Capitalism does not look at the passport

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Sergei Padalkin on the catastrophic scale of labor migration of Russians

On January 1, in the evening, I was on the Penza-Moscow train. My fellow traveler turned out to be a hard worker of 40 years old - a resident of one of the regional centers of the Penza region, working as a watch in the capital. We talked, went to the restaurant car, drank a mug or two of beer, a holiday after all. He has been working as a security guard for 9 years, guards an elite house. For two weeks he receives 25 thousand rubles, then spends two weeks at home with his family - with his wife and two children. Children have already grown up over the years. The youngest daughter, who is 5 years old, does not want to let her dad go.

“Here she is, my beauty,” a man on his phone shows me a photograph of his daughter. - When I was getting ready for the train, she hugged me and said: Dad, don't go, I won't let you go anywhere.

We went out at the station to smoke. Cigarettes are not sold due to tobacco control laws. It is not allowed at the train stations. But there is beer at more than an hour of the night. They set up two tables in a local stall, wrote a buffet, and the sale is allowed, because now it is a cafe, not a shop. Two more shift workers came up to us to shoot a cigarette. It turned out that they also work as guards, both from the districts of the Penza region. One kid about 30 years old, the second for fifty dollars already. The second one guards the construction site.

- In the summer I go by car, not by train. It's good at the construction site, it's normal to work. They steal everything, - he says. And I stand in bewilderment, I cannot understand what is good if everyone is stealing. It turns out that the guards themselves steal building materials a little bit, that's why they drive a car. It will not lose money from construction companies, and everything in the household will be good for the peasant - both cement and tiles.

My fellow traveler does not share the optimism of the security guard from the construction site.

- We are like slaves there. We have pulled ourselves away from the house, from the family, we are working for a pittance out of despair. Is this a normal life?

A simple man, but he understands everything, reasoning sensibly. Because every time the daughter hugs him and says: dad, don't go, stay with us.

And after all, half of the region lives in this way. Labor migrants. On watch to Moscow and to the north. Both men and women. Security guards, builders, finishers, cooks, waiters, maids. There are no street cleaners. Tajiks work as janitors in the capital. They, poor fellows, have even tighter than ours. Far from their homeland, they are forced to work for even less pennies, often illegally, live in an incomprehensible place and eat something incomprehensible. They are chased by the migration services and the police, beaten and killed by the Nazis, and they are bullied by their employers.

After leaving the Soviet Union, Tajikistan slipped into dire poverty and is considered one of the poorest countries in the world. More than half of the republic's citizens are below the poverty line. And almost 50% of the country's GDP is money earned by migrants.

Of course, our men feel better - they are closer to home and their work is slightly better than that of the Tajiks. But how many families have already disintegrated because of this labor migration? How many children did not receive parental warmth and attention? How many of them, our peasants, have disappeared in this Moscow and never returned home? After all, they are also bullied by their employers, deceived, they are not given a salary, they are robbed on trains and killed too …

And my dear little Penza region is Tajikistan, except that it is colder here. There is practically no work in rural areas, and if there is, then for a meager salary, which is enough only to pay for utilities and a loaf of bread a day. Immediately after graduation, young people strive to leave to study in the regional center, and few return back, because there are no prospects. And those who are older - on trains, cars and buses go to Moscow to work side by side with brothers in misfortune - Tajiks. Capitalism is not picky about nationalities. Everything is one for him, whether Tajik or Russian. This is all cheap labor that will bring the capitalist a profit. And hard workers will only get the opportunity not to starve to death.

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