Cherry hell

We begin a series of publications about the Old Housing Fund - the acute problem in Russia. The first report is about the inhabitants of the ancient noble estate, in which there is no sewer, hot water and other elementary amenities

You can get to the village of Koltyshevo only on one bus - the twenty -first. Only two people come out at the stop with me. If you go to the side through the forest, you can see a sanatorium on the shore of a picturesque lake. We are moving in a different direction - towards the only store behind which there are wooden barracks. They were built in the sixties to resettle workers of the poultry farm. They said that for a month or two, no more, therefore, they built a summer option-almost without a foundation. The walls were made from two layers of boards and plaster. Fifty years have passed, and the workers of the former poultry farms live in these houses so far.

There are no streets in Koltyshevo, but there are rooms of houses. We go to the house No. 1. It is called "Barsky" here. This is an old landowner estate, which was built more than two hundred years ago. No one knows its exact age, even in the house book it is written - the date of construction is unknown. After the revolution, the mansion from the Lord was converted into multi -apartment and next hundred years slowly but surely brought to an emergency state. From the aristocratic past there was a linden alley now leading to the huts.

View of the house behind. Over the distance between the windows of the first floor and the ground, it is easy to notice how much the house sagged. Photo: Arthur Bondar for TD

In the reference book of the estates near Moscow, compiled by Andrei Chizhov, not much has been written about Koltyshevo. Until the middle of the 19th century, this village of Klinsky district was called Voskresenskoye and was the estate of Andrei Tatishchev, whose family was still from the Rurikovich. Later, the Norov brothers - major and captain, titular adviser Andrei Lebedev and others owned the estate. In 1901, the landowner Popov won the estate in the cards, becoming its last private owner. In 1917, Koltyshevo was nationalized.

Today, on the second floor of the Barsky house, the family of a packer of the 4th category of Tatyana Ivanovna lives. In one apartment - she is with children and grandchildren, in another - her mother and brother. She moved here as a child in the seventies and remembers what the old -timers were told.

- When we arrived here, here some grannies lived. They were already a lot of years, they worked for our landowner, for the same Popov. They said that the Kamenka river had a chicken coop, and near the current bus stop - a nail plant, near the house behind linden - large stables. Now nothing is left of this. On the other side of the road where private houses stand, birch trees grew in circles, they had a pond there, I still remember it since the seventies. Before the revolution in honor of the holidays, they laid a long tablecloth in our meadow, and everyone walked, who worked for him, and the Barin sat with them. All grannies praised him very much. They said that he brought food to his employees right in the field three times a day.

Tatyana Ivanovna in her kitchen photo: Arthur Bondar for TD

They say that in the Tretyakov Gallery there is a small picture with our estate of the brush of an unknown artist - there it is with huge balconies, stucco molding on the facade. Now you can’t say this to our house. Several times the descendants of the landowners came to us - they were still led in the village, it was a long time ago. Popov’s nephew specially came from Paris. They thought that they would worship here, as abroad - “take your times”, and they were told: “Buy yours once.”

There was almost nothing left of the noble nest. Near the wooden sheds and the new playground, to which for four years they can’t bring sand, there is a pedestal. There was a monument on it - a small angel. The youngest son of the landowner Popov, who died in early childhood, was buried in this place. Residents of the house claim that the second son of the landowner-a test pilot who died in the First World-also rests nearby. The hollow under the monument, in any case, is really two. The sculpture disappeared from the pedestal when one of the locals decided to check if there are treasures inside The sculpture disappeared from the pedestal, when one of the locals decided to check this quote to check if the treasures are inside. A meter from the monument lies a drunk man in camouflage pants. “At the Popovs, this probably didn’t happen,” I think, gently bypassing the sleeping villager.

Tatyana Ivanovna has been living in an apartment mansion for sixteen years. Before that, her family lived in a wooden hut, but he burned in 1998 due to faulty wiring. Despite the motive age, he works at a furniture factory in Solnechnogorsk with his daughter. The son of Tatyana Ivanovna graduated from the university in Zelenograd and every day goes to work in another city - also to the factory. There is no work in Koltyshevo.

The Barsky house sagged very much, and from the walls you can safely remove the bricks. Photo: Arthur Bondar for TD

- We always had a “transshipment point” in Soviet times. He was called that. People came, were registered to get an apartment from the poultry farm. In neighboring villages, construction was underway. Everyone left there. People were temporarily prescribed in our house. Even on the roof, just do not ask how, I don't know. I remember there was a case. The police arrived and says: we need a man from the eighteenth apartment. And I tell them - we have only ten, if you take the attic - then sixteen, well, and seventeen and eighteen - this is already on the roof, look for there.

At that time I worked in a local sanatorium, first in the pool, then in the dining room. It was not far - two kilometers. But in the zero we changed the tenant, the locals fired and hired visitors, ready to work for a meager fee. Yes, and taxes do not need to be paid for them - everything without documents. They now work in a sanatorium, live right there. They almost do not go to the city, they are afraid: to the store and quickly back so that no one will notice. Well, you are walking here again, you will learn a lot.

At the exit from the entrance, I meet a harsh look of an old woman - this is Polina Pavlovna, Tatyana's mother. In the hands - a small mesh and two sticks that help to walk to the store and back. She is 82 years old. Lives on the second floor. Climbing a steep staircase every day is becoming more and more difficult. In the courtyard there is her large chair in which she rests after going for groceries. Sitting in him, Polina Pavlovna thaws in her eyes: first a smile appears, then she begins to speak. Her voice is already very quiet, you need to sit down next to the ground to hear everything.

- The places here are good. Previously, the river was big, they caught such a fish. And then - a glassy place. According to legend there, Catherine II flooded the horses, well, with whom it does not happen. I myself in Odessa was born, but I'm afraid of the sun. I endure the cold, rain - and the sun, as it will get out, so it becomes bad at once. My husband and I are 56 years old, before everyone went around here. He is a disabled person - without legs - lives in a wooden house here in the neighborhood. It’s easier for him there. And my family and I are in the "bar" house.

Polina Pavlovna sits on her beloved chair in the courtyard under the old linden. Here she is hiding from the bright sun, which does not tolerate. Photo: Arthur Bondar for TD

We are already old, the memory is lost, and this house will be simple for centuries, I am sure. It only needs to be a little a little on the outside. After all, it was made of which clay he was made-they took it, chicken eggs, some kind of powder threw some and mixed everything. But before that, no one cares. They want to resettle us, but it will not work. I will not go anywhere. They protect these places for themselves, wait for everything to fall apart. They want to build up everything. There are already private houses behind the estate.

Having rested from the hated sun in the shade, Polina Pavlovna indulges in memories:

- I am not scared to die. I worked in the north in Ukhta, the overseer. It was no longer a correctional camp, but a prison. They did not return from there. There are its own laws, this is the North. The worst place on Earth. The Pechora River is a shore with an embroidered shirt with our estate and water in the ravine. The forest is fed all day - they load, take it away. A person could easily fall into cold water between the logs and not save.

She was a whisper, I helped everyone, but never came across the authorities. Tell me everything, but do not tell the chiefs the truth, cooperate, but without the truth. That's how we lived there. I talked with the lower, and with the rich, and with prisoners, and with the authorities. In order to be smart, you need to communicate. What to look into the ground?

From the past, Polina Pavlovna is rapidly returning to the present:

- Here are our guys came to the administration and say: “Give us cement, materials, we will all repair it ourselves.” They don’t want to, they don’t give it, they are waiting for the house to fall apart. But they will die, and our house will not collapse for another hundred years, I know.

The staircase on the second floor of the Barsky house. Photo: Arthur Bondar for TD

Over the past twenty years, there has never been a major overhaul in the estate. A couple of years ago they changed their heating pipes because the old ones failed. The only good well deteriorated after the 1998 fire. The water at first became muddy, and then completely black. It had to be filled up, so one crane with cold water was held from the water tower into the house - it stands right in the entrance. True, before you drink it, so that the liquid is settled from rust for two to three days. The specific smell of water does not disappear anywhere and after that, so you have to carry clean water from the column in the neighboring village. Residents recall that when they dug a trench near the house, pre -revolutionary coins, dishes and even a bronze antique kettle were found in it.

The water was carried out six years ago - on this all the work of the management company was over. This year, residents of the house wanted to change the roof, in the district administration they were offered four sheets of slate. “Where there are four, my whole roof is flowing here,” says Svetlana, the daughter of Tatyana Ivanovna. Recently, their ceiling collapsed. A man was sleeping on the couch at this time. Fortunately for him, the ceiling turned into dust and could not cause harm. It is already difficult to repair it with difficulty - there are nothing to score in, all the floors rotted.

On the floor there are carpets everywhere, because the house has terrible dampness, and in winter it is very cold. The batteries are working, then no. The inhabitants of the house have already learned by the names of all boiler room workers. On the ground floor, a neighbor lives on the one hand, he is a wheelchair user. And under the apartment of Svetlana - nobody. People bought an apartment in this house just for registration. In winter, it is empty, so the floors on the second floor are very cold.

Young "aristocrats" in the courtyard of the Lord's house photo: Arthur Bondar for TD

For a communal apartment, all residents regularly pay several thousand rubles. They have no debts, but they never heard about sewage and gas here either. They wash in baths that stand right in the courtyard of the "bar". Toilet on the street. In May, the new management company turned off the light in the entrance due to the debts of the Dubrava company, which was responsible for this house earlier. While managing companies blame each other at home, residents have to do everything on their own. In the entrance, they held a light bulb directly from the apartment. While managing companies blame each other at home at home, residents have to do everything on their own Twist this quote

The new management company often sends the residents of this house strange accounts - for the cleaning lady in the entrance, for example. But they never had her. Due to the curiosity with the cleaner, I had to go to the administration, write a statement. “These from the management company were never in Koltyshevo, they don’t know what kind of house it is and what problems are there, and now we also pay 25 rubles for cleaning in the entrance,” Svetlana complains. The foundation of the house can be disassembled with your hands - the stones fall off the wall. For a long time, the residents of the house have been asking to recognize it emergency, but the administration says - we need checks, independent experts. As a result, only apartments were recognized as emergency, but not the house itself. One answer comes to all complaints of people - "You live in emergency apartments, make repairs at your own expense."

We have to hope only for yourself. Many residents have already come to terms. They are slowly making repairs. Trying to close the ceiling with foam tiles. It has to be beaten with nails - the ceiling is too crooked, does not take any glue. Being the walls is also useless, the fungus absorbs the entire whitewash. You have to first process everything with sulfate. But this is before the first precipitation, after heavy rains and snowfalls, the roof begins to flow again.

Irina lives on the ground floor, her husband is disabled. “You just don’t catch his eye, he does not like journalists,” she warns. We go out with her to smoke through an unlit porch. A couple of years ago, the floor on the ground floor was broken, Irina’s husband in a wheelchair could not get home on his own. After the silence of the management company, she herself cemented part of the threshold and built a ramp.

The grave of the youngest son of the landowner Popov. Previously, an angel stood on the tombstone, then someone stole it photo: Arthur Bondar for TD

- I recently took him from the hospital, my sister and brother helped. He drove without one leg by car, and now the second refused. You won’t get our car, but I have no right yet. For many years I worked in a neighboring village at school - a laboratory assistant, in the dining room, director for the economic part. Then they closed the school, left only kindergartens and primary grades. I got a job at the poultry farm, but there are also reduction, now I’m looking for a new place.

We live here - we survive. In neighboring houses, people agreed to repair the house in half with the management company. They did it, they changed the roof themselves, but half of the money was never returned to them. People in spite have stopped paying utilities. Now they just have a duty to accumulate. I have a hole in my kitchen on the ceiling. I'm sitting at the table, and I have a rat on the battery from this hole descends Twisting this quote I sit at the table, and I have a rat on the battery from this hole descends. Autumn comes, you will turn off the light and that's it - they went. My corner in the house is already a donkey, you can open the window, step and go out into the street. The first floor is at the ground level, from this and dampness on the walls, but all to no avail. We also changed the windows ourselves.

We pay for heating all year without a break for the summer, because the boiler room works on diesel fuel. The gas passes a hundred meters from the house, cannot be brought to us. Why are we paying a communal apartment? For sixteen years, they never painted even anything here. During the elections to the village council, two iron doors were brought to the house near the stop, one by mistake they put us. Although the door here was just good - powerful, oak - even under the master they put it. That's all the help. You do not make noise here. On the ground floor, a woman sleeps, my neighbor. She lives here with children, works at the airport at night.

A resident of the house leaves his room to check whether the porridge is ready in the pressure cooker. Photo: Arthur Bondar for TD

Trying not to creak the floorboards, we climb the apartment of Polina Pavlovna on the second floor. She shows us her books - gives us to read brochures with excerpts from the Bible. A thin man in camouflage pants bursts into the room. The one that slept near the monument.

“Are you bitch, Baptist?”
- No, journalist
“Ahh, well, this is the same thing,” he says disappointedly and goes to his room, but he immediately returns, muttering something incoherent. Polina Pavlovna is trying to take him away. “Son Peter is my most difficult test,” she sighs. Peter does not stop:
- Yes, I fought in the Donbass, I have a fighting wound!
He pokes us with a passport with a canceled stamp of the Russian checkpoint on the border with Ukraine.
- How did you go there? - I ask
- My friend was visiting the army, went fishing - they rolled there, well, we went.

Polina Pavlovna shakes her head skeptically - she seems to be used not to believe everything that her son says. Together we go out into the yard. On the street - a steam room seems to be a thunderstorm. In the shadow of the old linden is not so stuffy. The old woman occupies her usual place in a large chair and again plunges into memories.

Drinking flowers on the windowsill between the first and second floor in the entrance of the Barsky house. Photo: Arthur Bondar for TD

- I was a fighting, and my sister, and the guys - I pounded everyone. I went to the forest alone, I was not afraid of anything. Such are born - strong. Dad was like that. I felt sorry for the prisoner. I wore tea in my sleeves. They need to do chiffir, but you can’t get tea. We, the warders, always walked in two. I tell my partner: “You go ahead, I’ll adjust the boots here,” and once I put tea under the sheet somewhere on the territory. And they, of course, were already waiting for me. It was a lot of terrible. Prison is a war. There the mountain was like that. The sun is already sitting, and it is all shining. One of the camps says to me by a Jew: "This is the bones shine." People froze, died and stacked them up, and then the light went from there.

In the pre -gap silence, everything suddenly freezes. Even Peter stops raging. On the way to the stop I go through the store. At a small plastic table, men drink beer: “Man, why are you getting lost? What have you forgotten here at all? "

Somewhere in the distance, a distant sound is heard, freezing, sad. If desired, it could be represented by the sound of a bursting string, but this just signifies the approaching bus number twenty -one.

View of the house from the side of the old grave. Photo: Arthur Bondar for TD Svetlana and Maxim play near the house. Photo: Arthur Bondar for TD The only house for the whole house is located on the staircase of the second floor. True, water is only cold and with rust photo: Arthur Bondar for TD Tatyana Ivanovna erases linen in the courtyard near the house. In small booths - homemade bath and bathroom. Photo: Arthur Bondar for TD Polina Pavlovna’s bed in her apartment on the second floor of the house. Recently, it became difficult for her to climb the stairs. But the most difficult, as she says, is a “test” - this is her constantly drinking son. Photo: Arthur Bondar for TD Polina Pavlovna carries bread from the store. Photo: Arthur Bondar for TD

* The names of some characters are changed

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