The State Duma in the third reading approved amendments to the Forest Code, which allow Russians to collect and harvest deadwood for their own needs. The epochal message did not go unnoticed - after all, this is a rare case when the news talks about branches thrown in the forest. In connection with this, samizdat “My friend, you are a transformer” sent its Novosibirsk resident Alexei Ponedelchenko to the forest for reconnaissance, but he only reached the edge.

If we live until January 1, 2019, then we will see the amendments to the Forest Code come into force, according to which the Russians will finally be able to collect deadwood in the forest for free. So many jokes have already been joked about this that if you collect them all and voice them, then it will be enough for a monologue of a novice stand-up comedian:
- I recently went to the post office and said: “Where is my package?”, And in response to me: “Your only deadwood is here, and that one from next year!”

Or there:

A little boy was walking in the forest
In the bag he collected dead wood.
The forester angrily clicked the shutter:
The man is not aware of the innovations.

With deadwood, of course, a strange story came out. To begin with, no one actually forbade collecting it. Bills on deadwood were submitted several times to the State Duma, while Roslesnadzor stated that it did not consider deadwood and brushwood lying on the ground to be paid resources at all and did not consider their collection as an offense. The dilemma of the Russian deadwood is almost like the incident of Schrödinger's Cat. Russians have been taught since childhood that picking deadwood can turn into something unpleasant. For example, in the Crimean Museum of Local Lore, children are told during environmental education lessons that under Peter I, going to the forest for firewood could be punished with a whip, cut out the nostrils and exiled to hard labor, and fined 15 rubles for deadwood - at a time when a cow can be was to buy for 50 kopecks. Nothing much has changed in three hundred years, and in 2016 the Federal Forestry Agency warned that picking brushwood in the forest and lighting a barbecue from fallen branches could result in a heavy fine or two years in prison. The federal media were even forced to write advice to readers: “May Picnic: Survival Instructions" - and warn that you need to carry a bag of coal with you into the forest.

And here again - a dichotomy. In July 2015, a special natural zone "Volga-Akhtuba Interfluve" was created in Astrakhan, where visitors were forbidden to wash cars, dig cellars, catch more than five kilos of fish at a time and hunt with scuba gear, but they were allowed to set up tents and collect deadwood for a fire. And already in October 2015, the Samara Provincial Duma proposed issuing a special permit to Russians for collecting deadwood. The initiative was approved by the Federation Council Committee on Agrarian Food Policy and Environmental Management, but the State Duma rejected it: the law does not explain what deadwood is. In 2016, the State Duma saw a new bill. “A situation is being created when a large number of citizens commit offenses every day, collecting deadwood, but at the same time clearing the forest,” Andrey Tumanov, deputy from A Just Russia, commented on the initiative in 2016. Nothing came of it, and the document, having caused a surge in search queries, was lost somewhere in the depths of the parliament. Finally, a new, adopted bill was developed by deputies from three factions at once - United Russia, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and Fair Russia, and he included deadwood in the list of non-timber forest resources. “The heart simply rejoices,” said Andrey Isaev, first deputy head of the United Russia faction, before discussing the legislative initiative. “Today, it will finally be adopted in the third reading.”

Russia is full of people who take the new law seriously and wish they had to wait another seven months to collect deadwood. We will now introduce you to one of these people.

Ivan lives in the suburbs of Novosibirsk, on the edge of a dacha society bordering on the forest.

Do you know why I bought a plot right next to the forest? Ivan asks me
- I don't know, tell me.
- To be surrounded by people only from three sides!

Ivan melts the stove, near which one of his cats stretched out. A guard dog barks outside. The chips in the furnace furnace, burning, begin to click.

- Deadwood? I ask, pointing to the firewood by the stove.
- No, it's still raw, it's the last one. And this is purchased firewood. ordered that year. Here I burn.

- What do you think about the new deadwood law?
- Perhaps this is the only law that concerns me directly. In fact, I often go to the forest with a chainsaw. Almost after every hurricane, trees fall, which I find, cut, take home in the trunk, chop, dry and then burn in the oven. All this is an offense, punishable by a fine, and this constantly makes me uncomfortable. It is unpleasant to feel like a criminal, doing, in fact, the work of clearing the forest.

- Scary?
- There is little. In general, it is difficult to meet in the forest a representative of some forest supervisory authority. But among the neighbors there are a lot of people who know the form of the report very well. That year, my neighbor cut down a tree on his own plot, and, can you imagine, someone handed it over. Some kind of cosmic fine was assigned to him. Therefore, I have to deal with firewood on weekdays, when all the neighbors leave their dachas. And this is always in the evening, since I also work on weekdays. In a good way, you need to do such things on the weekend, in the morning, and devote the whole day to this, and not like me: two hours after work.

- In this sense, the new law will help you?
- Certainly! I got up on Saturday, got ready, pulled the back row of seats out of the car - and drove into the forest. In a day you can know how many logs to get! And most importantly, I will no longer hide from anyone.

Ivan is making tea, the firebox is getting brighter, the cat stretches out into a sausage and turns its belly towards the heat. Ivan's house is seven years old. He began to build it while still a student and living in a student hostel. In the third year of construction, Ivan moved into a house under construction, and in the fourth year he built a stove in the house.

- Why an oven? Some, I know, heat with electricity, supply gas.
- In my case, the oven is the most profitable solution. Gas, of course, is cheap, but the gasification procedure is very expensive. In addition to supplying the gas pipe itself, you need to install a boiler, install radiators, pipe pipes, buy antifreeze, and then every year also call gas workers who will check gas equipment. It all costs a lot of money. It is much easier and cheaper to build a stove and heat it with wood. I counted everything. There is another option to heat with electricity, but this is a ruin. Although some people in our village heat themselves with electrical appliances all winter, and in order not to pay several thousand a month, they simply steal light bypassing the meters. This is well known to the chairman, who spreads the cost of stolen kilowatts to everyone. Very convenient: you pay the chairman five thousand for the whole season and calmly steal thirty. Therefore, I'd rather collect deadwood. This at least does not lead to a high tariff for electricity.

- By the way, how much can you save on this deadwood?
- A cube of firewood costs 800 rubles, but four cubes with delivery cost 4500-5000. The same four cubes in the forest can easily be collected by spending five liters on gasoline for a car and a chainsaw. As for the indicator of firewood consumption, then everyone is different. I have a bell-type stove, everything in it burns without residue, so the consumption of firewood is small. Someone, perhaps, drowns with a potbelly stove, and in it all the heat flies into the chimney.

Ivan takes a sip of tea. His wife comes down from the second floor, sits by the stove and picks up knitting. The cat purrs in his sleep.

The initiator of the amendments to the Forest Code were the deputies of the United Russia, the Communist Party and the "Fair Russia". Do you adhere to the views of any of these parties?
- To be honest, I'm not very good at it. I would like to live in a country where people do not need to adhere to any political views, be members of any parties, and so on. I myself try to minimize the role of the state in my life and I consider this approach to be the most optimal. We all should get used to the idea that sooner or later the state will only perform the functions of collecting and distributing taxes among its employees. All other functions people will have to perform on their own. As soon as this realization comes, the news about the permission of the collection of deadwood ceases to be funny.

We drink tea with Belarusian waffles. The cat lazily climbs to the second floor and jumps onto the stove, in which purchased firewood is burning out. Outside the window is night, there in the dark on the cold earth a Russian person is waiting for wood that is still forbidden.