Far from sinister headlines about matters like accusations that Russians hacked the Democratic Party in the United States, a few hundred people milled around the ruins of this villageâ??s once-imposing Orthodox church.
Here was what one might call the other Russia, a local effort to raise funds in pursuit of the somewhat quixotic task of renovating the Church of the Nativity, once the place of worship attached to an aristocratic estate.
Scores of stall holders offered home-baked cakes and discarded books, paintings and handcrafted face scrubs. Eager buyers, mostly vacationers from summer dachas in and around the nearby town of Tarusa, scoured the stalls.
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