Welcome to Chyorny Yar Meet the village that nearly banned Wikipedia for 140 million Russians

Chyorny Yar is a large village of about 8,000 souls. It's the administrative center of the Chernoyarsky District of Astrakhan Oblast, though the city of Volgograd (once called Stalingrad) is a bit closer. Moscow is more than 700 miles northwest. Chyorny Yar is, for better or worse, a Russian village like thousands of others. In July 2015, a local court in Chyorny Yar issued a countrywide ban on a Wikipedia article about charas hashish, leading to a small crisis in August, where the world's largest encyclopedia nearly became inaccessible to more than 140 million Russians. In a special report for Novaya Gazeta, photographer Evgeny Feldman went to Chyorny Yar to capture life in the village that almost made Wikipedia illegal in Russia.

The village is switching to gas heating, but smoke still pours out from boiler pipes. Some people are happy about it, as gas is cheaper. Others are less pleased, groaning, "The officials don't ask anybody before they do these things. It's like some dictatorship." But everyone admits that the switch to gas has had some hiccups: last fall, they turned off the boilers in some areas and weren't able to hook up the gas before winter.

Meet the model-plane enthusiasts in Chyorny Yar—one of the biggest centers for model-aircraftery in southern Russia. The group holds aerial combat competitions, where each plane has a ribbon tied to its tail, and one plane tries to cut off another's ribbon.

The village's main square.

Young doctors at a local hospital are paid millions of rubles to relocate to the area, but physicians are leaving, nevertheless. There's nothing to do in town, the hospital is understaffed, and doctors are forced to work overtime. The hospital is still the jewel of the village, however. From the outside, its problems aren't visible, and the medical equipment really is impressive. Also, key branches of the facility work around the clock.

This is the village's main private-sector industry: agriculture. In Chyorny Yar, they grow peppers, cabbage, potatoes, carrots, onions, and tomatoes. There are two harvests a year. There's also a cannery in town. Feldman's full photo report from Chyorny Yar is available at Novaya Gazeta, accessible here in Russian.