Ilia Utekhin

Essay on theft

While discussing deviant behaviour, we have touched rather extensively on the topic of theft performed by strangers who have been brought to the apartment by deviant personalities. Involving exterior relations and the guilty being a stranger, this matter as whole is not subjected to CA customary law. On the contrary, theft inside the apartment is treated by customary law. As well as drinking, by itself small theft is not an extraordinary event. It is a part of the everyday life - or at least it is an actual idea used by CA mentality to conceive everyday life. People cannot exclude the possibility that something of their possessions may be stolen by neighbours. Sometimes something is actually stolen, sometimes it is not; but people used to suspect some of the neighbours and would take measures to prevent theft. The everyday ordinary phenomenon of pilferage will be our subject in this chapter, along with some types of extraordinary thefts which perhaps would better fit into deviant behaviours. Some reasons, however, make us include them here; these thefts either are performed by the local drunkards and their more or less constant cohabitants, or by visitors of the “normal”, not deviant, neighbours.

A conviction has remained in CA dwellers mind from classic CA times that neighbours do not usually steal inside the apartment. The thieves are strangers. Maybe even deviant guests of normal neighbours - cases of this type of theft occurred even in those times when deviant behaviour was strictly controlled in CAs by strong leadership or by the authoritative public opinion of an overcrowded apartment. Among very infrequent cases of theft in classic CA times, an old woman (88 y.o.) could remember only one. When her daughter got married in the end of 1960-ies, she gave her the trousseaus. It was the underwear the mother had bought when the girl was at the age of five. According to a custom, all the new clothes were subjected to laundry before use and put to dry on the ropes in the kitchen. At that time, one of the neighbours had a guest in the apartment, a young woman from a village, who secretly took the trousseaus and fled away. The old woman does not remember if this story caused a scandal or not, but no effort apparently was made to find the thief and to return the booty.

The more marginal is the host, the more dangerous for the community are his guests, as we have seen in the previous chapter. This danger consists not only in serious theft, but also in a more frequent phenomenon, pilferage. Pilferage and non-licensed use of other people’s things may occur even when the guests are not so malicious or, at least, when they have no criminal intentions. Cf. an explication as follows: “This boy lives alone since he is thirteen, his mother has left him. You can imagine his way of life. He continuously has visitors. Girls that he catches somewhere in the street. Of course, not being a well-educated boy, he does not remember [what a well-educated boy would remember], it even doesn’t come to his mind to show where is the soap to the girls, where is this, where is that... I understand that in the bathroom, these girls, they look around and come over...”. Although unpleasant, such cases are not usually regarded as dangerous.

More threatening are strangers who openly despise the ethical norms of Living Together, emphasising their stranger status: “We’ve got here a black sheep in the flock. She was a drug-addict and prostitute herself, but all her men where or just after the “zone” (= jail), or before going there... And once a man lived here for some time, absolutely hideous. I understood that in jail too the moral was declining... He used to steal inside the apartment in the most impudent way. Say, somebody is unfreezing a chicken in the kitchen. And he comes and simply cuts the thighs and fries them.”

The neighbours, having not enough authority to oppose such behaviours, have to prevent it by keeping foods and objects of value in a safe place. And they breath with relief when such a dangerous personality leaves the CA. Nevertheless, today’s CA dwellers cannot feel themselves sure even in the absence of strangers. Formerly, “one can leave anything, any gold anywhere. And then to pick it from the same place. Or somebody brought it to you, if remembered that it was yours... Now it has become different, very unpleasant. Today one cannot leave not only golden rings. One has to lock up cereals, soap, anything. Some people do...”.

Today’s CA mentality does not regard this state of continuous danger of pilferage as abnormal. Thus, speaking about a neighbour, one quite typical informer said: “He steals a little, and always did so. Salt or pepper in the kitchen. He doesn’t dare to steal a serious thing, but regards as his duty to steal something less significant... There was a refrigerator in the kitchen. Later we moved it to the room. In principle, nothing disappeared from it. But I am sure that he <the neighbour> inspected its contents regularly.” This is a typical enough way to conceive the behaviour and intentions of the neighbours.

Note the idea of inspecting regularly. It is not a mere fantasy of the paranoid informer. Of course, it could be so; generally speaking, this type of fantasy is archetypal for CA dwellers who are often obsessed with the idea that someone is observing and inspecting their lives and possessions. But the fact is that such fantasies are not always groundless. Inspection of other people’s possessions in the absence of the owners and witnesses is more or less common behaviour in CAs. It is not even regarded as a serious transgression when somebody is caught in the act. It sometimes happens that a neighbour absorbed in his investigation doesn’t hear the steps of the owner entering the kitchen or lumber-room unexpectedly.

The informer proceeded with the narration and told another paradigmatic story about this neighbour: once he changed good oranges in his refrigerator for the same number of rotten ones, and when interrogated about this act, refused to recognise his authorship. This type of theft is expressed with Russian verb “podmenit’ ” (= to substitute), that is, to steal something, substituting it for a similar thing instead of the stolen one, in order to dissimulate the theft. In such cases it is not always possible to formally establish the guilt. If not caught in the act, the thief would plead not guilty, adducing that the things which the owner affirms have been substituted are actually the same, and the difference noted by the owner in their quality is a fruit of his suspicious fantasy. Even the open consumption of the stolen foods cannot be a decisive argument against the criminal, for he can allege to have bought these foods. With other objects the procedure of verification is easier, as it may include checking of the distinctive marks or features of the thing which has been found in the suspected thief private zone.

It is important that all the arguments in defence of the suspected one automatically accuse the victim of theft in slander. Such situation is potentially double-edged: being made public, it inevitably leads one of the participants to loose his face.

The secret substitution of foodstuffs is often provoked and facilitated by various circumstances. The foods are better in quality than usual, the owner leaves them open for a long time and without control, etc. All this is inducing people in temptation. The potential victim should take into account this possibility - and can prevent theft (or “podmena”, a substitution) through special measures against envy. Thus, he can share his foodstuffs, really or symbolically (“ugostit’ ”, to give an “ugoshchenie”). If he doesn’t do it, it is likely that somebody would not stand the temptation. Sometimes, even “ugoshchenie” cannot be enough. Thus, in the Soviet times when coffee was not always available from shops, a family received coffee from its friend often going abroad. They had no electric coffee-grinder and usually asked a neighbouring family to grind it, then giving them from time to time a cup of coffee. It was all right while the amount of coffee was small (a cup of coffee beans), but when the happy coffee owners once asked to grind a whole pack (of 250 g), they received back the corresponding amount of a different coffee: ground domestically toasted in the cooker stove green beans.

Such phenomena as well as everyday pilferage are, probably, a covert addition to not sufficiently effective anti-envy devices. It is important that here the inter-group relations are affected, not only individual tenants’ envy. What would be normal among friendly families - say, to take salt or pepper without asking permission - is regarded as pilferage when performed by a member of a non-friendly group. Drunkards, young men living alone without definite occupations - in a word, marginals, - are more often suspected in pilferage than others. Along with foods and meals, the most usual objects of pilferage are matches, spoons, forks, knives, cups, plates, jars, and frying-pans.

If a more serious theft occurs, the suspicion also falls first of all upon the marginal personalities, even if there are no proofs of their guilt. Here is a very symptomatic story. A woman bought new shoes for her teenager daughter. It was an important event, because shoes of good leather are expensive. They were carefully selected, and then presented to friendly families. Some days later, the shoes disappeared from inside the girl’s room; another pair of shoes was left instead - similar, but used. The woman was angry and desperate. She accused in theft a young man who lived in the opposite end of the apartment and did not belong to her friendly circle. The man had somewhat a marginal status because of many visitors he had almost every day, and because of some drinking and not having a constant job. Nevertheless, the woman understood that it would be highly improbable that this guy, who earlier never was noted at stealing or dishonest act, would have stolen the shoes for himself by means of a substitution (“podmena”). So, she said that it had been some of the girls who were at the party in this man’s room. The woman explained that even if it was not an intentional theft, it could be a result of mistake: a drunk girl might have entered the room, in complete darkness, and put the shoes. Anyway, there was a victim, and there was a transgression. The woman was not afraid of the evident contradictions in her version: thus, the supposedly drunk girl would have to cross all the apartment, with her own used shoes in hand, etc. In addition, the shoes were of a slightly different size. In spite of these contradictions, the woman’s version was exposed in her declaration to the policeman called to the apartment. The young man denied the accusations as absolutely delirious, but the neighbours, however, were inclined to find them grounded.

By the evening of the day, the guilty person was detected. It was a schoolboy, a close friend of the younger son of the woman. The boys played together with an electronic play until late in the evening, and when angry parents of the visitor demanded him to go home immediately, the absent-minded player put on the first shoes that he found at the door. All the story thus turned to be a sheer mistake. Among general relief, it was not the woman who, ashamed, went to the young man to apologise for groundless accusations. She sent her son, the brother of the girl to whom the happily returned shoes belonged. She found him guilty of not correcting his friend’s behaviour when the boy remained with him for too long. She herself explained these accusations as natural, because “so many strange people come to the apartment to visit him <the young man>”. This story is remarkable because, like in an experiment, it allows to see usually tacit expectations and presumptions.

These expectations are so usual that there is no need to apologise if a suspicion didn’t come true. Old-residents of CAs, men and women, is a special case in this respect. Among old people, a pathological suspiciousness often is developing: they lock up all that can be locked, and suspect their neighbours and relatives of stealing keys and other things. Padlocks are put everywhere in their possessions, not excluding drawers in their private rooms. Although all kinds of accusations are expressed at public, they are not even taken as offensive by the neighbours.

It is curious that the talks of these old men, until checked against what other men say, give impression to be quite reasonable and rational. They do not differ from other peoples’ talks in their rational construction; they simply are not related to other reality than the old men’s egocentric fantasies.

The most serious accidents of inside CA theft are those that we have said fit better to deviant behaviour category. They are performed by marginal personalities during their booze-ups, or another temporary desperate circumstances, that is, the most dangerous periods for community. One of the symptoms of increasing deviance of their behaviour is that they don’t return the borrowed money. Generally, to borrow small sums of money is a common practice between neighbours, but some of them do it much more often than others. Local drunkards actively exploit this possibility of free credit. Those neighbours who lend them money enter in a whole system of relations: to give, to prolong credit, to receive back a part, to receive promises to receive back a part, to give some more for a medicine, to do it for the last time, to get promises not to buy alcohol with this money, etc., always preceded by a humble knock at the door. To ensure future credits, the drunkards manage to return money in time, though can ask for the next credit two hours after having returned the previous one. When credits are not returned systematically, it is a bad sign: deviance it is a possibility of a serious transgression. And the benefactor is in danger, he should not leave his purse at an open place.

To steal a big amount of money is a heavy accident for the apartment. As a rule, the proofs are evident enough, and there is no doubt about the theft’s personality. Thus, an hour after the purse with a monthly salary of a well-paid neighbour had disappeared from the telephone table in the antechamber, the local drunkard (who used to borrow money at this neighbour) literally fell out of the elevator to the landing, completely intoxicated and unable to walk. No money was found with him; nevertheless, during the following months he obviously had money for unusually good foods and drinks, in spite of not having a constant job. The police cannot help in such cases. They receive a victim’s declaration and it never leads to any result. The theft and the victim keep on living together and even start to greet each other after a more or less long period of tension.

One of our informers told the following about a typical case with her deviant neighbour: “He used to ask me money, and I always gave him. My attitude to him was normal. And he went to rob my husband. We were out of the city, in the village in Pskov region where we have a cottage. My husband came to the city to get his holiday pay. And went to the bathroom, leaving the purse in that room <not having door to the corridor, the entrance being through another private room where the interview was conducted>. And this man used to come here to ask for a cigarette. Every day, he knocks at the door, would you, please, give me a cigarette... endlessly... I think that he came then in order to get a cigarette, and could not stand with temptation... it was impossible to him... I understood it later, psychologically... It was a terrible shock, not to say that for the rest of the year we were to pay the debts [we made because of that accident].

It is just my goodness that keeps me from addressing to the police each time. When I then met him [after the theft] in the corridor, I asked how it happened. ‘I did so much good to you!.. - I didn’t take anything. - But people saw you to come out of the room through the kitchen door window. - Who did see me? - It’s not yet your business. In the court they will tell you.’ And he confessed immediately. And said, pardon me, if you please, only pardon me, I won’t stand the jail.“

Deviant personages, constantly living in CAs, sometimes have periods when they try to overcome their marginal status. They put a relatively clean dress. They start to accomplish their uborka duties, and abstain for weeks from drinking or taking drugs. Thus, the same people who stole and pilfered, can show their temporary honesty and benevolence, bringing to the kitchen someone’s wristwatch left in the bathroom and asking for the owner. However, their life is scheduled in a cyclic manner. And a considerable part of the cycle involves everyday pilferage and even theft.

In the former times, as experienced people say, all was different. Thus, for example, there was a carton with bulbs for public places. The bulbs were bought with community money. However, since some time the bulbs began to disappear - “If they at least would say, I will take a bulb...”. “A degradation is sensible, of course... Since the old generation began to leave this world...”. “Do you see the pan over there? When the heavy times began, the soup started to disappear from the pan, the kasha too... And one has to bring all these to the room.”

The rooms’ doors are locked today when people leave the apartment for a while, not to say about prolonged absence. In some apartments, it is usual to lock the rooms’ doors when going elsewhere inside the apartment - to the kitchen, bathroom or toilet. It is always commented with pity, as people remember other times and other mores: neighbours quarrelled, drank, etc., but never stole. They think in former times there were no thefts. Be it true or not for a given CA, it has to do with their ideas about the local history.