DOWN AND OUT IN MOSCOW
A VIEW FROM RUSSIA
Paul Lewis
Originally published Saga
Magazine, September 1993, pp. 18-22.
Nikolay
Andreevitch Yasinsky’s apartment is set back from Parkovaya
Street 15th, so called because it is the fifteenth of sixteen parallel
streets all called Ulitsa Parkovaya or Park Street which hatch the space
between Moscow’s outer ring motorway and a long wide road called Okrusnoy
Avenue. To the north lie the remains of the natural woodland on which this
estate was built and the blocks of flats on Parkovaya Street 15th seem
to have been placed among the fully grown trees without disturbing any that
were more than six feet from their walls.
War veteran Nikolay Andreevitch. He lost his leg during the battle
to relieve the siege of Leningrad, but today he cannot afford to buy the vegetables
he needs.
Trees
are the redeeming feature of Moscow’s dilapidated blocks of dreary flats which
officially house nine million and actually accommodate thirteen million. They
need redemption. At each address there are several buildings, set back from the
road. Nikolay’s is a good 200 yards from the pavement along unmade roads
relieved by scrap cars, earth playgrounds, and large rubbish containers. Four
doors lead into his building. Through the first and up six short flights of
stairs is apartment 85, building 5, number 42, Parkovaya Street 15 — home to
Ukrainian Nikolay, aged 72.
He
lost his left leg fighting to relieve the siege of Leningrad. “Where Pushkin
was wounded, Black River” — he is proud to have been wounded at such an
illustrious place. There is no lift in the building and the red and yellow
tiles on the concrete landings and stairs are broken and uneven. On every other
half-landing there is a rubbish chute. His front door is well locked and leads
to a small hallway which gives on to a tiny kitchen, through which there is a
balcony with a few plants. A second door leads to the bedsitting room where his
small box bed is part of his daytime furniture. A table covered with an old
carpet and a cheap settee fill the rest of the room. The finest objects are
large, framed photographs of him and his wife taken before the war.
He
has three rooms, though all are less than 12 feet square. One was his and his
wife’s, one was their daughter and son-in-law’s, the other was for his
grandson, his wife and their two-year-old daughter. Seven people crowded into
three rooms, a typically crowded Moscow family flat. But last year his wife
died of cancer and his daughter died of diabetes. A few months later his
grandson, a soldier, was killed in a shooting accident and his widow and their
baby have moved back to live with her parents. Now Nikolay Andreevitch lives
alone with his son-in-law Viktor Mikhailovitch. The three-roomed apartment is
too big for just the two of them. He weeps at the memory of the loved ones he
has lost.
Nikolay’s
pension is enough, he says. He gets 24,000 roubles a month — his flat costs him
just 85 roubles a month. Over the last year all flats in Moscow have been privatised
by the simplest possible means — handed over to the tenants. The 85 roubles
covers heating, water, and rubbish collection. In addition, he pays 20 roubles
for electricity and 106 roubles for the phone. Local calls are free. With the
basics taken care of, Nikolay still has almost all the 24,000 roubles a month
left for living.
It
is impossible to say simply what a rouble is worth. If you go into a bank with
pounds sterling you can buy 24,000 roubles for about £14 so his pension is
little more than £4 a week. But all state services, such as the flat and
electricity, are very cheap. A ride on the Metro, Moscow’s efficient
underground railway costs six roubles, about a third of a penny, for any
distance. A ride on a trolleybus or tram is four roubles. Conversely fruit, for
example, is very expensive. Two pounds of apples will cost 2,000 roubles, a
twelfth of a month’s pension. Even a pint of milk is expensive at 80 roubles, a
2lb bag of sugar costs 355 roubles. But Nikolay Andreevitch doesn’t think in
such quantities. “Five small carrots are 100 roubles. I need vegetables but I
cannot have them. I need the vitamins and I cannot buy them in the chemist.”
Nikolay’s
pension is enough for his needs because his diet is very poor. He never eats
fruit, he doesn’t like meat. It is just as well. Ham is 3,784 roubles a kilo at
a local shop. At about 25p a pound it sounds cheap, but not if you are living
on £14 a month. Nikolay Andreevitch lives on vegetable soup, porridge, which
Russians eat as a main course, potatoes and, at 24 roubles each, eggs. He never
goes out, except to return to his factory for some company during the day.
He
says, “I fought in the war. I was honoured at work. I was a technician in a
textile research plant and factory. But now life beats me greatly. I don’t know
why God does it. Under Stalin, after the war, he told us the price of bread. And prices came down each year. Now
inflation has robbed us. My wife and I had 5,000 roubles each in the bank. It
was good savings. Now it is worth nothing.”
The
rate of inflation in Russia is hard to grasp. Although it is now falling, it
was 2,600 per cent in 1992. Something which cost 100 roubles in January cost
2,700 roubles in December. To try to cope with the effects, the Government
raises the pension every three months. Pensions are now ten times what they
were nine months ago and sixty times what they were two years ago. If we had
inflation at the same level in Britain, the basic retirement pension would have
risen from £52 in 1991 to £3,120 a week in 1993. Despite the frequent increases
in pension, inflation soon destroys its value —by one third at the end of the
month in which the pension is paid; after three months when the next pension
rise is due it is worth less than half its original value.
Nikolay
had a reasonable job and his war injury ensures that his pension is higher than
the pay of many people still in employment. Other Russian pensioners are not so
fortunate, you can see them in their hundreds round every Metro station, in the
subways beneath Moscow’s broad avenues, and lining the busier streets. The city’s
poor have joined the market economy with a vengeance to try to scrape a living
with a few extra roubles. Some sell small bunches of cut flowers; others offer second-hand
clothes, a few sell kittens. But mainly they sell food.
They
even sell food outside Moscow’s central market in Svetnoy Boulevard. Inside the
market, pyramids of glossy fruit and plump vegetables are a testimony to the
fertile diversity of Russian soil and climate. The market has always been here,
even under the communist regime, and its Georgian stallholders have a
reputation for hard bargaining and high prices. On the street outside, it is
different.
Lubov Vassilievna takes all day to
sell a couple of loaves and some milk —
she makes 17p.
Widow
Lubov Vassilievna, 79, wears a colourful scarf and an orange-coloured cardigan
over a print dress. Her wares are displayed on a cardboard box: one loaf and a
one litre carton of milk. In her bag there are two more of each. It takes her
all day to sell them and she makes less than 300 roubles (17p). She worked for
20 years in a shoe factory after bringing up her children. Her pension is 8,000
roubles (£4.45) a month. She told me, “I cannot remember when I last ate meat
or sausages. I eat milk, potatoes, and bread but no butter, just oil to fry
them in. I have no fruit or vegetables but I may be able to afford them later
in the year when they get cheaper.”
Russian
pensions are related to earnings. A wife who has a pension of her own gets no
widow’s pension when her husband dies. Lubov Vassilievna is suffering from
widowhood after a short, low-paid, working life when her children had grown up.
Perhaps the children helped her now? She smiled: “I have a daughter, a
granddaughter and two great grandchildren. I help them from my pension and what
I make here. They need help because of the expense of everything and the new
problem of unemployment. Soon I will be 80 and I am looking forward to that
because my pension will be a bit more then. My main worry is that I have high
blood pressure and medicines are very hard to get. It is a worry to know that
you cannot get them when you need them.”
Like
most of the women lining this busy thoroughfare, Lubov sells food on the street
which she has bought in ordinary shops. Her customers are workers who are too
busy or too lazy to queue for it themselves. Although there are no longer the
chronic shortages and long queues which characterised daily life under
communism, buying food is still a lengthy process. Choice is very limited in
the small, local grocery shops which are all called, simply, Produkti
(products).
One
of these is nearby in a dirty, drab building. The windows are empty. Inside
there are three counters: one stocks milk and cereals, another meat, mainly
dried or preserved in some way, and a third vegetables. There are just six or
seven different items at each counter with half a dozen people queuing for
them. Patches of bare concrete show through the broken floor tiles; some new
plastering is left unpainted. If the lighting had not been so poor, it would
look even worse. Prices displayed on torn pieces of rough card show that butter
is 1,180 roubles a kg (30p a pound), tea is 231 roubles for 100g (14p a
quarter), and sugar is 355 roubles a kilo (9p a pound). The prices seem low
when converted into sterling but they are not when they have to be found out of
a pension consisting of just a few pounds a month.
At
each counter there is a small queue. Occasionally, a veteran or disabled person
goes to the head of the queue, which by convention they may, and they will be
served at once. Others wait patiently. Once the few items have been chosen and
the price calculated, either mentally or, in difficult cases, on an abacus, the
customer is given a ticket. This process is repeated at each counter and the
tickets must be taken to yet another queue at the central cash desk. In turn,
the totals on the tickets are added — on another abacus — before the total is
finally entered on a new Casio till! The customer takes the receipt to each
counter in turn to collect the groceries. By enduring this long process then
re-selling the goods on the street for a small profit, Lubov, like thousands of
other women across Moscow, sells her time and patience to supplement her pension.
Fifty
yards in front of the Izmaylovo International Hotel is the Ismaylovskaya Metro
station. Forty women stand in two lines like an honour guard for the passengers
emerging from its entrance. Maria, 63, holds aloft a large salami and a small
plastic bag full of tomatoes. Occasionally a passer-by shows interest and asks
the price. “My pension is 10,000 roubles (£5.55) a month because I had a
low-paid job in a meat factory where I worked for 15 years. My husband died two
years ago. I am here maybe two or three times a week, I make perhaps 1,000 or
1,500 roubles (55p-83p),” she said. Next to her is Alexandra, 70, selling milk.
“My father was imprisoned by Stalin. He was taken when I was 14, so I had no
education and could not get a good job, so I have a small pension. I buy milk
in the shop for those who have not got the time to queue. I think this is a
good use of my time and I make a few roubles.”
Not
everyone buys the produce they sell. Outside a cheese shop in the south suburbs
of Moscow, Ivan Mikhailovitch sits in front of a box on which are three
portions of rocket, a kind of wild lettuce, replenished by the sackful. “My
pension is 10,000 roubles (£5.55). I collect this in the woods and then sell it
here two or three times a week. It is 50 roubles (3p) a portion.”
Ivan Mikhailovitch supplements his
pension by selling wild lettuce. He makes
around 3p a portion.
If
the central market is the best in Moscow then Tishinksky market is the worst.
On a piece of waste ground, in front of derelict buildings, using sheets of
newspaper for stalls, Moscow’s poor sell to each other: rusty blunt drill bits
and a handful of used brake shoes. Sergei, is selling his grandchildren’s old
shoes, three out-of-date reel-to-reel tapes for which he claims to have a
buyer, and four small steel hinges. At the entrance a woman sits in front of a
small tray on which are various boxes of medication, dirty and old, but items
which are hard to find in Moscow’s chemist shops.
Inside
the market is Praskovia Ivanovna who lives alone in a one-room flat and sells
empty 1.5 litre plastic bottles for 15 roubles each (less than 1p). Aged 80,
her pension is 15,000 roubles (£8.33) a month. It is enough to live on, she
says, but adds: “I haven’t eaten a tomato all year because they are too
expensive. I sell my things here for almost nothing.”
A
recent survey by the charity Care International found that pensioners living
alone were the most vulnerable here. In the south west corner of Moscow, near
the university, the International Protestant Church organises a modest response
to this problem, providing meals for Moscow’s poorest and loneliest pensioners
in what it calls a soup kitchen – a stolovaya or canteen. These stolovayas
provide more than 10,000 meals a day to needy, people, mainly pensioners. The
stolovaya I visited feeds 300 each lunchtime, staffed by volunteers and
students, many from Nigeria who are in Moscow studying engineering. On offer
today is a thin vegetable soup, plain pasta served with thick brown porridge, a
hard boiled egg, two pieces of dark bread, and a glass of tea.
Anna
Nikolayevna Volodina, 81, wears a white patterned scarf tightly drawn over her
round face. Her black dress is old and worn and covered by a blue cardigan. Her
shoes are thin. The Russian language has a wonderful term of love and respect
for its older women — babushka or grandmother. If anyone personifies it, Anna
does. She looks at her soup, pasta, and porridge and peels her egg. “The food
here is very delicious,” she says. “I worked all my life in the Dulova china
factory where I painted designs on cups and plates. After I retired I got 52
roubles pension and that was plenty. Now I get 8,000 roubles (£4.44) a month
and it is not enough. I respect those who work in factories, but I do not
respect these businessmen and speculators. They are really workers but they don’t
want to work.”
Anna Nikolayevna Volodina
personifies the Russian Babushka (grandmother). The stolovaya’s (soup kitchen) food is “very delicious”, she says.
Her
family, two sons and numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren still live
in Dulova, about 60 miles from Moscow. She remarried a Muscovite late in life
and is now a widow but now that she is registered as a Moscow resident it is
hard for her to move away.
“My
sons don’t help me because they have many children themselves. One is a
mechanic but wages are low and unemployment is now a constant fear. I live in a
communal flat, I have one room and there are two other rooms with young men in
them. We share a bathroom and kitchen. They don’t help me. No, if I’m not
careful they would steal from me. I have bread and butter and tea for breakfast
but I do not have enough to eat — the food here is very good. Hot meals of the
sort I like. Really I am young, my life is young, I am hoping to live a very
long time. I am always smiling and that is the important thing.” Her deeply
lined white face breaks into a smile as the beauty and mischief break through
the patient endurance of this wonderful babushka.
When
flats were allocated by the state, the housing shortage was dealt with by
putting childless people in communal flats. Unrelated, and often incompatible
single people or couples, like Anna and her flatmates, would share three rooms,
with common facilities, waiting for the time when they could get some privacy.
It could take years but technically they were “housed”.
Viktor is homeless. He lost his
documents so he receives no pension. “I sleep
where I am”.
Now
that the state no longer controls housing, there is real homelessness. Viktor
is 57 and an epileptic. Married twice and an officially registered resident of
Moscow, he is homeless. His dark face framed by a flowing brown beard, his
dark-coloured, thick clothes and shoes tied with string. He smells of strong
Russian tobacco. He eats at the stolovaya. “I was a carpenter. I have been
married twice but now I sleep where I am. All my documents were stolen so I get
no pension. Sometimes I collect old bottles and return them for a few roubles.
Or I just beg. I get perhaps 100 or 200 roubles (5p-11p) a day. I eat here free
but at other canteens I must pay 72 roubles (4p) for a plate of soup.”
John
Melin is a Lutheran minister from Minneapolis, currently resident with the
International Protestant Church in Moscow which runs the stolovaya. As people
come and go they thank and praise him for his kindness. One woman stops to say,
“I have worked for 63 years yet I have to come here for my food. God bless the
church and God bless the Americans who help us.”
John
explains, “We wanted to share with the people who were needy during the
difficult transition from communism. This soup kitchen is our response to that
need. We provide healthy traditional meals for 15 to 18 cents (10p-12p) each.
Every dollar we are given goes straight to those in need. It is a food sharing
ministry and I want to stress we provide service not just food, an opportunity
to talk with people. Here they can sit, and be served, and talk. We do not proselytise.
Our witness is in our service.”
A
soup kitchen can never be more than a stop-gap measure to deal with the
economic problems which
create the terrible poverty prevalent in Moscow. Under the communist system,
the welfare of older people was shared be-tween relatives and an elaborate
system of organised care. Charities and voluntary organisations were banned by
a state which had to seem to provide everything its people needed. But when the
communist regime collapsed following the rapid political changes which followed
the attempted coup in August 1991, the structures it supported went with it.
The gap is slowly being filled by charitable efforts, according to Megan Bick,
director of the Moscow office of the BEARR Trust (British Emergency Action in Russia
and the Republics), an English charity devoted to helping the countries of the
former Soviet Union.
Megan
said, “The Trust keeps in touch with the local needs and channels help, from
people in Britain, such as money or goods or technical aid about how the
voluntary sector works.”
Prospekt
Mira, or Peace Avenue, is a broad boulevard running due north out of Moscow
past the exhibition of economic achievements which lies beneath a soaring
titanium statue of a space rocket pointing skywards. Close to these monuments
to Russia’s past a small group of people is trying to create the human side of
its future.
The
Alexeyevskiy district consists of 300 blocks of flats and is home to 80,000
people. It was built for those who worked on the Metro and among them are now
an estimated 35,000 pensioners. Here, in a damp basement office that used to
house communist party meetings, the Alexeyevskiy Fund, with some assistance
from the BEARR Trust, is developing services for them. Its director is Tatiana
Yurievna Pavlicheva, who used to work as a metallurgist in the defence industry
until, in 1990, she became involved in distributing humanitarian aid. “It was a
big problem about how to give aid to people who needed it and stop well off
people from grabbing it. Doing this work made me realise what problems existed
and I started trying to see what I could do. God wouldn’t forgive me if I didn’t
do something.”
Her
first step is to carry out a survey of the pensioners in the area and she
expects to find about 1,000 who need help to cope alone. Like any western
charity, the Alexeyevskiy Fund has to raise its own money. Tatiana appears to
have found a uniquely Russian way of doing that, using the value of the newly
privatised flats which these older people now occupy.
She
explained: “An old woman lives alone and needs help. And there is a businessman
who would like to have the flat when she dies. So the Fund sits in the middle.
We contact the businessman, telling him that there is a flat of such a size in
such a district and it is owned by a woman born in such a year but no other
details. If he agrees, we get a lawyer to draw up documents so he pays money to
our Fund and he will receive the flat in the end when she dies. The Fund then
provides her with the services she needs for the rest of her life.”
Tatiana
admits that with high inflation and investors wanting a quick return on their
money, it is hard to persuade Russia’s new entrepreneurs to support the Fund
now, in exchange for a possible return in several years’ time. But already one
local businessman is paying some salaries in exchange for the promise of a flat
when its octogenarian owners die. With salaries of 15,000 roubles (£8.50) a
month and some flats worth $50,000 (£33,500) it could end up a very good deal. Already
documents are being drawn up to allow the Fund to share in the profit to pay
for some of its future projects.
It
is a practical answer to the terrible problems which their older people face.
They live in the biggest country on the planet, packed with natural resources.
They have some of the best science and technology in the world and an enviable
heritage of literature and art. They could have so much. But many have so
little.
Translation:
Lyudmila Alekseevna Cromova
Pictures:
Grigory Dukor and Paul Lewis
Vs. 1.00
20 April 2022
