BARZAS, Kemerovo Oblast – First-time visitors become aware of it as they approach this Siberian town – all they need to do is poke their heads out the window and survey the crumbling surroundings. This village of fewer than 5,000 people, located in the Kuzbass coal-mining region, has been losing its population for the past 20 years and is finding itself increasingly isolated from the rest of the world.

The journey there illustrates the problem, starting with the road itself. Kuzbass itself has so many excellent roads that they could probably arouse even the envy of a Muscovite. That, at least, is the way it looks on the way out of Kemerovo, the regional metropolis of 550,000 people, about 60 km south of Barzas. But as you draw away from Kemerovo the road starts to gets rougher, with potholes appearing more frequently, until eventually the pavement gives way altogether and you find yourself bumping along on nothing but a dirt track. By that time, the traffic has all but disappeared.

There is a bus linking Barzas to the nearby town of Beryozovsky, but it is old and doesn't run on a regular basis. "There used to be several buses a day, but now there is only one – when it works," said Lidya Mikhasyova, an old Barzas resident, who worked in a nearby kolkhoz, or collective farm, that has long since disappeared.

Barzas was not always a town in decline. There was a time when it was a fairly important center. Residents point out that the infamous Admiral Alexander Kolchak, one of the White Army's leaders in Russia's 1918-1921 Civil War, based his headquarters in the village for some time.

"Until the end of the 1970s, this used to be the administrative center of a district named after this place, Barzas," said Alexander Shvedskov, a policeman in his 50s, busy repairing his small wooden house in preparation for winter. "It had more than 15,000 inhabitants, and several state-owned companies were based here. There were several mines, as well as a wood-processing factory."

Barzas is set on the edge of a large pine forest, part of the huge Siberian Taiga. In the late 1970s, the village's fortunes took a turn for the worse. Gennady Gaydinyov – one of the rare taxi drivers from Beryozovsky to grace the streets of Barzas – said that was initially because neighboring Beryozovsky, with 40,000 inhabitants, grew rapidly and soon overshadowed Barzas. "That is when people, especially younger ones, started to leave this place to go to Beryozovsky, and the exodus has been going on ever since," Shvedskov said. The district named Barzas disappeared shortly after that.

Then, with the fall of the U.S.S.R., the village went into free-fall. The state-owned wood-processing factory closed, as did the five mines surrounding the village, which had provided work for many Barzas men. Today, with the exception of a couple of badly stocked grocery shops, the only other business remaining is the Leskhoz, a wood-cutting company employing just a few dozen lumberjacks.

Even the village school burned down three years ago, Shvedskov said. A new one is under construction, but no one knows when it will be completed. For the time being, Barzas' children attend classes in a temporary building.

With nearly no employment prospects, the inhabitants of Barzas are left to fend for themselves. A number of them are retired miners, like Andrei, a man of 60, sporting a grey, untrimmed beard, who said he received a pension of 850 rubles ($30) a month. Many are just unemployed.

For most, there is only one possibility left: to live off their ogorodoks, or backyards, where people grow all sorts of fruit and vegetables. "We have cabbages, potatoes, carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers and so on. That's the only way we can make it," said Mikhasyova, who lives with her unemployed son and teenage grandson.

But even that has gotten harder. "We used to have a few animals in the garden, cows and goats, but we had to stop," Mikhasyova said. "It was just too expensive. We couldn't buy food for them and bread for ourselves at the same time. Now, bread is the only thing we can afford. We don't eat meat any longer. In fact, we practically don't use money any longer either."

The situation has gotten so difficult that people have even taken to stealing from each other's gardens. "You especially have to watch out for cabbages. You just have to leave for a little while and people will steal your cabbages," said Mikhasyova, her small dog, as if on cue, growling behind her at the mention of the word. "It is so sad," she added.

It doesn't look like things will improve soon. "We do have some possibilities," Shvedkov said. "We have a spring in our village where water is exceptionally pure and healthy. We could try to bottle it and sell it. Also, the nature here is beautiful. We could try to attract tourists. But who will invest in such a place?"

If nobody answers that question soon, one day there might not be anyone left in Barzas to pose it.