Dear Readers:
Continuing on our depressing theme of Palestinian genocide. Many people complain that Russia is not doing enough, and they are right. But we do see, in this piece, that the Chechen government is trying to help at least a handful of refugees. The reporter is Vera Basilaya.
In the Chechen capital of Grozny, the government have built five brand new apartment buildings for Palestinian refugees evacuated out of Gaza. The money for the project comes out of a fund named after Akhmat-Hajji Kadyrov, and the houses are located in a suburb of Grozny called the Visaitov Region. This neighborhood was first constructed in 1936 and called “Staro-promyshlenny” (“Old Industrial”). In 2020, as a result of a public opinion survey, the Grozny municipal authorities decided to rename it after a man named Mavlid Aleroevich Visaitov (1913-1896), Commander of the 255th Chechen-Ingush Regiment in the Great Patriotic War; and later honored as a Hero of the Soviet Union.
The political leader of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, promises that the housing in the Visaitov region will be very nice, with all the amenities. In all, there will be 35 flats. There will be a school and kindergarten nearby.
Who will live there? Chechen government official Akhmed Dudaev has reported that 30 Palestinians, so far, have been integrated into the Chechen community and provided with jobs. Of these, 27 work in the field of health care. All of the refugees will be provided with instruction in the Russian language. Each family will receive a stipend of 100,000 rubles [around $1100 American dollars], it is not specified if that is one-time bonus or a repeated payment.
Just to clarify: These lucky few who will get the housing, are by no means the first, or only Palestinian refugees to arrive in Russia. Earlier, 206 Palestinian refugees had arrived in Chechnya, but they are temporarily living in a children’s summer camp in the village of Avtury.
In all, Russia has helped to evacuate over 900 people from Gaza, these lucky ones have some kind of ties with the Russian state, such as dual citizenship, for example, or a spouse who is a Russian citizen.
Awful Avalanche 
Looks pretty nice?!? Looks like architecture from the Brutalist School (which is actually a thing, a design style of pipe-showing, unfinished-concrete industrial-seeming style that started in the 1960s). I think Brutalism is ugly, although it’s better for those refugees than being brutalised by Zionazis and having nothing to live in except a tunnel under a bombed-out apartment block.
When I was a kid, my parents took me and my sisters to the Montreal World’s Fair in 1967. Back when World’s Fairs were a Big Thing. We also went to the one in New York City in 1963, although I don’t remember that as well, being just a wee lad. (For a family that was basically a bunch of middle-class squares, we did some interesting things.) One of the exhibits that made an impression on me in Montreal was this demonstration project of pre-fab housing using room-sized stackable concrete cubes. The idea was that builders could bang cubes out en masse then heap them up to provide quick, cheap housing for people living in poverty. Slap some paint on the outside, kit out the insides — this will be a bedroom! Kitchen equipment goes in this cube! — and your housing shortage is fixed. As a kid, it seemed like a marvelous solution. There were a lot of problems with that approach, which I won’t elaborate on because yours is not an architectural blog. However, this well-intchechened (sic) project makes me think of that brutal blocky exhibition from Expo ’67.
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Well, I admit I don’t know much about architecture. Although I DID read “House of the Seven Gables” and I stayed in a Holiday Inn Express once.
Rather than brutalist concrete blocks, maybe they should just go with the “Tiny House” approach, that seems promising to me. I’d even live in one myself, if I had the opportunity!
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Hey everyone! Interesting read about the Chechen government’s efforts to provide housing for Palestinian refugees from Gaza. It’s heartening to see some positive steps being taken.
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Yes, it feels good to know that some distressed families will get decent housing. It may not be the Ritz, but they will have running water and electricity!
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And when you’ve been without for stretches in your life, you’ll understand, “modern-life” began with plumbing and electricity.
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