Taking Gripes to the Fourth Estate

No. 33 Ulitsa Lodochnoy is north and west of the city center, far away from anything else. It is yellow brick and barely distinguishable from Houses 31 and 35 -- except for one thing.


The five-story building lost hot water for a record-breaking four months this summer. Eighty faucets flagged, sputtered and dried up in mid-June, and clear through until late September there were no showers to be had in House 33. On the faces of its residents a visitor can still read, well, character.


Marina Yakovlev, 70, a pensioner who shares an apartment with her husband, smiled ruefully and looked around for some wood to knock.


"Russian people know how to wait," she said. "It's a useful skill. You have to learn to be patient. Of course," she added, "you also have to bathe sometimes."


Feeling sympathetic? The families on the ninth floor of House 8A Ulitsa Pestelya are not. They have been taking the stairs for nine weeks now, which is good for their quads but bad for their morale. And a whole row of apartments on Altufyevskoye Shosse has had it up to here with House 18A -- its residents have dumped trash out of their windows and set fires one too many times.


These beleaguered Muscovites have one thing in common: They were so frustrated with municipal repair services that they turned to the fourth estate, filing their gripes with Center-Plus newspaper in its "Book of Complaints" column. Every week, the column publishes a list of flat nightmares under the words: "If the bureaucrats refuse to help you, call us on Tuesdays or Thursdays."


"Book of Complaints" was established in early 1994 as a forum for downtown residents who were being displaced, shaken up or otherwise bedeviled by reconstruction projects, said Kirill Rubak, an editor of the weekly newspaper.


The calls have kept coming, said Olga Potashnikova, the reporter who compiles the column. About 20 people call every week -- mostly about "ordinary troubles" like hot water and endless reconstruction projects. Some gripes are more unusual, like the family on the 16th floor who were kept awake by the new flashing neon advertisement outside their window.


Although many callers have attributed assistance to the publication of their complaints, Center-Plus has no real power to hasten repairs.


"All we can do is attract a little attention to their problems," she said. "Unfortunately, we can't assure people that someone will respond. Of course, dealing with these problems through a newspaper is not the normal procedure."


Still, everything turned out all right for the residents of House 33 Ulitsa Lodochnoy. The turning point came in late summer, when residents decided that if they couldn't solve the problem through any rational means, they could at least vent their emotions."We had already gone to the dezhurnaya. She said we should talk to the manager. So we went to the manager, and found out there was no manager," recalled Yakovleva. Then someone called the newspaper, and their story made it into print.


"In the morning, I read about it in the newspaper. In the evening, the hot water came on," she said. None of the residents were ready to link the two events directly, but there was a pervasive sense of gratitude for the exposure.


Regardless, said resident Olga Kacheva as she loaded her car for a trip to the dacha, House 33 is hardly out of the woods. This morning, the water pressure was way down, and the temperature lukewarm at best. "Tomorrow -- who knows?" she said, and drove off toward the country.