We found this unique look at how the global reces­sion is effect­ing small towns in Rus­sia from Time Magazine.

The town of Pika­ly­ovo has ram­pant unem­ploy­ment after the local cement fac­to­ries closed down. Peo­ple there took to the streets to protest over never receiv­ing back pay. The protest got Vladamir Putin’s atten­tion, and the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment is tak­ing steps to make sure more protests don’t occur in the country.

From Time Mag­a­zine, reporter John Wen­dle gives us the story of the Pika­ly­ovo.

For three months, Pikalyovo’s cit­i­zens had been liv­ing in crip­pling poverty after the town’s recession-hit cement and brick fac­to­ries started clos­ing down. Thou­sands of work­ers were laid off and almost overnight nearly 25% of Pikalyovo’s 20,000 res­i­dents were unem­ployed. After mak­ing sev­eral pleas to their employ­ers for back pay — at one point crash­ing a meet­ing at the mayor’s office to demand their jobs back — the work­ers turned to des­per­ate mea­sures. On June 2, they staged a strike along a major high­way link­ing the city of Vologda to St. Peters­burg, block­ing the route for hours. Finally Moscow took notice and Prime Min­is­ter Vladimir Putin flew in by heli­copter to force local politi­cians and fac­tory own­ers to pay the town’s work­ers the money owed to them. Now Pikalyovo’s shops, cafes and banks are doing good busi­ness again, but as the reces­sion sweeps across Rus­sia, small single-industry towns all over the coun­try are just one fac­tory clo­sure away from suf­fer­ing the same plight. (See pic­tures of Putin.)

“You wouldn’t have seen any­thing like this — peo­ple were fed up and angry,” says Alexan­der Plush, 41, another for­mer fac­tory worker stand­ing in line at the ATM. Plush had worked for 17 years at one of the Pikalyovo’s cement fac­to­ries until it closed a few months ago. “Before we got paid, peo­ple were liv­ing on bread and water and the food they could grow in their gar­dens this early in the year,” he says.

The sit­u­a­tion was so bleak that, accord­ing to Russ­ian media, peo­ple in Pika­ly­ovo were forced to eat wild plants, while the city’s hot water was shut off after res­i­dents couldn’t pay their bills. When Putin came in to save the day, he saw PR poten­tial in Pikalyovo’s dis­tress. Dur­ing a nation­ally tele­vised meet­ing in the town, the prime min­is­ter scolded local offi­cials and fac­tory own­ers, includ­ing bil­lion­aire tycoon Oleg Deri­paska, a one­time Krem­lin favorite whose invest­ment com­pany Basic Ele­ment owns the town’s Basel­Cement fac­tory. “You have made thou­sands of peo­ple hostage to your ambi­tions, your lack of pro­fes­sion­al­ism — or maybe sim­ply your triv­ial greed,” Putin said.

Yet even Putin’s harsh words and the dis­bur­sal of pay have not put an end to the feel­ing here that the cri­sis will con­tinue. “It’s unlikely the sit­u­a­tion will change. Receiv­ing our pay was a small ges­ture, a short-term solu­tion,” says Denis Yer­shov, a for­mer employee at the local elec­tric­ity plant who helped block the road last week. “I’ll be happy when we have work again. I’ll be happy when we have sta­bil­ity and I’m able to feed my family.”

Yershov’s sen­ti­ments — and those of nearly every­one else TIME spoke to in Pikaylovo — are play­ing out at check­out coun­ters in shops all over town. “Peo­ple are only buy­ing the cheap­est brands. It’s like they don’t believe the change will last,” says Oksana Gavrilova, a staunch Putin sup­porter who had worked at the Euro­Ce­ment fac­tory for eight years before she was laid off. Lean­ing down into a nearly empty cooler to grab a kiel­basa, she says, “With­out the fac­to­ries, Pika­ly­ovo is nothing.”

And she is right. Pika­ly­ovo is one of hun­dreds of cities across Rus­sia whose pop­u­la­tions are sup­ported by just one fac­tory or one indus­try. If that fac­tory or indus­try is wiped out by the global eco­nomic down­turn — as Pikalyovo’s was when the price of cement dropped and Deripaska’s com­pany Basic Ele­ment put half of its work­force on forced leave — the whole town is sent into a tailspin

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