Dear Readers:
Today continuing this human interest story about a refugee family. Where we left off: Natalia, her husband, their youngest son, and the two little girls they had adopted, were able to escape from Kremennaya (Luhansk) to Zelenograd, which is a suburb of Moscow.
They arrived with literally nothing except their shattered nerves. Fortunately, there are some very good people in this world who volunteer their time and resources to help displaced refugees. How people fare can also be a function of good luck and just plain “who you know”, like everything in life.
Natalia: During these hard times, we were helped by Russian volunteers. The older of my two daughters-in-law personally knew a volunteer named Maria Makeeva, one of the co-founders of the humanitarian group called “Refugees. Moscow and MO.” Maria was a godsend to us. Task #1 was to find temporary housing. For this, it was necessary to translate a mound of documents from Ukrainian to Russian and to get everything notarized. Masha found a translation bureau in the Dinamo region, all the documents we needed were translated without charge. And then she helped us find clothing and shoes. When we left Kremennaya, the weather was still warm, so we wore light jackets and sneakers. But here, in the Moscow region, it was already snowing, so Masha brought some warm clothing directly to our place.
Quote from Maria Makeeva: “Everything that we donate to help other people, was either donated or bought, with their own money, by ordinary people. We are not sponsored by the government, or by any political parties. Our organizers and volunteers do not receive a salary. Many of them work at real jobs. They have families, children. It’s just that we are not indifferent.”
Natalia: Our lives are slowly getting into order. We have rented a flat, a small 2-bedroom apartment. It needs a lot of work, but it’s livable. The children are attending a school nearby. At first the school administration wanted to hold them back in a lower grade, since the Ukrainian and Russian curricula are different, but I asked the pedagogues to protest that idea. The children actually have a higher level of knowledge, appropriate to their grade. Currently they are doing well in school, the only subject they lag in is their written knowledge of Russian, since they didn’t study that in the Ukrainian school. I was also worried that the other kids might bully them for being Ukrainian, but that didn’t happen — their classmates are very nice to them. The kids even started making some friends, they go out and play with them, they compete in sports, they attend parties and so on.
The hardest thing we had to deal with, was finding work. My husband and I are not spring chickens any more, and he is even older than me, at 58. He still hasn’t been able to find a job – the employers only want to hire young and energetic people. Myself, as soon as I received the status of a temporary refugee, in the fall of 2022, immediately I set out to find work. My older son found me a job in a factory that processes fruits and vegetables. I work on a team: I clean, cut, and pack fruits and vegetables. Every day from 7:30 AM to 7:30 PM, and some days I am even on the night shift as well. [yalensis: What ever happened to Soviet labor laws and the 8-hour day?] The only thing I don’t like about my job [yalensis: the only thing??] is that the workplace is cold, the fruits and vegetables have to stay at a temperature of 3-4 degrees (Celsius). But that’s nothing, I am used to it now, and I even try to convince myself that it’s healthier to work in the cold: You breathe better, and the cold slows down the aging process!
I won’t lie: This is not a life of luxury. We basically live from paycheck to paycheck. Our apartment costs us 35,000 rubles a month [yalensis: around $400 American bucks], then we also have to pay 2,500 per months [around $28] for the communal services. That’s already half my paycheck. Meanwhile, the children are growing up fast, you buy them new clothes one day, and they grow out of them the next! In spite of everything, though, we are very grateful to the volunteers who continue to provide us with support!
Thanks most of all to Maria Makeeva and her organization. They have a center in Moscow, near the “Novoslobodskaya” Station of the Metro. Two rooms are filled with clothing hanging on racks; then they have boxes filled with shoes, they also have lots of toys, office supplies, and in a third, smaller room, they have various food products. We were very lucky, because Masha lives close by Zelenograd, therefore she is able to bring, quite often, some things that we need, right to our home. For example, she brought some winter jackets for the children, some ice skates, a table lamp. Some larger furniture as well, such as an iron bedframe with adjustable width, for the children, as they grow and get bigger. And when New Year 2023 arrived, she brought us a giant artificial New Year tree. The children helped us decorate it – it was such a joy!
Sometimes I also turn to other philanthropic organizations for assistance. There are many organizations which help refugees, for example, “Mercy” and “Lighthouse”. In the “Lighthouse” organization we found a vacuum cleaner, something very necessary to domestic life; and also some plates and kitchenware, and clothing. In “Mercy”, they gave us clothing, shoes, household appliances. Recently, for example, they gave us a new computer monitor. All we need now is a processor, maybe someone can share one with us, and then we can assemble an entire computer! We used to have our own computer, back in Luhansk, but we had to leave it at home when we fled. But the children really need one, for their studies in school.
In these three philanthropic organizations that I mentioned, one may also find food. Just simple foods, like sugar, tea, cereal, flour, stew, condensed milk, sweets for the children. But when you have three children in your family and you are wondering what to feed them – well, this is a big help.
Next: Refugees help other refugees.
[to be continued]
Awful Avalanche 
Reminder that Putin’s Russia is still a neoliberal capitalist place where non-politically ambitious oligarchs still own the economy.
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Yup! It still amazes me how the Soviet working class allowed this capitalist counter-revolution to happen so (relatively) bloodlessly. Soviet workers had a really good deal: Reasonable working hours, pay not so great, but lots of perks, almost impossible to fire…
Why would they just throw all that away? Everything that Lenin worked so hard to build for them? Human stupidity, I reckon… I just answered my own question.
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at this point this example you’ve used sounds like slave labour… why aren’t their laws protecting workers like her?? it seems bizarre, especially if she is telling the truth, which i take it – she is..
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Compared to where Russia stood when Putin took the job and where is stands now I say he’s Russia’s FDR.
Perfect? No, nobody is but…
1] Putin’s “revolution” has been largely bloodless. Life has improved dramatically for working class Russians. Opportunities abound under Putin.
2] Putin’s acumen in running an economy under world-wide attack is next to flawless. Unprecedented.
3] Putin’s military response to DC/London’s effort in dismembering* Russia into small neocolonialist possessions has been better than any historical comparison. Has Putin missed some opportunities and been too willing to seek peace when none was truly on offer…sure. But, this was due to Putin’s misunderstanding of the malevolence of his opponents. I too have been shocked at the depravity of DC and London, I think it fair to say, only their dark-lord, Satan himself, is not surprised at his minions behavior.
*The goal of Crimean-War 2.0 advocates in DC/London is spoken out loud by a neocolonial quisling…
https://www.rt.com/russia/597979-estonia-ukraine-nato-eu/
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Yes, there are a lot of positive things about Putin, but unless Russia steadily improves wages, working conditions, and the social safety net, Russian society will surely eventually be torn apart by a neo-feudal or at least a neoliberal vertical class society that could devolve into civil war in the future. The PRC government still maintains substantial control over the financial sector, so it’s harder for oligarchs to gain the power they have in Ukraine, Russia, and the US, etc., and the Chinese social safety net is gradually improving. The Chinese closely watched the ending of the USSR and how Russian workers immediately were fleeced of almost everything, and they vowed not to let that happen in China, even if it meant having the dictatorship of the Party for several more decades. The central government of China consistently gets 75% approval ratings, and that is not due to charismatic personal leadership qualities. It’s all about group leadership and preserving the “serve the people” ethic, which to some extent seems to be the real thing. I wish Putin would try for just a few days to do manual labor for 12 hours a day plus overtime. It’s almost out of Charles Dickens.
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If capitalists had their way and were never checked by workers resistance, then that would be the fate of every worker. I think it was Marx who wrote in Kapital that the working day would only get longer and longer, right to the very limit, if there were nothing to check it. According to Marx, capitalist entrepreneurs have kind of a fetish about that, they believe in some crazy theory that every additional minute of squeezing labor out of somebody else, brings them that extra margin of profit.
In reality, as most workers know, there comes a certain point where you’re just not that productive any more, and there is no point to continue working on, without rest. There is sort of an optimal period of time, when you do your best work and get everything accomplished that you need to do, and then you should just quit for the day.
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Not every worker is constantly fired up like Stakhanov! People want to survive with the least amount of effort, while having as good a time as possible under the circumstances. So they get slack and allow the counter-revolution to creep in. Especially when it holds the glowing promise of the Westies’ material goods. Which are part of the great advertising (i.e. “con”) game. After the privations of the Soviet era, and the collapse under the reign of the oligarchs in the 1990s-early 2000s, who wouldn’t want a chance at a big-screen TV? So they go for the materialism and forget the dialecticism.
When the USSR came apart, there was no more official propaganda urging those things that Lenin worked so hard for. People obey the narratives they are fed — that’s one of the central points that Caitlyn Johnstone harps on. (She’s Aussie, and a righteous babe! I mean “babe” in a figure of speech, not as in “babe-a-licious,” coz she’s middle-aged in the illustration on her blog) No “workers unite!” narrative, no unison.
I often get inspired to Big Picture thoughts from your blog, and what you write about the fraternal charity offered to Natalia shows that Russia hasn’t gone ALL the way to capitalist cutthroat-ism. People do help each other, especially families. The center you cited might be run by the Russian equivalent of an NGO, but it sounds more generous (and less money-hungry) than the Salvation Army or the St. Vincent de Paul (Vinnies!) Society here. Not to throw shade on those two, since they’re doing the Lord’s work. The REAL (fictional) Lord, not the God of Greed worshiped in Amerikan churches. So there’s a whiff of Lenin in the Russian air yet, Yalensis.
I contrast that to Amerika, where for decades, the emphasis has been on “get yours, and to hell with everybody else.” The dominant ethos has been sociopathic. That’s the narrative pushed by the corporate world, and it has sunk in deeply. America wasn’t always that way, not that it was ever perfect, and there are pockets of decency in the country. Especially after disasters. Collapse and civil war would be a helluva disaster, eh? But the mindset in any corpo communication is of selfishness. Thus, Amerikans are like the “crab pot” analogy where the ones in the boiling water grab hold of those who are trying to clamber up the sides, pulling them in so they all boil. (To be fair to the grabbers, those clamberers are standing on the carapaces of the ones left in the soup, pushing them down, so screw those bastards trying to get away!)
Is it too late to restore a sense of community to Amerika? I think so. When it Hits The Fan Bigly, and I expect to live long enough to see that happen, my formerly fellow citizens are going to be crabs, not kamarads. But I’m negative that way. As always, I hope I’m wrong, but fear I’m right.
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Even in Amerika you will find tons of people with charitable hearts. A lot of it is community-based, and sometimes even ethnic-based. In any American community, of any ethnicity, you will find that same “Sarafan Radio” network of well-informed married women who fuss around, bake cookies and casseroles for other families, knit sweaters, donate to the Salvation Army, organize charity events for their community, etc. Americans are actually very generous people, they will donate clothing, food, etc., for whatever cause they are asked to do. Sometimes this even makes them gullible to conmen and fake charities.
That a similar thing exists in Russia (well, any society), I don’t really consider this a legacy of Leninism. It’s always been there. If anything, Lenin wanted to build an efficient system where everybody worked, everybody was paid a decent wage, and charity/philanthropy would not even be needed. I sort of feel the same way: I feel like philanthropy and charity are necessary evils in an imperfect world, but would be unnecessary in a perfect world!
I mean, ask anyone. Sure, if they desperately needed a school dress for their little girl, they would accept a hand-me-down and be grateful. But in their hearts, they would rather have enough money to be able to walk into a store and buy a brand new one.
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