Literary Ruralism (Part XXVI): The Tsar of Love and Techno

This post is going to seem to some folks like a stretch as far as rural goes.  However, a passage from Anthony Marra's The Tsar of Love and Techno (2015) struck me as rural in the sense of reminding me of rural attachment to place, even as the place declines and opportunity is lost. 

The "place" in Marra's book is a Siberian town north of the Arctic circle, Kirovsk, where nickel was mined and, as a consequence, pollution has been rife and its effects have accumulated over the years.  Yet, after several generations there, the descendants of those shipped there because they were disloyal to Stalin (or perceived to be), people are reluctant to leave.  Marra writes via the voice of a 30-something woman whose grandparents were exiled to Kirovsk by Stalin: 

The layoffs began shortly after the first war in Chechnya ended.  Automated machines mined nickel with greater efficiency than our husbands.  Pensions vanished in the fluctuations of foreign stock exchanges.  Even those who kept their jobs struggled.  With the collapsing ruble, the payments of wages and pensions delayed for months, no one could afford the imported products that replaced familiar Soviet brands.  We considered moving to a milder climate but couldn't manage relocation costs.  Besides, our children were the fourth generation to call the Arctic home.  This meant something even if we didn't know quite what.