Russian villagers relive the past

The village well is just as it was 300 years ago

Two Russian families are preparing for an unusual experiment - they are going to live and work in a reconstructed 18th Century village.

Volunteers will settle in the reborn village to live just as their ancestors did

Aleksey Barsky

The houses are made of wood and have been constructed using the techniques of the period.

The director of the project, Aleksey Barsky, told Russia's NTV television that he believed many more volunteers would settle in the reborn village "to live just as their ancestors did."

The local authorities see the village as a prototype for others, and hope that tourists will flock to take a glimpse of Russian rural history brought to life.

Haymaking

Mr Barsky, the director of the Museum for Wooden Constructions, said the village at Semyonovka, north of Moscow, would be exact in every detail.

The tools and utensils are all traditional

"We would like this not to be just a piece of architecture... but for the village to live its own life," he said.

The villagers will look after their own cattle, make their own dairy produce, grow and preserve their own crops and do their own haymaking just as in the 18th century.

Painstaking efforts are also being made to reproduce the original structures, including traditional wooden fencing and barns.

The only concession to modern life is that the houses will have electricity.

Wood-burning stoves

The doors open inwards

NTV said the architecture in the north was different from that in the centre of the country.

The windows, for example, are small and the doors only open inwards to stop ice building up.

The houses will be heated with a traditional Russian wood-burning stove, known as a "pechka".

As part of the project, schools in the region have begun to teach children a new subject called "Roots", along with old forgotten folklore, traditions and dialects.

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