Anastasia Maltseva

If not us, then who will?



Born in Perm. Graduated from the PSMA with a degree in Surgery. Social activist, human rights defender. Chairman of the Union «Assistance to the social development of the city of Perm,» Chairman of the Board of Trustees of School No. 48 «Union of Motovilikha Generations».

Quotes

  • You should treat people more gently and broaden your own conceptions.
  • I like my life. I am proud of mankind that it still doesn't allow to chew it up.
  • I dream that we will return to a planned economy and help all children in the world.
  • The family is an inner permanent piece of happiness.
  • Depriving me of optimism is difficult. The mission is impossible, but not for us.
  • The main problem in modern society is capitalism.
  • Both Perm and Motovilikha (the first historical district of Perm — ed.) are places that I can call homeland. Not the same for Russia, Russia is my country. And I make my homeland better.

My story

I am a Perm and Motovilikha citizen in the third generation. My grandfather served in the Red Army under Tukhachevsky, was the kolkhoz head, and was not repressed quite accidentally. Grandma worked all her life: at the factory, in the house of models, again at the factory. Mama is an energy dispatcher, and papa is a locomotive driver. From the age of five, I have been living in Rabochij Poselok district, in the «Garden City,» or «Sotsgorodok.» Before the move, we all knew this district well: it was scary, here it was still as if World War II continued.

At school, the class teacher once gave the task to prepare a report: «Why is there socialism in our country?» And I already knew that terms of planned economy and socially obliged state were brilliantly developed in Lenin's «The State and Revolution.» I read this work far and wide, I got confused and went to my mother: Mama, we do not live under socialism! As a result, I make a plan-outline of why we don't have the socialism that should be, and how the general line of the CPSU (the Communist Party of the Soviet Union) detains us from the right way. A quarter of an hour I report to the classroom, there is dead silence. The class teacher sits white, asks me: «And what is the conclusion?» I: «We do not have socialism.» She: «Maltseva, get out of the class and think about what you are doing!» I went out and, as I thought, I became a leftist revolutionary.

I graduated from the Medical Academy, worked for three years as a surgeon in the regional clinical hospital. All this time I was in the left movement. But I have never been listed to a system party; for my whole life, I am a member of a non-systemic socialist movement, a Trotskyist and anti-Stalinist.

In the early 2000s, residents of dormitories turned to me, and I began to defend their rights: these people were literally included along with the dormitory building in the authorized capital — in fact, they were sold as serfs. Then we created the Dormitory of Russia movement: it took 10 years for us to get the first solution for the whole country in 2007, where the right of privatization was recognized for the residents. Perm was a pioneer in this process. Then we managed to solve this problem almost entirely. I stood in the courts during the day, at night I was on duty at the hospital work, and after three months of such a life I began to fall to the ground. Then my husband said: «Come on, you shall choose: either you will be a good lawyer or a good surgeon. Otherwise, you will either slaughter someone at night or hang yourself from grief.»

Life went on, and our government brought us the Housing Code under the slogan «Your home is your problem.» This Code provided for three forms of apartment building management: the HOA (homeowners association), the private company management and direct management. There were no restrictions on square meters and apartments in 2005 for direct management, and it was least of all bureaucratized and veiled. This form was at first tried in Astrakhan, and in Perm, we were the first house that chose this method of management. We started the agitation in October 2006. We were gathering at the middle entrance of our house and were shouting so that people sometimes came to us from the tram stop: they thought we had meetings and fights. After establishing the direct management form in March 2007, we closed the entrances accession in the first year, then we returned the electricity to them and then to the roof. We cut down three huge poplars that were breaking the roof and facade. In the third year, we have changed the heating system. In the fourth, we began to think what to do with the roof: the stars could be seen through it, and our tenants were flooded right up to the first floor.

My husband and I bought some armored film, stuck up the holes, and it stopped flooding. We decided to make an attic, but the city suddenly remembered that the house is a socio-cultural heritage. And we decided en masse that we shall litigate for the renovation, once our roof leaks, and we began along to study what the concept of «social and cultural heritage» includes. At the public hearings on block land surveying, there was the whole micro-district and some more. All went into overdrive. We won the trial and sued the land for the entire quarter: now you cannot build anything here except a fountain according to our sketches. We won the trial for the renovation of our house from the second time, by January 2012.

For a long time, we forced the city administration to execute the decision of the court to renovation. When, through warnings about criminal liability for failure to comply with previous decisions, we were financed, and then we completely restored the house in a year and a half. Then we gradually won the courts for the neighboring houses. There are 8 houses in this complex, and in general, the Rabochij Poselok project included 21 buildings. The «Comfort Environment» program helped us a lot in our movement: this is the first program where Direct Management was included, and, of course, we joined it.

No one can hang an antenna or advertisement in our architectural ensemble. After the repair, there are pictures at the entrances, there are carriages, everyone is familiar with each other. On the territory and in the hallways now we have cross-surveillance, but often it is not necessary. Recently, a film crew from the administration drove up to shoot our beauties, and the tenants immediately called me: «Nastya, there are some guys here with a camera.» And it's good that everyone knows each other: our perimeter has become secure.

We really want to take part in the reconstruction of our «garden city» for the 300th anniversary of Perm. The city sprang up due to mining and metallurgical culture, Perm has its castles in the form of a factory and the palace square in the form of the constructivist Bauhaus quarter. Everyone will die, but the stones will remain. If the authorities have at least petty ambition in their souls, even a slice of vanity and they want to leave themselves at least a little in immortality, then maybe by the 300th anniversary we will revive this territory for Perm and Perm Krai.