Gentrification, Post-Soviet Style

She was, on first glance, a most unlikely civil activist, and certainly no obvious rabble rouser: an aged, stooped, frail, silver-haired pensioner, who also happened to be the starshaya po domu—something like “chief resident”—of a Khrushchevka, a five-story apartment building dating back to the era of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. My wife and I had lived in this particular Khrushchevka from 2001 until just a few years ago; we still own an apartment there.

We had returned at the invitation of this pensioner, whom we had never met before. Her voice trembled with anger as she explained why she had invited us into her home. The municipal authorities, she said, would likely soon demolish her building, along with the rest of Moscow’s , and relocate the tenants. But she had no desire to move and was, as a result, asking my wife, a Russian citizen, to sign a petition of protest that she would send to the mayor’s office—and possibly even to President Vladimir Putin