That the demolition and rehousing were, according to press reports, supposed to happen only with permission of the residents mattered little; they would assent, as the Russian saying goes, “dobrovol’no prinuditel’no”—voluntarily but forced. That is, the government would eventually do what it wanted, whether its citizens liked it or not—not entirely strange for Russians, given their country’s Soviet-era history of mass expropriation, deportations, arrests, imprisonment, and so on. Today’s Russia is not the Soviet Union, of course. But potent, fearful memories, passed down from generation to generation, live on in almost every family. [...]
Khrushchevkas have no elevators; each apartment unit consists of one to three rooms, a kitchen, a bathroom, and at times a balcony. They are, to be sure, eyesores, made of either brick or prefabricated concrete panels. The pensioner’s building stood in central Moscow, near a metro station—prime real estate. It made sense that Khrushchevkas in such neighborhoods would be the first to go; after all, housing built in their stead would afford urban developers huge profits, and to Moscow, increased tax revenues. New buildings would also give many districts a more modern, less Soviet look, just as Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin has envisioned for Russia’s showcase city. But most of all, the proposed demolitions seem to be about money. Or, at least, no other reason seems to exist—Khrushchevkas have not begun collapsing, and their residents are not clamoring for relocation. [...]
Putin’s go-ahead, it seems, was all Sobyanin needed to proceed. In scale, his proposal would eclipse Luzhkov’s still-unrealized plan, destroying 8,000 Khrushchevkas and rehousing 1.6 million people (Moscow’s total population is an estimated 12 million), at a cost to the state of some three trillion rubles, or the equivalent of $53 billion. All this, by the end of 2018, the year of both Russia’s next presidential elections and Moscow’s mayoral contest. Legislation backing Sobyanin’s scheme is still being put together, but a draft law approved by the Moscow Duma on its first reading on April 20 stoked worries. It would permit the city to declare entire blocs of Khrushchevka buildings “renovation zones.” Putin pledged not to sign any bill violating people’s rights, but until residents see the fine print, they have not been inclined to relax.
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