Ilia Utekhin

Limited Good, fair play and the evil eye

((Sorry, the illustrations are not available))

In this chapter, or at least in its part, we deal mainly with seemingly small things that nevertheless have a big significance - and that is why these things fall within our scope. Other things that we treat here cannot be but very significant, because they are obviously indispensable to survive and to carry out normally the everyday activities.

The limited availability of shared facilities requires an efficient strategy for a fair distribution. Along with the distribution of public space, the key issue here is the distribution of facilities in the temporal dimension. That is, queuing becomes a substantial part of everyday life. The more tough are the conditions, the more institutionalised turn out to be the ways of queuing (thus, e.g., schedules of the use of the bathroom appear). However, we have mainly observed spontaneous ways of queue organisation, when according to unwritten rules and presumptions the most efficient way of common use of bathroom or taps is established, and potential conflicts avoided.

Being limited, the availability of facilities is not enough to completely satisfy everybody. Correspondingly, people are extremely sensitive to the fairness of the distribution. Not only one’s own share is supposed to be fair, but the share of other members of community is the matter of everyone’s concern, which also means an intense emotional involvement. It is the feeling of envy, the motor of many activities, that perfumes the relations within the apartment.

At the same time, the survival of community critically depends on the performance of a definite minimal sum of efforts necessary to keep up the living environment, and also depends on a certain amount of costs. These costs and efforts are carefully shared and attentively controlled so that to maintain the general balance of fair distribution of goods and obligations.

Many forms of CA dwellers’ behaviour, their attitudes and habits originate from motives and institutions typical for “cultures of poverty” or, more exactly, “deprivation” societies, described by means of the Image of Limited Good by George Foster. According to this view, people in such cultures of shared poverty think of all the good things in life as constituting a closed system, a resource, whose quantity is limited for the group. Correspondingly, one community member’s advantage is conceived as being at the expense of the other. This picture is not, of course, completely relevant to describe CA mentality - and it becomes less and less relevant with the time; however, some revealing parallels may be traced.

As it has been remarked, the temporal distribution of goods and obligations is provided by the institutions of queues and schedules. Thus, the cleaning of the apartment, described in the chapter on purity, is performed by turn by all the tenants. By tenants here we mean single tenants living alone in their rooms or families consisting of several persons, who constitute a kind of “legal person” for all public needs. The usual way is to be on duty during the number of weeks corresponding to the number of persons: thus, a family of four cleans the apartment for four weeks, while the turn of a single person lasts one week only. In very big apartments (e.g., we have observed one where forty four men are reported to once live together), where the duty is more difficult and takes more time, a turn lasts several days, a day per person. In Fig.__, the schedule of turns is represented. Such schedules are usually put in the most visible place, such as the kitchen door. The sequence of turns follows the sequence of rooms in the apartment. Sometimes, this sequence may be changed in case if a tenant has to be absent from the apartment for some time; he exchanges his turn with someone else. Some CAs go without written schedules of duties, but everyone knows who is on duty today and who is the following.

One more obligation usually performed by turn, though not often reflected in a written schedule, is that of calculating monthly expenditure of electric power. It means that the tenants by turn take the indications of all the counters of electric power in the apartment, calculate the costs, make a table on a sheet of paper where all the calculations are presented and which is posted up somewhere (usually also in the kitchen), and collects money in order to pay them to the bank. This obligation involves, first, skills of calculating and, second, responsibility which the community cannot delegate to all of its members. That is why not all the neighbours can be entrusted with this work; drunkards and old people do not often participate in it. In some CAs, a definite person is charged with this obligation (in the past, it was so called “kvartupolnomochennyi”, that is, officially recognised by housing administration leader of CA community, responsible for the order in the apartment).

Another kind of schedules concern the common use of facilities. Except for bathroom written schedules in overcrowded CAs (practically not observed today, though remembered by the elder generation), these schedules are spontaneous and not formalised. This is what in Russian is called “zhivaia ochered’ ”, a spontaneous queue. In hot hours, in the evening and in the morning, the turns are accorded between neighbours who stand, a towel on the shoulder, in the kitchen or in the corridor by the bathroom door, or simply wait in their rooms that the previous user calls to the door. The towel is as eloquent as the pocket telephone-book in the hands of the person who stands in the antechamber waiting his turn to call by telephone - and listening his neighbour’s conversation. Those coming to the kitchen (or to the telephone) see the pretender and ask him, who is the last in the queue (“Kto poslednii?”). When someone is believed to abuse the patience of those waiting their bathroom turn, some measures are taken to inform the abuser. Either he is called through the bathroom door, or the water tap is used in the kitchen.

This requires a comment. The hot water supply in the bathroom can be interrupted by taking water from the taps in the kitchen. Sometimes it is inevitable, when there is no other tap in the apartment, and people need water. To prevent this molesting moment and to inform the neighbours that someone is taking bath or shower, a piece of paper is put on the taps. As a rule, in this case people try to avoid using the kitchen taps for a long time, so that to give hot water to the person in the bathroom. (See Fig. ___ for special carton plate with a hole and inscription “Moiuts’a (= someone is washing oneself)”, for placing it on the tap). So, an intentional disturbance of the person in the bathroom can be a signal that it is time to let other people to use bathroom.

At the same time, the breaks in hot water supply may occur with occasional drops of water pressure, and so not caused by the neighbours’ actions. Meanwhile, neighbours are always suspected in causing disturbances. It is recognised by everyone that the suspicions may turn out to be groundless, and in potentially conflicting situations special strategies are used to decline the bathing neighbour’s anger. Cf. an interview passage as follows: “Something should be made with the geyser. See what happened. One day I am having shower, and suddenly the water grows cold. I swear furiously. And here aunt Asia is knocking at the bathroom door and says, ‘Kirill, no one is taking [the water], no one is taking, it has extinguished by itself’ (Russian: ‘Kirill, nikto ne ber’ot, nikto ne ber’ot, on sam pogas’)“. (See below in the chapter about personal relations and conflicts about the way to address people as “aunt” and ”uncle”.)

Since people have different personal schedules, it is normal when those who do not hurry let those who want to use bathroom before going to the work pass before them. It is supposed that those who can use the bathroom during the day, should not queue in peak hours. That is another argument for washing clothes outside the bathroom: it takes too much time, while other people need the bathroom for personal hygiene, which is a more private affair and, unlike washing clothes, requires a closed space of the bathroom. A neighbour’s urgent need to wash up is often satisfied by the person who is washing clothes by that moment.

Clearly, queuing is potentially conflictual subject, and all kinds of violations of the described order frequently happen. Someone can, for instance, get secretly into the bathroom in spite of the queue, during a short interstice between two turns while the bathroom is empty, though the water is on and someone’s tubs are already being filled. In such cases, the geyser (if it is located outside the bathroom) is disconnected by the tenant whose rights have been violated.

The balance of schedules is also kept by the custom to perform the cleaning of the apartment at the time when it would not complicate the tenants’ activities of peak hours (personal hygiene before going to work in the morning, preparing meals and bathing children in the evening).

All the social devices mentioned above are intended to optimise the neighbours’ everyday activities and thus their pragmatic functions are evident. Not so obvious are the meanings of behaviour forms concerning the share of costs and the individual property. In Soviet satiric literature, more than once the typical CA dwellers were presented as greedy and envious creatures, whose interests were focused on their quarrels with neighbours about the most insignificant matters. Our materials give us reasons to claim that today’s CA inhabitants have inherited some habits and specific traits of mentality that were ridiculed by the writers.

The “greed” of CA dwellers is best illustrated by their attitude to electric power expenditure. It is especially convenient example, as the price of electric energy has never been really significant neither in the USSR, nor in today’s Russia. Nevertheless, a great deal of quarrels between neighbours originate from discussions about electricity. This question is always burning in CAs. The covert reason of it is the fact that people are too sensitive to the fairness of distribution, and an individual share in the overall expenditure of power is a symbolic substitute for one’s “fair share” in general. CA mentality is essentially attentive to individual possessions and to sharing goods and costs - that is, emphatically greedy and envious (though greed and envy are the natural feelings that in this or that way are incorporated in and transformed by any culture). That is why even the most insignificant shares of the Good can become objects of attention. Our task when exposing the examples of these feelings is to find how they contribute to establish a balance of interests, how they condition the fair play. Being socially and personally destructive, these feelings make necessary special cultural devices intended to coping with the power of these emotional states and to transformation of them into motors of socially accepted and useful activities and attitudes.

Today, it is not often that formerly very wide-spread system of illumination of the public places can be met. According to that system, every tenant had his own bulb in the toilet and in the kitchen, the corresponding switch being located in the tenant’s room. So people used to switch the light on from their own room, so that no one else could use their bulbs and the electric power paid by them. Expenditure was fixed by individual counters. In case if the switches were located by the toilet door, an occasional use of another tenant’s bulb - e.g., by guests who eventually cannot be aware of which of the switches belongs to their host - was a source of repeated scandals. Sometimes, to avoid intentional or occasional use of his bulb, the owner removed it after use. Of course, in big CAs the implementation of such system was more difficult, and it mainly could be found in middle size CAs (up to five families). See Figs.___ .

Currently, both in big and middle size CAs it is more common to have one bulb and one switch for a toilet. The expenditure of energy in public places is calculated from the indications of the common counter. The sum of monthly amounts fixed by individual counters is rested from the indications of the common counter (“obshchii schet” = ‘common account’), which thus comprise the individual expenditures plus the expenditure on the common places’ illumination. The result (“obshchee pol’zovanie”= ‘common expenditure’) in proportionally divided between all the tenants.

An almost fabulous example of sensibility to fairness is a complaint of an old woman, who asked to increase the “obshee polzovanie” share of a neighbour, adducing the fact that he had many guests who used electric door-bell. As it is often arranged in CAs, neighbours recognise their guests from the number of door-bell signals. The old woman had one signal code, very rarely used because her visitors were few. Her neighbour opened the door at three signals. She deduced that the door-bell consumed more energy for the neighbour’s guests, and so “obshchee polzovanie” should have been redistributed to increase the neighbour’s payment.

It is interesting that the redistribution of shares can really occur. In some cases it is done so that to express the community attitude towards somebody, under the veil of a more just sharing.

If you regard carefully many tables of payment calculations which are placed monthly in the kitchen to inform the tenants of the amount they should pay for electricity and telephone, you can make a curious discovery: the number of tenants can sometimes be a variable with more than one value even within a single table. One source of the variations of this kind is clear enough. If we have the “obshchee pol’zovanie” amount divided between, say, 19 persons, and the sum for telephone, between 17, it may be motivated with the fact that two of 19 neighbours are little infants who do not use telephone at all. Despite of the regulations demanding proportional sharing according to the number of people, the local ideas of justice suppose attention to the actual situation. So, the number of real telephone users is counted. The same occurs when people absent from the apartment during the month of the payment are not included into the bill of “obshchee pol’zovanie”.

Another source of numeric variations has well pronounced connotations. It can be, for instance, the irritation against the person who is often called by telephone, but lives at the end of the corridor opposite to the telephone. He never hears the telephone ring and never approaches the ringing telephone himself. Those who do approach the telephone and so have to call this person many times a day, every time need to make a long way through the corridor to his door, or to exit to the landing and press his door-bell button. The neighbours do not try to conceal their irritation. They express it verbally, sometimes openly refusing to call this man and saying it to the people who are telephoning him. Every month, when dividing the amount of the payment for common telephone, this person, in spite of living alone, is made to pay two shares. This is but a symbolic expression of blame, the real amount of payment being insignificant for one’s budget: in the described case, one share is roughly equivalent to the price of two boxes of matches.

A similar thing occurs when a person who receives many visitors is made to pay an additional share for “obshchee pol’zovanie”, the explicit reason being that his guests enjoy electric power paid by the community. An implicit reasoning puts in the bill the community work on maintenance of the clean state of public space. Although enjoying the purity and adding his contribution to soil it, the guest does not compensate the community for its work; the host should do, though in a symbolic form. This is made to ensure justice in the distribution of goods and efforts.

In the same table, sometimes a column is added to collect money for some urgent CA needs. In past times, a special person was a sort of cashier responsible for community money. He or she had a certain amount for current needs (like buying bulbs for public space illumination). Now the money is usually collected to compensate one’s expenses already made to acquire bulbs, a new lavatory brush etc. The number of persons between which the amount is shared may also be different both from that of “obshchee pol’zovanie” contributors and from the recognised telephone users. That is, the answer “It depends on how you count...” to the question “How many people live in this apartment?” is quite logical. Some tenants have their dwelling place registered in the CA, but actually live elsewhere; some can be temporarily absent; some may actually live in the apartment, being but guests, friends, or relatives of a tenant. This last possibility is opened by the last decade’s loosening of the administrative control. CA community tries to incorporate such temporary inhabitants to the collective economy of goods and efforts. The inclusion of a new unit to the bill means a formal recognition of a person’s living here. When the community opposes to a person’s presence in the apartment, as in case of a drunkard’s friends who have come to live with him, this new person is not included in the table and the correspondent share of costs is not required from him, though he (or she) has already become one of actual users of public places. The community cannot recognise its failure in the fight against this person’s presence. Moreover, sharing the costs would involve also providing with certain rights. A person who pays his share, even without legal permission to live in the CA, would have more grounds to claim his rights of common goods and facilities.

Sharing costs according to the number of persons implies the idea of equality as a part of justice. This idea reflects the ideal of shared poverty, but does not correspond to reality, as the people’s circumastances are far from being equal. It is taken into account by practices we have mentioned above, but there is another source of inequality which brings about much envy: privileges. Recently, privileges where introduced in the payment of electric power for the veterans of war, elderly pensioners and some other categories of population who are given the right to pay a reduced price. The privileges have considerably complicated the calculations of the table, the more so as the underprivileged ones invent various ways to unofficially escape the full price. Thus, for example, kin families, in one of which there is a privileged person, spread this privilege to all the relatives living in the CA. The result may even be materially significant for the tenants, but it is more important that they feel so valuable justice: all the people manage to get privileges, and “we are not worse than the others”.

This trickery does not affect greatly the electric supplier company. The introduction of privileges has been a part of the social policy of the state, at the same time limiting the high profits of electric power monopolies. In order to not overcomplicate the calculations, the supplier company counts every CA with one or more privileged men as a privileged CA, and puts in the bill a half-price. The real sum paid is bigger, as the underprivileged ones pay the full price (these bills are curious; they state, e.g., “To pay: Rbl 60” and “Paid: Rbl 82”). The difference of these two amounts tends to be minimised by the tenants and implies much trickery within this margin - and even more envy. Not to say that this situation is a silent recognition of the fact that the prices had been overinflated.

The tables presented as illustration (Tables 1 and 2) are old enough to include a column of payment for gas; today it is included into a different bill and paid separately and individually. You can see that the figures are different in what the number of shares is concerned. In one case (Table 1), there are 23 men in “obshchee pol’zovanie” column, 26 men who pay for gas, and 18 recognised telephone speakers. In Table 2, there is already no gas payments calculated; the last but one column is a collection of money for collective needs (Rbl 2.50); “obshchee pol’zovanie” is paid by 25 men, and telephone, by 19. In the last column, the total amount of payment for each tenant is calculated. When the sum is paid to the person who is responsible this month for collecting money and the calculation of costs, the figures are crossed out with a pencil pending on the wall by the side of the sheet with the table. In Table 1, one of the tenants (No 10) has not paid his share, as we can deduce from the figures left intact. This means that he was enforced to pay lately, or that his payment was taken from the common money (this tenant is absent from Table 2, because soon after 1984 he was taken to jail for hooliganism and theft, whereas his room was turned into a lumber-room). Extraordinary failures in payment like this, as well as unrecognised interurban calls are paid collectively. Note (Table 1) the approximation of individual “obshchee pol’zovanie” sums: one share is put as Rbl 0.33, really being 0.32,5, and two shares are Rbl 0.65. The same can occur with payment for telephone, and sometimes one or two kopecks needed to make the sum round were also used as a blame symbol for the molest telephone user: he paid his share plus one kopeck.

A significant detail is the precision of payment and change given by the collector. During high inflation period (1993-1994), when coins lost any real value, they nevertheless were used to give change in CAs. Even if the person who paid was saying it was unnecessary, the change always was given exactly up to the last kopeck. No hint of personal benefit, however small it may be, could be present in such monetary relations.

A more tangible resource - and, of course, not less sensitive topic of disputes - is the living space. Fierce rivalry about the newly appeared possibilities to get an additional room (when a neighbour dies or moves elsewhere) could lead neighbours to the court, where a judge decided who of them had more grounds to get the disputed room. Privileges were granted to veterans and disabled persons, and also to families with many children who usually were suspected by the neighbours of trying to resolve their housing problems through having children, which could partly be true. Practically all people of these categories were included in the waiting list (Russian “stoiat’ na ocheredi” = ‘be waiting in a queue’) to better their living conditions. When someone of the neighbours received a separate apartment given by the state, those who remained in the CA had a privileged right to occupy the room of the gone family. We will not dwell here on the many questions related to this problem, though they have much to do with covert envy and rivalry. In our days, this rivalry is attenuated - because there are more free rooms and the rent is much higher.

However, the disputes about individual shares of the public space (in the kitchen, corridor, and lumber-room) remain as intensive as ever. They are extremely interesting in the context of our study. Eventual intrusion into a “privatised” zone may lead to unpleasant consequences: leaving an object on a neighbour’s chair or tabouret in the corridor, one should be ready to found this object thrown to a corner or on the floor. Sometimes, a prolonged non-verbal discussion is maintained, through eloquent moving a chair or a tabouret, in absence of its owner, for several centimetres afar. This brings to mind school-children’s behaviour, who trace a line in the middle of the desk and have a territorial dispute (see Mark Twain’s “Tom Sawyer” for a hint).

A different attitude can seemingly be found in the declarations like this one: “Fighting all the time for living space (“zhilploshchad”) is just because of envy. Do you think this guy really needs that tabouret [placed on a disputed territory in the kitchen]? There is plenty of space by the side. And he says: ‘this place was left to me by my father!’ Rubbish!... These aboriginals take the centimetres of living space for an extraordinary blessing. Centimetres! It is strange for us, because we had a whole house, in which only the first floor was of one hundred meters. There was all kind of things there. And these men, they have grown up in these cages, so they think correspondingly...” The speaker had moved to St.Petersburg from province, where a whole building belonged to his family. He despises “the aboriginals” for some of their habits. However, the contempt for his neighbours’ attitude to living space does not prevent this man from taking an active part in the conflicts about the square centimetres, and to fight for them defending fervently his own rights. The only difference is that he is close to understanding that the benefit gained in such fighting is rather symbolic, as the material result of an eventual victory is insignificantly small.

What really is in question, it is rather one’s authority and privacy (or a transparent substitute of privacy within a public space). Often disputes which seem to be about property have the covert content of privacy matters. Thus, one informer told that he took some matches from a neighbour’s box that was on the kitchen table while the neighbour was on summer holidays at his dacha. When come back, the neighbour detected the lack of matches as he had counted their number before leaving home and thus was sure that some matches were stolen. It is worth mentioning that in the USSR, there was no article cheaper that a box of matches: its price was one kopeck, the minimal monetary unit. When the guilty gave a new box of matches to compensate the lack, the neighbour threw it into the window, saying: “I don’t need your fucking matches. What I do need is that anyone leaves my things in peace”. We may suppose that to leave the matches on the table was a provocation, organised by the matches’ owner who knew the habits of his neighbours. He knew beforehand that some matches would lack. However, the subject matter of the provocation reveals the point of the man’s concern.

The objects of bigger value than matches that appear in public space logically attract the attention of neighbours. Even the property discarded or simply taken out of active use and put on the periphery of one’s possessions does not escape the neighbours’ control. Some manifestations of this control are quite unexpected for the owners of the properties envied, but they don’t usually protest against giving a useless thing to a neighbour who finds it useful. “A year ago I threw away a burned tea-pot, it was all black. And she <a neighbour woman> took it and now is ‘gradually getting it in order’, as she says while cleaning it daily for ten minutes.” Similar case was observed when a woman put a used tea cup to her shelf in the bathroom. On the next day, she found a message inside, which goes as follows: “If this cup is intended to throw it out, don’t throw and, please, give it to me for bring it to my work” (Russian: ‘Esli eta chashka u teb’a na vybros, ne brosai, a podari pozhaluista mne na rabotu’). The message was signed by the woman who had tense enough relations with the cup owner, because the slightest noise from the other room disturbed the early sleeping of the message author. Despite of many conflicts partly caused by different activity schedules, and partly originating from scandalous character of the envier, the demand of the cup was taken as normal and immediately satisfied. “I never thought this cup could attract somebody”, the ex-owner said.

However, in what new and good things are concerned, their owners do know they always become an object of neighbours’ interest. Say, a new dress or footwear hardly can be concealed - and so a special half-ritualised form of presentation is practised between neighbours. The overt motivation is to obtain their comments and opinions about the new thing, which is thus presented not to all neighbours, but only to those who understand the matter. Note that they coincide with people who can, supposedly, want to have a similar thing - or who already have one and can convince themselves in the advantages of their own thing. Anyway, asking their opinion gives them a symbolic authority of judgement over the eventual object of their envy.

Even if one does not make any special arrangement to present a thing, it is, however, inevitable to get comments. As one informer said, “I don’t make any special shows. The neighbours themselves say: “Oh, you’ve got something new! Come here to the light, let us look closer!” It is not uncommon to ask the price of the new things. However, if the price is higher than usual the answers are evasive or intentionally misleading.

However, it is risky to present - or just to possess - things which raise above the average level of beauty, quality, or price. They cannot be imitated, as any other thing possible to buy. The mechanism of imitation (or fashion), so irritating for the imitated ones, can combat the destructiveness of envy as far as the imitation remains possible. When a new thing is outstanding and inimitable, it may heavily affect even the most friendly relations. Here is a good illustration. One informer says that some time ago she had a friendship so good “that one couldn’t dream of a better one”. The two women passed their leisure time together, going to theatre and concert halls. “All as it should be”. But now all is different: “We have quarrelled. Who is guilty?.. Well, two participants, both are guilty, perhaps... I do know, of course, who actually is guilty, but I cannot explain it”. Later in the interview she turns back to that neighbour, and the explanation of the conflict goes like this (speakers are one of the conflicting women and her son):

/R.Yu., 70 y.o./: “My elder son has brought to me a blouse form Korea, he was working there. It was so good and beautiful, this blouse. And I showed it to the neighbour. Simply showed, you know... nothing kept in mind... And it was the cause of our quarrel... I don’t want to speak about it... As for me, I have not quarrelled, I just don’t speak to her any more... All this because of the nail...”

/R.Yu./: And our conversation was very kind. She liked the blouse very much and wished me to wear it with pleasure, and so on...”

In that case, the usual mechanism of coping with envy didn’t work. It is remarkable that the victim of envy finds the other woman’s behaviour absurd, she does not realise that the wish to wear the blouse with pleasure was a pure etiquette formula behind which a strong and destructive feeling was concealed. The ways the culture keeps this emotion out of people’s awareness are worth of a separate study. Cf. another example: “I know that if my mother is cooking, say, goloubets (= meat stuffed cabbage-rolls), this neighbour tomorrow will also have goloubets. She repeats after my mother. And here everyone knows it. Perhaps, she simply lacks fantasy.”

The traditional way to conceive envy is the idea of evil eye. It is actual for traditional CA mentality. In our materials, we have data on how a grandmother instructed her granddaughter to have the fingers secretly crossed in her pocket while being in the kitchen in presence of a neighbour women called Natalia. The danger is the evil eye. The grandmother noted that when the parents of the girl (the old woman’s son and daughter-in-law) make little pies or pelmenis, they always quarrel between them, if Natalia sees them at work. As the grandmother believes, Natalia has a special ability to evil eye for several reasons. First, she is a Pole and so very artful. Second - and the main reason - is her unhappiness in life. Although no evident signs of unhappiness can be found in her biography - she has a big and well-to-do family, a married daughter and two granddaughters - the old woman believes that Natalia always has felt unhappy because she has changed her name. All the neighbours know that Natalia is not her original name. Although people call her Natasha (or “t’ot’a Natasha”, aunt Natasha, as it is the children’s custom to call neighbours “uncle X” or “aunt Y” projecting the kinship term to the neighbourhood relationship), the real name is Nina. Neighbours also call her by this name in a special case: when she is asked by telephone as Nina Antonovna. They know that for her it is important how is she called by telephone, because Nina Antonovna is the way she is addressed at work, and the neighbours call to the door saying “Ninu Antonovnu k telefonu (= Nina Antonovna is called to the telephone)”. But the grandmother reveals to the girl that the real name of the woman is not Nina. It is a secret one and never mentioned: Yanina. Having changed the name twice (Yanina to Nina, and Nina to Natalia) is a special sign of unhappiness and malice, so evil eye is quite an actual danger. 19-years-old girl is sure her grandmother was right; maybe, sometimes the evil eye is a pure superstition, but this case has more than once been proved to be really dangerous.

One of the devices to ensure the protection from evil eye is to share the goods which can be envied. When preparing meals, especially pies and those dishes that are not often made, it is usual to offer some pieces to neighbours (“ugoshchat’ “), often without asking their consent. One simply finds a plate with some pies on his table in the kitchen, or even in his room, without explanation (a service implies an alternation of common politeness rules which blame an unauthorised penetration in private rooms). As it is not possible to share pies or something with all neighbours, those people who are chosen usually are the giver’s friends (and so the gift is interpreted as a sign of friendly attitude), and/or have children (and so the gift goes usually commented as directed to children: “Let them taste”), or are old and helpless. Sometimes the gift either is accompanied with a pejorative comment about its quality (something like: “This time it seems to be not so good. But, anyway...”), or with a request of an expert opinion (“Try it and tell me what is wrong with it. I cannot understand whether there is enough salt”). We haven’t heard about cases of refusal to accept the gifted share (“ugoshchenie”), but it is not difficult to suppose that such refusal would lead to a heavy offence.

Another category of people who receive their share in (mainly festive or holiday) meals are strangers, temporarily living in the CA. The gift does not necessarily involve any other form of contacts. An American historian who had lived for some months in St.Petersburg told me that he was greatly perplexed with what CA babushkas (old women) did. They used to enter his room without previously asking his permission, to put plates with meals somewhere in the room, and to come out silently. This scene repeated almost daily, though the old women never spoke to him in any occasion, nor had any other relations with him. He just didn’t know what to do with all these meals.

Later, say, on the next day, the person who has received the gift returns the plate, expressing his gratitude. The plate also can be requested by its owner, accompanied with a question whether he has enjoyed the meals.

Sometimes, while preparing meals or coffee in the kitchen, one can hear the comments of the neighbours about the lovely smell of the cooking, or questions (“What is that interesting stuff you are cooking there?”). A polite answer would be not purely verbal, but also would involve the offer of a piece (or a cup of coffee) to the asking person. As we have said, in cases when something owned by someone is impossible to imitate or to share (though symbolically), it brings about irritation and anger. These feelings can be expressed in openly aggressive actions or words, especially when a property or a privilege seems to be illegal. CA mentality is extremely inclined to denounce. The potential or actual denouncement is an effective tool in the intra-apartment fighting. Thus, a tenant has installed illegally a fax-machine, parallel to the common telephone. As soon as some neighbours knew about it, they started to threaten him with denouncement to the telephone exchange, whenever he disputed with them and whatever was the object of dispute.

Another informer managed to install a separate telephone, because his family had a legal right on it, being the family of a public prosecutor. In that time, installing an additional telephone in CA was a difficult and almost impossible affair for a simple citizen. Our speaker commented on the reaction of a newcomer woman to this inequality. The private telephone was silently envied, but recognised as legal by other tenants who clearly understood their benefit from this discrimination, as the most active telephone user made no competition for common telephone any more. The woman didn’t want recognise her neighbour’s rights, nor to weight advantages and disadvantages of having removed the main competitor in telephone queue. “Where she has come from, she left a separate apartment with a telephone. Here there is a common telephone, and nothing more for her. And it happened that she learned that we had our own telephone. She went [to the telephone exchange] and claimed a separate telephone to be put in her room. They said it was impossible. Then she demanded to disconnect and to remove our telephone: as it is impossible for her, no one should have this right.”

The drive to denounce one’s neighbour, regarded as a virtue in official Soviet ideology, in CAs was urged on by the feeling of envy. In a closed system of CA, one’s possessions or privileges cannot be a private affair. And not only material possessions.