How do Moscow Illegal Migrant Workers live

Short introduction for those who are young and missed everything. In the perfect Soviet times there was such a thing as a registration. Now it exists too, but registration value then was much more important than it is now. There was even idiom “to get married because of the registration”! Registration was needed to live in a city, for example, in Moscow! Living in the city was much better than in the countryside – more food, entertainment, and other benefits of civilization. For example, in the city you can buy sausage or boots! But you couldn’t move from Zazhopinsk to Moscow…

– I thought I would be sent to Moscow, and I really want to see Comrade Lenin!
– And Comrade Lenin really wants to see you in your own village!

At some moment, Muscovites began to refuse to carry out menial work at numerous plants. Then the large enterprises were allowed to draw from the villages and other urbans different unskilled labor. That was actually the limit of registration, and people who came to work, called limitchik. Soon the meaning of the word has changed, and limits began to call all those who came in large numbers in search of money and fame. In fact, the Soviet limitchik – is today’s guest workers.

In the 80s, when the Soviets has already happily curled, one Moscow food combine invited workers by limit. They resettled them, as expected, in the dormitory, which was located in a former kindergarten in one of the town houses ofBudenovskoye. Budenovskiy town – is famous constructivist quarter on Bolshaya Pochtovaya street.

Usually limitchik through several years of hard work had the opportunity to obtain a separate apartment in Moscow. But in the case of food processing plants, something went wrong. Soviet collapsed, and a food plant with it was closed. Part of the plant workers were settled to the flats. The hostel also became the property of the city, and not settled workers remained to live in it.

In the bustle of the 90 inhabitants of the hostel have registered in their small rooms hundreds of dead souls. And now, more than 20 years later, no one knows what to do with them. Now there lives few families, they do not pay the rent, their houses are like uninhabited.

People want to be given a normal apartment. But why does someone has to give them an apartment?

01. First, a bit about Budenovskiy town. It was built in the late 1920s. According to one version, it was a settlement for the workers, on the other – the houses were built for the high command of the Red Army.

02. Budenovskiy town was designed by architect-constructivist Michael Motylev. Then the implementation of housing projects for workers has always rested in the financial capabilities of developers. Therefore, houses in the workers’ settlements obtained simply, without elevators, with small rooms and shared kitchens and bathrooms. Be that as it may, the experts considered that ‘The quarter is interesting for its planning structure and provides historical and
cultural value “. The town was recognized as a monument of constructivism and promised to be put in order.

03. This two-storey extension is a former kindergarten, instead it there was a hostel for workers. Its inhabitants want it’s demolition and resettlement.