Apartment renovations in Moscow are mostly done by immigrants from Ukraine and Belarus, and in recent years even a concept has appeared - “Ukrainian” or “Belarusian” euro-renovation. Former compatriots, and now brothers in the Union State, take incomparably less money and usually work more diligently than Muscovites.
“I come here to work because I can’t earn that kind of money at home. And I couldn’t live on what they’d pay there,” Slava says. “Even if I get a good contract in Gomel, it’s a one-off job. My wife in Gomel is, of course, homesick, she complains, she shouts that we don’t need this money, that our two sons are being left without a father’s supervision.”
In Moscow, Slava has no problems finding work - over the years he has found intermediaries who find contracts and don’t take a commission. He usually lives with his crew in the very apartments they are renovating, among building materials and cement. They sleep on the floor and eat at tables knocked together from old boards. After all, they come to Moscow to earn money, so renting an apartment is beyond their means. Sometimes the Belarusian brings his older son along - this, he says, is so that he knows the value of money.
But all the housing inconveniences, according to Slava, pale in comparison with the main problem that non-residents face in the Russian capital - the problem of registration. Slava and his crew are usually registered by the customers, but even officially obtained documents do not save them from constant “visits” to the police.
After a short vacation, Slava came back to Moscow eight months ago to renovate an apartment. “I end up at the police station almost every week,” he says. “I already know all the police stations in the area; I’ve been to every one. They detain me and say the registration is fake. But really they just want money; they come at you with an outstretched hand. You go with them to the station, sit for two hours - they don’t have the right to detain you longer, otherwise they’d have to bring serious charges - and that’s it, sometimes they even apologize. But if I gave them money, they’d let me go right away. It even happens that I’m walking along, meet a familiar policeman, we greet each other, he smiles and steps aside - but another one takes me and drives me to the police station.”
“As for the Union State of Belarus and Russia, we get no benefits from it at all. Quite the opposite. Russian citizens who come to Moscow have proper forms with photographs; the others from the CIS have proper immigration cards. But we have ordinary pieces of paper with something written in ink and some unclear stamp on them. We don’t belong to the CIS, nor to Russia. And we ourselves don’t know who we are.”
Muscovites often resent the influx of newcomers to the Russian capital, even saying that they take their jobs. But they still don’t go for hard work for little money. That is why courtyards in Moscow are cleaned mainly by people from Central Asia, asphalt is laid by Armenians, and renovations are done by Belarusians and Ukrainians.
Turning several old apartments a year into pictures worthy of fashionable design magazines, Slava himself is a real shoemaker without shoes. A small apartment in Gomel remains unrenovated - he stripped the wallpaper off the walls, but there is never enough time or money to put up new wallpaper or paint. He started building a house in the suburbs of Gomel - but hasn’t finished it yet.
And yet, despite all the hardships of Moscow life, Slava says he will keep coming. “There’s no shortage of work here, because Moscow is being built. Just as we used to come here to earn money, we’ll keep coming.”