Major repairs of roofs and attics, replacement of elevators and pipes, laying new paths and curbs between buildings. We thought it was a gift to us. It turned out to be a temporary campaign, and very soon the cost of the repairs will be added to utility bills. At the same time, it’s not like only every second building needs repairs in the “republic”. And what seemed like a generous gift and a kind-hearted initiative turned out not to be a free gift at all.
And the contractors who took on re-roofing Khrushchev-era buildings turned out to be far from professionals. Tracking them down and patching holes became — and still is — quite a trial for many: during downpours they left roofs exposed, in frost people were literally left without a roof over their heads, with streams of water pouring from light fixtures.
And it’s impossible to refuse such destructive “major repairs.” You can survive it with certain losses, but judging by frequent complaints in messengers, it’s unclear what such repairs bring more of — happiness or disaster. At the very least, no one writes words of gratitude, but complaints about peeling wallpaper or power outages appear often.
Frankly speaking, we aren’t very grateful. We see road repairs through increasing traffic, perceive new traffic lights as extra and unnecessary stops for cars, and tree trimming as catastrophic summer heat. And whether everything is really being done crookedly, or we’re just ungrateful people, the gift has stopped feeling as sincere and valuable as it seemed at the very beginning.
Many things are done carelessly. For example, the campaign to discuss new transport routes. You could come by and leave your suggestions somewhere. It was very appealing. But minibuses mostly remained extremely old, dirty, endlessly patched up, with schedules like “I drive when I feel like it, and you can’t do anything about it”, and often with the last bus at 7:00 p.m.…
Everything is strange. On the news we see new buses, beautiful ones, with themed stickers; in reality they are present only on the central streets. And the small old minibuses are still decorated for New Year with fairy lights and stickers, mixed together with ads urging people to join the military. It’s so sweet that the elderly minibus driver thought about our mood, and at the same time it’s so miserable that this leaky floor and dirty seats are lit up by simple fairy lights…
It’s the same with roofs, with asphalt, with so much of what’s happening now. To my amazement, they laid an asphalt path to my relative’s house. Two guys somehow did it very easily. For her very, very old house with cracks in the walls, it was a grand event. The next day machinery arrived and dug up the fresh asphalt — turns out they’d paved over some sewer manhole too. That’s how a lot of things are done now — several times over. The people doing it don’t care at all that time and money are being wasted on this.
If you think about it, we do everything twice: passports, car plates, driver’s licenses. My neighbor spent a huge amount of money to legalize her house in the russian cadastre. Queues, three-stage appointments (first a line just to get a ticket, then a visit by the ticket, then payment…). And then it turned out by accident that she didn’t know she also had to make a technical land plan for the plot. Someone told her right away that she didn’t need it, she readily agreed, and afterward told the whole street for a long time how cleverly she’d done everything among the first. Then it turned out she’d only done part of it, and now she has to call the surveyors again for the land plot technical plan. The same path again, twice. Something that could have been done right away, spending half as much effort. And it’s literally like this with every matter. You need to do it, feel some very short-lived happiness that it’s done, and then start doing it again or painfully redoing it for a long time.
Starting this year, the university entrance score has been raised. Supposedly, the competition will be tougher. It’s no longer so easy to get a state-funded scholarship. From 24 passing points, the number has grown to 40. New realities. Competition. Optimization. Fear that we are not ready for all these changes enough to cope with them easily. We will cope, of course. And we will survive the new bills with frightening amounts, and the new tariffs, and rising food prices, and the eternal debates about why literally everything is cheaper in nearby Rostov …
An elderly person definitely won’t cope with this. The world is changing too fast, it’s not for the elderly. Not for weak people. And, strangely enough, on social media people don’t thank anyone for new paths, but complain about new tariffs, about changes that are too rapid, about a world that is often not as friendly as we expected.
They increased my mom’s pension. They raised everyone’s from the New Year. Those whose pensions were decent got a noticeable increase. My mom’s pension was minimal, and hers was raised by only 900 rubles. Probably deciding that she’s used to living on pennies and shouldn’t abruptly get unaccustomed to it, so there wouldn’t be stress from suddenly fallen wealth.
It’s especially painful that this bureaucratic machine hit hardest those who believed in it the most. My mother still thinks that they made a ridiculous mistake in her pension amount and that it can be fixed — it’s just that nobody is doing it. And, like many others, she will habitually say that she’ll save money, that you can do without many things… The familiar mindset that you can get used to anything, even if you believed more than anything that what’s happening is for the better.
By Olha Kucher, Luhansk, for OstroV