Russians Battle Old Scourge: Bureaucracy

When Russians go to battle with the bureaucracy, you can measure the length of their fight by the thickness of the wad of documents they carry around. And the people who are drawn to acting President Vladimir V. Putin’s public reception office carry impressively thick sheaves of paper.

The corridor leading to the door bearing the potent name, Putin, is close, crowded and tense.

Though not resigned to defeat, the people waiting in line under a newspaper portrait of Putin exude a sense of powerlessness. To most of them, Putin is the last hope.

Each believes that the magic of the presidential name could cow unsympathetic bureaucrats, correct injustices, unravel mysteries or even ensure that Moscow waitresses will be polite.

These are people used to doing battle. Most are volubly indignant and several are hostile, perhaps by nature. More than a few of them wear the dogged, desperate look of those who dare to plunge into battle with the Russian bureaucracy and keep fighting.

They fall eagerly upon anyone who shows even a passing interest in their problems, greedily competing for an ear.

“I have great material,” said one elderly man, clad in a burred, mud-brown sweater and waving his sheaf of documents with a flourish. It turns out that Yuri N. Potashev has come from St. Petersburg and pounded the Moscow streets for two months in midwinter while trying to resolve his many problems.

But the public reception office is unlikely to get deeply involved in these cases or offer a commitment to follow up. The office, which is part of Putin’s campaign headquarters, will be open only until the March 26 presidential election, which Putin is expected to win. After he takes office, it will close.

The chief of the office is Nikolai Y. Medvedev. His job, while leaving most of the demands essentially unsatisfied, is to have visitors leave feeling that somehow their request has been answered.

“They think that since we work for Mr. Putin, his name is like a magic wand, wherever we call,” he said. “But we don’t have any administrative leverage. Maybe some visitors don’t realize this,” said Medvedev, handing over a business card bearing Putin’s name.

The office opened in mid-February to accept the complaints, problems and views of the electorate. When it closes, Medvedev will go back to his job as public relations officer with the tax police.

About 170 people write or send faxes to the office each day. And 200 people a day queue, armed with their arguments, their grievances and their documents. They have long stories to tell, and they speak quickly, not pausing even for breath, for fear the listener will lose interest.

The staff at the reception office listen and put the names of each complainant into a computer. In some cases, they write a letter to local authorities asking them to hear the case out.

“We don’t work miracles here. But it’s very important that visitors don’t leave this office feeling disappointed,” Medvedev said.

The office has five consultants who hear complaints. All, like Medvedev, work on a volunteer basis. That leaves each of them with about 12 minutes to hear each case, not much time to assuage a sense of grievance that in most cases has been years in the making.

“Everyone in that corridor has his own pain, his own problems that have remained unsolved for years. Our visitors have often been met with irresponsible indifference by the local authorities, and that’s why they come to us,” Medvedev said.

A couple of hours sampling those problems provides a picture of what a frustrating country Russia can be. Even those who have a case to pursue in court have to deal with a legal system that, at best, is full of contradictions and, at worst, is corrupt.

Nadezhda M. Belogurova, a retired woman with a 17-year-old daughter, has been trying to sort out her problem for six years: She moved to Moscow from the far north hoping to inherit her husband’s flat when he died, but she faced court action by the Moscow Housing Authority. Despite its clout, she won. But then it appealed--and won.

Now, deprived of official registration as a permanent resident of Moscow, she has no right to vote.

“I’ve lost all my rights. I don’t know whom to turn to for help. The state needs to give me at least a corner to live in and registration papers,” said Belogurova, who has appealed the case.

She has little hope that Putin’s reception office will help--which is probably just as well. Asked about her problem, Medvedev replied vaguely: “All issues like that have to be resolved in the courts. Unfortunately, we have to admit we have a legal system which is very far from being perfect.”

Potashev has been fighting for more than five years, since he was arrested for refusing to move out of his house, which had been transferred to the Interior Ministry. During the two months he was held in custody, his mother died and he was unable to arrange her burial or even attend it. Four years later, he was evicted from his mother’s flat.

“I want a criminal investigation of all these facts of illegal confiscation,” said Potashev, his anger rising. “I want permission to rebury my mother and put her in the vault where her mother and father are lying.”

He says he has been in Moscow for two months, living in attics and basements while he sought--in vain--an audience with the prosecutor general’s office.

“People treated me very rudely,” he said. “Where could I come but here?”

Arkady Melik-Osipov, 40, a former opera singer at the Bolshoi Theater, recounts a drawn-out tale of what happened at a Moscow cafe recently. Outraged because a waitress told him that he had to order at least a cake, Melik-Osipov wanted to complain to the manager.

Instead, he found himself detained and held by police, his 10-year-old daughter in tow, when the young waitress filed a complaint against him.

“Youth have become exceptionally degraded of late. They have no kindness in their hearts. They swear. They’re aggressive and embittered,” he complained in a soft, swift voice.

Medvedev says the time has come when the authorities have to reckon with people with grievances. But, rude waitresses aside, these are not the kind of problems that can be smoothed over in 12 short minutes. Medvedev aims to send away happy customers, but not all his visitors are impressed.

Alla Polovinkina, 32, has come to seek advice on how to have her husband, Vladimir, an Interior Ministry major, released from pretrial detention. She claims that he was framed by colleagues.

“I lined up here for nothing,” she sniffed. “They said if my husband is sentenced to death, Putin will definitely do something to make the sentence lighter. But the crime doesn’t carry a death sentence.”