In Russia, neglect of all things public is notorious. Some blame the government, while others believe that Russians were so fed up with Soviet collectivism that they have withdrawn into private life, ignoring awful highways, corruption, electoral fraud and other public indignities.
But the issue is more complex, and looking at Moscow real estate may help to analyze the problem. Moscow apartment prices are stratospheric. In desirable neighborhoods, a two-room apartment costs from $500,000 to $600,000. For many Muscovites, an apartment is the sole asset and source of income.
After prices came down a bit in the crisis, apartments cost roughly as much as they do in New York. But what you get for your money is very different. Let’s face it, the bulk of Soviet-era housing stock, even in the center of Moscow and established outskirts such as the southwest part of the city, would be classified as slums even in gritty New York.
The buildings bear all the hallmarks of shoddy communist enterprise: ugly design, poor construction, substandard materials and inconvenient planning. Their low ceilings and thin walls are worse than in New York’s municipal housing built for the poor in the 1960s. And forget about amenities like laundry rooms, playrooms, garages or doormen.
A typical steel front door would be a better suited for a jail or a warehouse. Once you enter the podyezd, or main corridor, that is exactly where it looks like you landed. The stairwell features a bank of rusty mailboxes, a paint-splattered tile floor and a creaky, cramped elevator. Some stairwells, even in good neighborhoods, smell of urine, and if the building has an incinerator it reeks of trash, as well.
But judging by the expensive cars densely parked near such buildings — making it hard to get out of your prison-like front door or pass on the sidewalk — the residents are far from poor.
The sad condition of apartment buildings is not the fault of municipal authorities. In New York, apartment owners form independent co-op boards that collect maintenance fees and use the money to manage the buildings and make repairs. They also regulate the use of common spaces in and around their buildings. Service on co-op boards is voluntary and unpaid. Nothing like that seems conceivable in Russia.
But in New York, the real estate situation wasn’t always as rosy as it is today. In the mid-1970s, the city was in crisis. Crime was on the rise, and social services deteriorated. The middle class fled to the suburbs and their “I couldn’t care less” attitude infected those who stayed in the five boroughs of New York.
The same attitude has plagued Russia since the 1917 Revolution, but on a larger scale. While promising to create the ultimate workers’ paradise, it destroyed the country’s sense of continuity and unleashed unprecedented social and political turmoil. Even when the situation stabilized, uncertainty and deracination permeated Soviet society for eight decades.
For all of the vaunted stability of the current regime, Russians still don’t believe in the permanence of their system enough to invest into their society — even in the place they call home. Last year, a public opinion survey found that 8 percent of Russians want to emigrate. The press rejoiced because 80 percent said they didn’t want to live anywhere else. But the percentage of those who wanted to leave was actually huge by the standards of most other nations: The absolute number of potential emigrants exceeded 11 million.
Alexei Bayer, a native Muscovite, is a New York-based economist.