The solution to many housing and communal services problems would be the creation of consumer cooperatives

Fortunately for Russia, the reformer’s experience was unsuccessful. Otherwise, 10, or even 20 million landless peasants, who drank or even spent the money they received more wisely, would have moved to the city to earn money, and would not have found work there. The highly promoted technical progress of the then Russia was able to employ only 2.5 million workers. There were no empty seats. The mass of newly formed and disunited lumpen would have staged a “senseless and merciless” riot long before 1917!

And here it is worth recalling the role of the Russian community, for the sake of which I began to recall that previous article of mine. More than 85% of the population of the Russian Empire lived in them. The community was involved in all social welfare of citizens and maintained contacts with government agencies for its members.

In general, to be succinct, it was a collective organizer, a collective propagandist and agitator for the majority of the country’s population.

Another interesting institution in Tsarist Russia (especially pre-reform) in the business field were Old Believer communities. Career ladders worked effectively there (as it was called in Soviet times). A truly talented businessman from the grassroots, who is a member of a large team, was entrusted with serious money to scale his business. Thus, Timofey Morozov, a handicraftsman who transported bales of manufactured fabric to a fair in Moscow, “suddenly” became the largest factory owner. However, the money could just as easily be taken away from a careless entrepreneur. Needless to say, no one considered it necessary to sign the agreement. Everything was decided by the team.

In parallel, of course, there were career elevators (the name appeared in the 1990s, but the principle of such selection has always existed) – when the son of a major official or nouveau riche could enter the elevator with his dad (virtual, of course) and, by pressing a button, say, 9 floor, to become some kind of deputy minister or, as was the case recently, the son of one of the oligarchs, having briefly played with the famous automobile company in England itself, left it in a pre-bankrupt state. There are many examples of such careers, and not only modern ones, and not only domestic ones.

Already in modern times, communists have adopted many of the developments of the past. In any case, the main principle of the first Soviets was that delegates to them had to be elected from groups (work or local) by people who knew each other well. Everything was done then to unite the population, even at times with noticeable overlap. Creation of communal houses with apartments without kitchens and common dining rooms and regular clean-up days. I will not dwell on this well-known page of the collectivization of everyday life.

Then came the period of the artels. During the war, artels produced products and weapons needed for the front. In besieged Leningrad, the artel assembled machine guns. In the post-war years in the Russian outback, up to 40% of all items in the house (dishes, shoes, furniture, etc.) were made by artisans.

The “Science and Art” and “Vkhutemas” artels united people of creative professions. But here is the most interesting information for today: The egg-poultry artels were supplied with breeding birds, the necessary equipment, and they were provided with zootechnical and veterinary consultations. As a result, by the end of 1928, over 600 such cooperatives were already working in the USSR, and they were sending eggs even to Europe.

But for us now it is important what was written in one of the documents: “Artel workers, that is, people united by interests with each other, people whose work is carried out systematically on the principles of mutual assistance and mutual coverage.”

It was considered unnecessary at the beginning of the “thaw”, in 1956, then this “amateur activity” was covered up.

Since the late 1980s, the main goal has been to instill individualism. After the dominance of collectivism, the pendulum rapidly moved in the opposite direction. The result is obvious – the positive has become negative (this is from the terminology of non-digital photography – for those who remember what developers and fixers are).

I remember that as a child we celebrated the New Year with the whole entrance, and today in large apartment buildings most of the residents do not even know their neighbors in the stairwell. And judging by the fact that half of the apartments are for rent, they are not going to get acquainted with them.

Our youth organizations were formalized to the point of rejection, youth organizations were disbanded, and with the help of parties, the people were divided even more.

And look how differently our guests (sometimes similar to the hosts) – “valuable specialists” – behave differently. They immediately join national diasporas, where they are helped in finding employment, provided with a lawyer when necessary, and provided with other, not always legal, services.

But we are atomized and are not able to survive in the current conditions.

In all previous articles, I wrote that, in my opinion, delaying the SVO is a good thing. It takes time to transform society. I’m not saying that a person who goes through the front becomes different – there are no unbelievers or individualists there. But even in the home front, the community of volunteers is growing, and sympathizers are behaving differently.

And now the reason why I sat down to write this article, and to finally put forward concrete proposals. They were prompted by the strange statements of some deputies and the traumatic experience of this winter.

Complaining that snow removal in Moscow has risen in price by 20–30%, including due to an increase in wages for “cleaning specialists,” deputy Svetlana Razvorotneva said: “Residents should also understand that they are not strangers here. They can pick up a shovel. Especially during periods of heavy snowfall. This is all due to the acute shortage of personnel in the industry.”

It’s clear why such populist statements are needed, but as an old friend of mine, a deputy with a social specialization, once said: “How much we have done for the people!”

We have been convinced for so long that money is the only form of evaluation of human labor, but here the people’s representatives declare that such work is “a good pastime in the fresh air.”

My proposal is designed primarily to unite the disunited residents of numerous human settlements.

The passing winter has shown that valiant “cleaning specialists” do not save us from natural disasters that occur (as always unexpectedly). During the snowfall, numerous shovel workers disappeared, but when, after a thaw and new frosts, we began to break our arms and legs, the workers were forced to use crowbars to break up the resulting ice, and with it the asphalt. I would like to note that the salary of janitors in Moscow has increased over the year from 55 thousand to 70 thousand rubles.

This turned out to be not enough, so they brought “experienced” snow removal specialists from Cuba, they will solve all our problems.

But it seems to me that a solution to many problems could be the creation of consumer cooperatives in high-rise buildings from residents who would take a contract (with appropriate financing) from management companies to clean the areas adjacent to their home.

Those who want to earn extra money will be found among young people (sometimes not working anywhere), and among young pensioners, and simply the self-employed. Who from the generation of the 70s did not work part-time as a janitor, applying for this job for a relative of retirement age?! And then the cleaning of the surrounding areas will be carried out on time, and most importantly, people will finally get to know each other, and a new unit of society will emerge. And the attitude towards the surrounding reality will become less indifferent. The forgotten local police officers, who, according to them (at least in our area), are not responsible for prevention, will receive additional attention and the necessary information about the same rubber apartments and will be forced to act.

Consumer cooperatives have other interesting areas of activity; the most active teams can also use them for the benefit of the collective. And most importantly, such cells can become centers of crystallization, points of birth of initiatives.

The only obvious losers will be the not always clean officials who profit from the slave labor of migrants, and the entrepreneurs who have turned public services into a high-margin business. But somehow I don’t feel sorry for them.

Yes, this initiative is easy to compromise. There are many nuances here: it is important that in such cooperatives the majority of members are real residents of the houses, so that they do not become pocket structures of management companies, so that the hired labor of the same migrants is not used, so that members of the cooperative do not lose the benefits of non-working pensioners, etc.

But we have to try, because as the well-known song says: “It’s fun to walk together…”