Three to one

“Are we really living under feudalism? Hundreds of thousands of people fell into the second-class category!” These are, perhaps, the most correct slogans that were chanted by the participants in the all-Russian protest of hostel residents that swept through cities and villages the day before yesterday. On the banks of the Neva, the rally took place near the Vyborgskaya metro station, opposite the entrance to the Compressor plant. The location was not chosen by chance - the once state-owned enterprise, the pride of the domestic defense industry, having turned into an open joint stock company (the lion's share of the shares fell, as usual, to the management team), became worse than a stepmother for its ordinary workers. Having devoted 15–20 years to production, people did not receive not only the promised comfortable housing, but also the meager space they occupy in the Compressor dormitory could be lost at any moment.

A private company that has privatized the building forces three adult residents of a dorm into one tiny room: live and do not deny yourself anything. And the three branches of government cannot prevent this

Samples of protest creativity

As Rosenbaum says: “I want to glorify my city as a craftsman...” The collision, alas, is pathologically typical for today’s St. Petersburg: on the last Saturday of September, activists of the protest movement of hostel residents from different districts of the northern capital gathered at the corner of Bolshoy Sampsonievsky Prospekt and Litovskaya Street - Krasnoselsky, Vyborg, Kolpinsky (NG has already talked about the fate of many of them) - in different words, they spoke in general about one thing. About outright discrimination towards them on the part of the management of the enterprises that were once dear to them, about compaction, and even about eviction - it doesn’t matter that you have children or an 80-year-old mother on your hands; about replies from officials of all ranks and about judicial arbitrariness...
It is curious that as for the Compressor dormitory, located nearby, on Litovskaya Street, 8, the building is more than controversial. Thus, in 2004, the KUGI of St. Petersburg, by its order, made appropriate changes to the long-standing plan for the privatization of Kompressor (then still a production association, not a joint-stock company). According to KUGI, it turned out that the specified property was never the property of Compressor, is not the object of privatization, and in any case, the deal to denationalize the hostel, in legal terms, is void. Moreover, the house on Litovskaya Street should be transferred to the city.
The plant administration has repeatedly tried to challenge this decision, but so far to no avail. I have before me the latest ruling of the Federal Arbitration Court of the North-Western District dated September 15, 2006: everything remains in force; Kompressor’s cassation appeal is to be refused. The City Prosecutor's Office also fully agree with this formulation of the issue.
Nevertheless, the private company behaves as the absolute owner of the building - and at the same time, apparently, the “serfs” inhabiting it. We are talking about working families who today occupy only a few floors in the house. But on other floors, the dormitory sections were turned into separate comfortable apartments - only the local aborigines did not get them, as promised: the apartments were either sold externally, or they were kept for their own (in the sense of the plant management and their relatives). The lower floors housed shops and warehouses; The passages to the courtyard and the former dining room were sold or rented, even one front door in the house was bricked up - to make it easier for merchants to trade.
At the same time, representatives of the “lower caste” are compacted with terrible force. For example, Nadezhda Mikhaltsova, who worked at Kompressor since 1979 (and was fired in 1996 due to staff reduction), her husband Valery and 16-year-old son Oleg are forced to move - all three of them - into one small room, citing the fact that the family allegedly has one more room.
- Yes, there was a kitchen there a long time ago! – Valery Mikhaltsov shows a certificate signed by the head of the design and inventory bureau. – Why should I now huddle with my wife and an adult guy in a cell with an area of ​​​​less than 12 meters?!

This is how we live

Surprisingly, the court recently ruled this way.
Let us note that at the same time, adherents of the enterprise do not consider it necessary to comply with the rules and regulations of the technical operation of the building in which they manage. Last year, for numerous violations in this regard, Compressor was fined 40 thousand rubles. But, as ordinary residents testify, nothing has changed: there is no centralized hot water supply, the elevators are permanently suspended; the windows are broken, there are giant cracks in the ceilings... The old-timers repair what they can at their own expense. However, Kompressor regularly charges them for accommodation and utilities, and in such amounts that the “clients” clutch their heads.
“I repeatedly tried to find out where these prices come from, but no one even wanted to talk to me,” says Olga Kovrigina, one of the hostages of the hostel on Litovskaya. “Then I stopped paying the bills as a sign of protest.”
The company, through the court, demanded 32 thousand rubles from Olga, which she allegedly owed him - money that was unaffordable for a woman. However, already during the trial the amount of claim was reduced to 20 thousand. But in the end I had to pay... 4.3 thousand. Wow difference! This means that the tariffs were set arbitrarily and were inflated five times?
In the case of “Compressor”, the affected residents still hope that the realities will come into line with the documents: the de facto city will become the owner of the property, people will finally be able to register ownership of their apartments, and the chaos will end. In other cases, the authorities shrug their shoulders: we can’t help, the train has left.
“Too often, departmental dormitory buildings are privatized and sold behind the backs of the people living there,” states Elena Potekhina, leader of the initiative group from Pogranichnik Garkavy Street. “And when we find out about this, it turns out that it’s too late—the statute of limitations has expired.”
The result of the protest action on September 30 included appeals to the heads of the local and Russian parliaments: “Everything that is happening now in dorms is undoubtedly aimed at depriving people of housing. The rights of citizens are grossly violated. <…> We received a number of responses to our letters to the vice-speaker of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly. Thank you. But the purpose of our appeals is not the deputy’s autograph, but the solution to an acute social problem. Meanwhile, nothing has moved.”
St. Petersburg residents would like to know: what has the specialized working group “on dormitories” created in the Mariinsky Palace done in 12 months? Perhaps the people's representatives will consider it necessary to report to the electorate - after all, elections are just around the corner...

Valeria STRELNIKOVA
Photo by Alexander Bankov