No wonder the Far East is facing its perennial heating crisis. Worse, there is no electricity for at least three hours every day in residential buildings. In the villages of Khrustalny, Rudny, and Fabrichny in Kavalerovsky County, temperatures are falling below minus 30 degrees, and there is no heat.
Three schools have closed because the temperature in classrooms is only 4 degrees. The cold has prompted most villagers to leave their apartments for older and more trustworthy dwellings. When winter temperatures drop, keeping warm requires resourcefulness. Some people stuff old pillowcases or clothing into empty cans, soak the rags in vegetable oil and burn them to make a miniature heater or cooking stove.
Most people wear outdoor clothing indoors, and some pitch tents in their apartments and camp inside. Cold-related causes kill scores of people in Russia each year. Most of those who die are street people unable to find shelter or drunken men who fall in the snow and freeze. But on Nov. Their mother had left town, and left them in the care of a friend. The woman tried to keep the children warm with a cheap electric mattress, but it short-circuited and began smoldering.
The issue of unheated housing in the winter would cause governments to fall in some countries. But in a nation where long-suffering is legendary, the crisis simply sparks another round in a familiar winter sport for political leaders: mutual vituperation over who is at fault.
Nonetheless, citizens are losing patience with the inability of the authorities to provide heat. Residents of 19 apartment blocks in the village of Uglovoye β 40 km north of Vladivostok β blocked the major highway leading north Nov. Yevgeny Nazdratenko. Such charges are not new. After the national media began covering the heating crisis, the State Duma invited Nazdratenko to Moscow to address the matter. The governor offered a ready explanation. The media, he said, are exaggerating. In a subsequent interview with the independent Ekho Moskvy radio station, Nazdratenko accused journalists of attempting to incite street protests.
