16 August 2003 00:57
Life in the Big Brother house: Andrew Jack laments the state`s `renovation` of his Moscow apartment block:
In true Stalinist style, the knock on the door came late at night. An
officious woman asked us to sign for receipt of theletter, turned on her
heels, anddisappeared. It signalled the start of two years of hell.
Our Moscow apartment block-built by the forced but high-quality labour of
German prisoners of war - has ever since been the victim of an ongoing
renovation that is sapping its tenants, stripping it of charm, and
"modernising" in a way that will last probably only as long as it
takes to privatise it.
A decade after the collapse of communism, Russia remains trapped between wild
liberalism and state manipulation. Nowhere is that more true than in its
property market, a snakepit for renters and owners alike.
Foreigners may get off relatively lightly, but even our experiences are
instructive - and as worrying for the future of Russia's buildings and
national heritage as for the problems of their inhabitants.
Like many hundreds of diplomats, journalists and business people from abroad
living in Moscow, we continue to be in the "state" sector. Our
landlord is a post-Soviet hangover called UpDK, the main department for
"servicing" the diplomatic community.
Like a large proportion of its clients, we have contemplated leaving - only
to be held back by inertia, excessive but not exorbitant rents, and even
worse horror stories from courageous compatriots who have already made the
transition into the private sector.
UpDK - which operates hospitals, car repair services and even a hunting club
- is nominally controlled by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In the
past, it could keep track of spies and agitators, the mechanisms for which
(such as curious metal objects in walls that are strangely thick) still turn
up from time to time.
Today, UpDK's status gives it the continued "protection" of a
federal ministry, allowing it to operate opaquely, to pay no tax, to have
inherited vast amounts of prime-location and often architecturally beautiful
real estate and to ride easily over regulatory constraints.
Government influence does not stop it from insisting that our rents be pegged
to the dollar, nor from periodically proposing that we pay directly straight
into the organisation's New York dollar bank account. Nor, incidentally,
did it prevent a previous top UpDK executive being jailed for fraud.
At first glance - a website, a marketing department, even a customer
satisfaction survey - UpDK gives the impression of a modern company sensitive
to its clients' every need. But scratch beneath the surface, and a very
different animal emerges.
We and other tenants spent months trying to negotiate with it after that
first letter promised a brief period of inconvenience while radiators and
pipes were modernised in line with demands from the city authorities. You
might have thought that would take a few days, and could be timed for
tenants' convenience. But that would be to take UpDK at its word.
We were not so naive, having already been victims the previous year of its
decision to rip off historic balconies from the facade, and replace solid
stone window sills with greased metal ones that wake you up whenever it
rains. But our efforts to resist further vandalism were met with lies,
rudeness and very few results.
Letters went unanswered, spurious arguments were offered, and written
guarantees with elaborate colour graphics (the new Russia) on how any changes
would be subject to our consent were issued and then ignored (the old).
We were never allowed to see the Moscow authorities' letter insisting on
immediate renovations, nor a specialists' report supposedly backing up
the conclusions. They could not explain why, if there was such an immediate
safety problem, the work was to be staggered over more than two years.
We were not helped by divisions between the tenants on the best approach to
take (aggressive because Russians respect a show of force; or discreet, to
allow for face-saving). Split loyalties between staff working for tenants but
provided by UpDK (for whom they used to inform) did not help.
UpDK insisted that everyone move out entirely (an entryway at a time) for
several months, and then proceeded to gut the interior, replacing everything
with modern but low-standard alternatives. Beautiful old wooden doors were
sawn up or removed by workmen, plasterwork mouldings broken and dropped
ceilings installed.
The result, after more than a year, is that our apartment looks like a
showcase for the former Soviet Union. The hastily installed parquet (far less
attractive or sturdy than the old) resembles the Altai mountains, with cracks
and warps up to a metre high.
The ubiquitous white plastified doors with ill-fitting catches offer as much
protection from wind as a 10-rouble note on the steppes. The handles glitter
with as much gold as a dentally challenged peasant from the north Caucasus.
The brown plastic electric plugs and phone sockets - matched in their
hideousness only by their impracticality - could have come straight from a
Soviet factory in the Urals. The metallic bathroom ceiling glitters like Lake
Baikal, its waters trickling and rusting the unnecessary heated towel rails.
Plasterboard walls have been added to the existing walls to make them neatly
perpendicular, shrinking the total living space in the process and proving
too fragile to hang cupboards on.
Far be it from me to suggest the changes were motivated by anything other
than genuine concerns for a building put up only 50 years ago. Otherwise I
can only suspect that spite was why our top-notch Finnish triple-glazed
windows (installed just three years ago at our expense) were ripped out in
favour of cheaper, inferior double- glazed alternatives.
But there is a mismatch between the high quantity and low quality of work,
and the budget-breaking expenditure that resulted. I can only hope some hefty
commissions were paid along the way. Andrew Jack is the FT's bureau
chief in Moscow
[FTI [The Financial Times]] |
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