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The Bush Plan
More than ever, it is mothers with kids who are ending up on America's streets. The president has a plan, but will it help? |
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The Peasants' Plight
Ukraine's rural communities are sliding back to a primordial feudalism
Red Star Rising
Russian heartthrob Sergei Bodrov Jr. is a director with a message
The U.N.'s First Lady
Nane Annan is calling attention to issues she cares about
Cities in Need
Study reports an increase in hunger and homelessness |
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NOTE: This is an unscientific, informal survey for the interest and enjoyment of TIME.com users and may not be indicative of popular opinion.
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YURI KOZYREV FOR TIME
COLD COMFORT: Yura tries to keep warm as the freeze hits -27C
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Tales from Cold Mountain |
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On a frozen garbage dump, scavenging is a matter of life and death for many of Moscow's homeless
By PAUL QUINN-JUDGE/Moscow
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On a frigid winter morning, Sergei ducks into his stinking little hut in the woods to attend to his 14-month-old daughter. Sveta is chubby and still. "She doesn't play very much," says her mother Lena, a friendly, slightly simple woman with a mouth full of rotten teeth. Sveta was born in prison, where Lena was serving time for killing her previous companion, the father of another child. Lena got four years, but was released after one. She says her older child, born in the woods, was adopted: "The prosecutor said he would find her a good family." Sergei, Sveta and Lena — plus two companions, Yuri and Volodya — live by a massive garbage dump on the edge of Moscow, where a reclusive community of homeless scavenges the pile for wood, metal or glass to sell and food to eat.
Advocates for Moscow's homeless, like Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), feel that the dump people are an unhelpful stereotype of the problem. They are, in fact, all too typical. No one knows how many homeless there are in the city, but 100,000 is a reasonable guess. According to MSF's statistics, one in four is a former prisoner, like Lena, left to shift for him- or herself after release. Many on the street are well educated, like Sergei, who finished high school and then went to technical college, or their companion Volodya, who was a skilled worker until alcoholism took its toll. And long-term homeless like this group, who have all been on the streets for four to five years, are likely to stay there until they die. Lots are freezing to death this winter: 128 since Christmas Day, 330 since the weather turned cold last October.
Even at -27C, the Moscow dump reeks of refuse. "It's not a bad place," Sergei says with a touch of bravado. "Very quiet." All four were first anxious but then welcoming when visitors turned up. Yuri, a former cook who smiles apologetically from time to time but says little, shares the 2-m-by-3-m hovel. Volodya, a 51-year-old former metalworker with a wild and ravaged face, piercing blue eyes and a passion for Manchester United, lives in a nearby hut. He has fewer illusions about his future. "One night I'll go to sleep here," he says, "and end up over there," gesturing to the nearby cemetery. Perhaps he is thinking of another homeless man in the woods who had died the previous night: "He got drunk and froze," Volodya says.
A long rambling conversation produces the bare bones of their story: a flick on the side of the neck (Russian shorthand for drinking), some fractured references to families who did not want them, to accidents or a vague something that cost them their jobs. Then the final catastrophe — the loss or theft of their passports, the all- important identification that Russians have to carry with them everywhere. After that they became faceless as well as homeless, viewed as an annoyance by officials or as "garbage," in the words of one cop, Andrei. "Illegal aliens in their own land," as Alexei Nikiforov of MSF puts it.
Marina Bobrova, a social worker at the only medical aid point for the homeless in Moscow, says that about 20 of the 100 people she sees daily are new to the streets. They have come to the capital hoping to scrounge a living on the fringes of the fantastic wealth they have seen depicted on TV. Many are graduates of the orphanage system, about one in three of whom quickly end up on the streets. They are the result of family breakups and a uniquely post-Soviet phenomenon — people who have been tricked out of their privatized apartments by unscrupulous dealers, and who have not been able to obtain redress from the corrupt and overloaded court system.
Contrary to popular stereotypes, about half of Moscow's homeless actually work, according to MSF figures. Pay is another matter. Without a passport they are defenseless when cheated out of the pittance they are promised for menial chores or working on building sites. "More often than not, when they finish the job they are beaten or chased away without the money," Bobrova says. And they have little option but to live on the streets. The city's eight shelters provide a maximum of 1,500 beds for the homeless. Social workers trying to get people on their feet know they are in a race against time. "The longer they're there, the lower they go," says Nikiforov. If they were not alcoholics before, they soon become so. And, says the director of one shelter, Konstantin Kazantsev, they quickly lose the motivation to rejoin society after a few efforts have ended "in a cell or a beating."
Kazantsev, a former engineer, tries to offer the homeless jobs, not just shelter, tries to get them in touch with their families, and is occasionally successful in getting their apartments back. But, he says, half the people he tries to help end up sooner or later living, as he puts it, "under a fence." Or like Volodya and his friends, under a garbage mountain.
 |  | | C O L U M B I A
Disaster in the Sky: A blast claims the Shuttle and its crew of seven. What went wrong, and what does it mean for future travel in space?
E U R O P E
Targeting Roma?
A new report claims that Roma women in Slovakia are being forcibly sterilized
| T I M E F I N A N C E
War And Peace:
At Davos, TIME's Board of Economists warns that even a quick win in Iraq may not stop the slump
M U S I C
From Russia With Lust:
Titillation and a surprisingly satisfying sound from Russian duo Tatu |
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