• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Taisiya has a daughter who is herself a pensioner. She lives in Norilsk, but the city authorities refuse to allow old women to move there. Taisiya couldn’t go there directly when she left Grozny. Apart from her daughter the old lady has two brothers of her long-dead husband living in Moscow and the Moscow Region. At their invitation she went to stay with them 10 years ago, and one did everything he could for the widow. He went to great lengths to have her registered to stay in his accommodation, but he too is far from young. His family finally questioned why they had to go to such trouble. It was the state’s responsibility to look after the old lady. Of course it was, and here the old lady is now, cleaning 16 floors three times a week, with all her possessions in a mop cupboard.

“Wherever we go people scold us. ‘Why have you all come back to Moscow?’ they ask. But where else could I go? This is where my family were.”

“Where do you eat? You don’t have a hob here, or running water.”

“I also look after the people who sleep in the entrance to the block. This is a big building, there are always people lying there. That is where I cook.”

“Where do you wash?”

“The same place.”

“And the toilet?”

“I have to ask somebody to let me in.”

Ask yourself how long you would last under such conditions.

“Am I going to die under a roof of my own?” Taisiya wonders. She says to passing residents of the block where she is allowed to live, “Look, a journalist has come to see me. Tell her, does anyone have a bad word to say about me? Am I a bad person? Or quarrelsome?”

Most of the residents don’t understand what she’s talking about. At 81 you shouldn’t really need to prove that you are not the worst member of society. At that age all you want is to be able to rest at the end of your life, on a state pension.

At the meeting of “Our Home” Wanda Voitsekhovskaya has been sitting motionless for several hours. Everybody has been talking except her. She holds her head proudly and her beautiful eyes have a firm gaze. She looks indomitable. But one to one, Wanda is nervous and much less self-possessed.

“I am homeless, an outcast and a beggar. I have no sleep, no life, no rest.” Wanda has great difficulty speaking because of high blood pressure. “I had everything then: a house, a dacha, a garage, a car. In Grozny. I lived there from 1950. I was sent there when I graduated from the Kiev Engineering Institute. I worked for 38 years in the same place as a planner. My husband was crippled in the Second World War. In 1992 my daughter married a very good man and came here to Moscow. He has a room in the Komsomol Automobile Factory hostel and that’s where all of us live now. My husband died in 1996. I was in a terrible state when my neighbours in Grozny saw me to the train and sent me back to my daughter. I thought it was just for a short while. I thought I would qualify for a pension.”

Wanda sleeps on a divan now with her 12-year-old grandson. On the neighbouring divan is her younger grandson. It is a tiny room where you can either sleep or get up and go somewhere else. There’s nowhere to sit. For someone old and ill it is intolerable. Because her age means she gets very tired, Wanda has become convinced she is just a burden on her children.

“I am very ill, facing complete immobility. I want to stay on my feet as long as I can so as not to be a trouble to anyone. I collect empty bottles to pay for medicine. Why has the state shifted its problems on to our children’s shoulders? I can’t understand. Why can’t I be allocated my own little corner? It wasn’t me who destroyed everything I had in Grozny.”

Valentina Kuznetsova is frail and beautiful. She does not take off her headscarf or her coat. Her hands are clenched and her lips pursed. Valentina holds herself in so as not to burst into tears. A feverish flush blotches her cheeks but she is constantly shivering and shifting, even when sweat is pouring off the others because of the stuffiness. Chronic malnutrition is the companion of refugees. It strikes everybody regardless of their