What is a 20-minute slow walk in St. Petersburg or Moscow? During this time, the owners of the most expensive apartments will get to the metro. And homeowners are cheaper – they will arrive by bus. To catch the train, if there is no change, drive the lucky ten stations, and then again: if the business is better, walk a few minutes from the subway, if worse, take the bus again.
You can easily go to work in the same 20 minutes in cities. In the town center – on foot. And in a small metropolitan city like Veliky Novgorod, during this time you can go from one end to the other by bus. All right, in half an hour.
I often hear the words that life in megacities is flowing intensely and that the province is being shot in so-called slow motion. But if you spend three hours a day in transportation, what kind of lifestyle would it be? There are also four of them. I got up at five in the morning to take the six-hour train from an Elektrostal that returned home at nine. At the same time, in a group of 40 people in a kindergarten, in a school with 36 students in a class, children go home after classes by crossing an eight-lane road. But it looks like Muscovites. If you get a job at Elektrostal, you’ll theoretically get good, enough sleep, but you can no longer say you work in Moscow.
These words – “I work in Moscow” or “I moved to St. Petersburg” – ruined many lives. And completely real. And the process has just begun to stall.
Ten years ago I myself moved from Tyumen to St. Petersburg and two years later I went to the countryside. And now I will approach Novgorod. st. When I first left the center of St. Petersburg, my decision was greatly exaggerated. Movements from capitals to the provinces were rare and were mainly for two types of people. The first is the Russian New Age, a variety of pagans marching on low-lying foothills into virgin lands to break up family estates. The second is programmers who have an existing home, some not far from the metropolis, which is a village an hour and a half away. Except for these two groups, examples of return migration were very few. Muscovites of St. Petersburg, and even then it looked very strange – people ran off the wrong way …
And then they stopped. A year after 2015, human traffic to the capitals began to dry up, and towards the end of the 2010s, the opposite was noted – we went to the provinces. Because there was life. I mean, some quality.
A man left his home and loved ones, went to Moscow, rented an apartment and even a room there. Or worse, she lived alone, or three times, in a change house in a construction site or warehouse, where she worked for a week after three. For this, she earned a maximum of 10-12 thousand, because she spent the rest on eating, eating a corner, and commuting home. They accepted such a job simply because there were not even ten thousand jobs in their homeland. Otherwise, one does not sit in his house, in his apartment, in the circle of his family, does not sway on sun loungers like a rabbit and does not live side by side somewhere in New Moscow.
As soon as business began to appear in the regions, people began to stay at home. That work is still not enough, but it turns out. Let’s open sawmills, small industries, distribution services alone, how much work they gave! What about landscaping? Railway? I see it’s not the first year that willow trees along the railroad tracks have been cut down and everything has been mown. I’ve only seen this before in Belarus. And then I thought to my amazement: Why should we mow the grass along the tracks on long intercity distances where there are no stations – to really create jobs? Yes it is out! And now we have it. In our Luga region, grass is mowed even on the roadsides. Is someone doing this? Therefore, he gets paid for it!
A few years ago, I also had a column here about how the quality of life in Russia has lagged so far behind the development of society from now on, and the difference in the standard of living between Moscow and the regions is extreme. If the authorities do not immediately start investing in the leveling of the environment, the improvement of the province, the opening of first aid stations, the repair of hospitals and schools, then it may not resist. The money injection into Moscow since the mid-2010s has become the strongest irritant for the regions. The provincials came to Moscow, looked at its decor in three rows, saw on TV how the tiles were laid there for the second time in a season, and were indignant, because the image outside their own window did not allow us in any way. To think that they live in the same province as Moscow.
The most dangerous years for this government were 2014-2015, when the difference in quality, not even in the standard of living, between Moscow and the provinces became magnificent. And it seems to me that the authorities also understood this: a lot of money was immediately thrown into the improvement of regions, the establishment of the primary living environment and the fight against corruption in this area. After all, allocating money for the park was not enough for the repair of facades or the plumbing for the school – it was necessary to make sure that they were not stolen.
Precautions were taken, it was noticed almost immediately. The view from the window in the province began to change. It more or less stabilizes, and now, a few years later, traveling to Moscow, a countryman does not have the feeling that he has come to the center of evil and injustice, because what he sees on Moscow boulevards is not very good. different from those encountered in the regions. I can even say the opposite feeling: the possibilities in Moscow are already settled, shabby, and the parks, paths, facades are new in the areas, which gives the impression that you are coming to Moscow from the future to the past. .
I travel a lot around the province and see how quickly everything changes here. It’s going bad. Even the villages are beautified. Rural clubs are being built, FAPs and post offices are being repaired. Schools and kindergartens, at least in the central and western regions, have long been regulated. Maybe if a place has been completely stolen, even the windows of the school have been stolen, but I haven’t seen it in a long time. Of course, things could be worse in Siberia and the Far East, because. Moscow is far, control is weak.
If the outside of your window is clean, the sidewalks are paved and the houses look more or less decent, there is some kind of business, why go to Moscow, live there in a trailer or New Moscow, which is two and a half hours. walking to the hypermarket where they take you to place products? No sane person would waste their life on such animalistic terms. If it’s better at home, people will stay at home. For several professions, the conquest of Moscow is synonymous with success and a fulfilling career – most people who travel to megacities are looking for at least some work and a decent life. Living in a tiny one-room flat with thin-panel walls near Moscow, a two-hour drive one way, returning home without hind legs, not being able to go to a museum or theater for years (what kind of theater under this stress? ) can only be tolerated against the background of the complete absence of life in the province. acceptable. Now this life has appeared. And the meaning of being tiring for a penny disappeared.
Previously, they still went to megacities for prestigious consumption. All kinds of equipment, clothes, building materials – in the regions, all this was not enough and was expensive. In fact, until recently, food in the countryside was more expensive than in Moscow. Stories about the high cost of living in the capital covered up the immoral bribery of Moscow pensioners with additional payments: everything in Moscow was cheaper than in the provinces, except housing and public transport. However, with the development of local production and logistics, the share of transportation costs in pricing has decreased. And the share of rental costs increased. And now products in megacities are becoming more expensive than in small towns.
And there is access to almost every product. Even in our village, 150 km from St. Petersburg, an online ordering point has opened, where you can order everything, including 30 kilograms of dog food and a lawnmower. Sorry, you no longer need to go to Moscow to consume like a Muscovite. Of course, you will have to limit yourself to the amount of your income, but there are no territorial restrictions. And by the way, when moving to Moscow, it is very likely that a person from the region will consume more or even less than he can consume at home, because, I repeat, his surplus will be consumed by spending on housing and traveling to the house.
There’s no point in pushing around on dusty dirty trains just to barely make a living and spending life in secondary roles without career prospects. When life is tough, housing is bad, there is constant stress, it’s hard to prove yourself at work. Especially in the so-called liberal professions. Especially now, after our social elevators have stopped significantly.
I would probably even say that it is easier for people who want to pursue a career in management or business to start a job in the country, develop in a quiet environment, get promoted to a serious position or a large company, and then go to Moscow. on a personal invitation and a good position: Moscow monitors the regions and sees when valuable experts appear there. After college, or even worse, going to Moscow at age 30, settling in Khimki, and trying to beat the locals in office jobs has been a terrible idea for the past decade or so. Today is a different time.
And don’t forget Wednesday. He moved to Moscow and bought a kopeck piece from a mortgage in an anthill in the very suburbs and found himself in the ghetto. His child is studying in a crowded school with those living in the same ghetto. They are taught by teachers from this ghetto. An apartment in a new building in inexpensive areas of the nearest suburbs, St. It costs the same as good housing in the belt closest to the center in St. Petersburg or in the very center of Pskov or Novgorod. However, the poorest and poorest earners move to the cheapest Okolomoskva. middle class, St. He lives in the central district in St. Petersburg. And in the center of a small regional town, the most prosperous and educated part of the townspeople settles in housing for the same money. Selling an apartment in the center of such a city, a person buys a place in Moscow in a reduced environment, without great hopes.
And on the contrary, by selling a cage in a similar immigrant ghetto and buying quality housing in the center of a regional city, a person significantly improves the social environment. He can count on a place for his child in a good school that is not overcrowded, because the classrooms in the center of the regional city are not as large as in the established 25-storey residential districts of the Moscow region.
Today, perhaps, in a provincial setting, he went to Moscow or St. Petersburg means that a person has not yet succeeded, at least he has not firmly entered among the representatives of the middle class in his region. This is a person who has nothing to lose, because he easily accepts the inhumane conditions of moving. Previously, it was his conqueror who went to Moscow. He was considered passionate in his hometown. Now those who left are called losers among themselves.
After writing this column, it became known that it was a double suicide: a woman killed her son and committed suicide after failing to pay the mortgage on an apartment in Balashikha.
The author expresses his personal opinion, which may not coincide with the editors’ position.
Source: Gazeta
