They closed the tractor depot in Koltsovo yesterday — the one that hasn’t fixed a tractor in ten years but still employed twenty men who showed up every day, drank tea, and pretended the state still believed in farming. Now they say it’s a logistics hub, which means two guys in a trailer and a foreign name on the gate. One of the welders from the old shop asked me if this is what progress feels like — like being replaced by air. I told him progress is just another word for remembering how to go hungry. The potatoes are coming in early this year. Maybe that means something. Or maybe winter just wants to laugh at us again.
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