Russia Profile
August 24, 2009
The Plight of the Evicted Merchants
Traders Selling Cheap Clothes in Moscow Suffering More Than Just Market Fluctuations Dislocations and Unaffordable Rent Payments
By Dmitry Babich
The problem of the Cherkizovsky market in Moscow, an enormous agglomeration of stores and shacks that used to trade in cheap clothes, shoes and other items produced just about everywhere on the Eurasian continent from China to Russia’s southern towns does not seem to want to go away. After the market was abruptly closed in July, tens of thousands of workers suddenly found themselves unemployed, and thousands were left without a place to sell their merchandise. The city authorities encouraged them to move their business to other markets or to leave the city altogether.
Anyone leaving the Lyublino subway station and heading toward the nearby Moskva trading center may encounter some exotic sights. In fact, the views are reminiscent of Beijing in the early 1990s, or of some provincial town on the border between China and former Soviet Central Asia. People of Chinese and Tajik descent sell chunks of raw meat right off the trunks of their wagons, without going to the trouble of packaging them or obtaining sanitary certification. Others haul around the notorious striped plastic bags stuffed with coats, pants and lingerie from China. The entrance to the trading center is blocked off by buses and trucks from all corners of mother Russia, brining in or carrying away the merchandise of wholesale traders. Moskva looks ever more like late Cherkizovsky market, commonly known as “Cherkizon,” which served as a distribution hub for cheap imported merchandise.
This outcome was easy to predict. What the authorities probably did not expect was the springing up of two NGOs uniting the people whose interests were somehow affected by the large-scale and poorly organized relocation effort, initiated by the federal Ministry for Emergencies, which decided to shut down Cherkizon for sanitary reasons.
The first NGO, called the Guild of Business People, brings together the former merchants from Cherkizon who cannot afford to rent vending space at Moskva and other markets, where rent prices shot up at least twofold since Cherkizon was closed. “In the aftermath of Cherkizon’s closure we got a proposal from the city government to move our business to the Luzhniki sports arena, which is used as an open air market,” said Natalya Alexandrova, one of the Guild’s leaders who manages its Web site. “I went there and I was terrified. Some strange people were sleeping on their bags with the summer rain pouring down on them. Cherkizon had often been criticized for anti-sanitary conditions and medical inspections were rare, but conditions at Cherkizon were a lot better than in Luzhniki. So I simply refused to go.”
A mother of three, Alexandrova had started her trading career with her husband at Cherkizon in the 1990s as a simple shuttle trader. In a few years she realized that Russian-made dresses and suits could compete with the Chinese ones, and started her own business, employing up to ten seamstresses to make the garments. She sold these suits and dresses at her own stall at Cherkizon. When the market was closed in July she suddenly found herself without access to her own property, with her container sealed and guarded by the police. The police operation was officially aimed at preventing smuggling and the sale of counterfeit merchandize, mostly of Chinese origin, but it was Alexandrova and her colleagues who suffered most. But even if all of the traders’ legitimate property is returned to them before September 1, as the authorities promised, there is still no good venue where this merchandise could be sold. “The authorities hinted that they could give me and my colleagues from our NGO a place at Moskva trading center if we keep quiet,” Alexandrova said. “But what is the use of their offer if we simply cannot pay the rent there? Simply for having the right to trade at Moskva one has to pay 60 to 120 thousand dollars. This is too much for me.”
The Guild of Business People’s main demand is to keep at least a part of the Cherkizovsky market open, so that traders can sell the remainder of their merchandise and pay off their debts. Moscow’s Mayor Yuri Luzhkov, however, insists that the market has been closed for good.
Interestingly, Alexandrova and her comrades-in-misfortune from Cherkizon are not the only people to feel the brunt of the soaring leasing prices. Irina Varsonofyeva, the spokesperson of the group of traders from the Moskva trading center, said that she and her friends encountered the same problem when Chinese “refugees” from Cherkizon began moving there in mid-July. “We have certain standards of quality and service at this market, so when our place started to look like Cherkizon our old clients stopped coming in,” Varsonofyeva said. “But what was worse, the administration of the market suddenly started to renegotiate the old lease contracts. Obviously smelling big money from the coming Chinese traders, they began cancelling old agreements, charging us 40 to 55 thousand dollars of the so-called ‘entrance’ money usually paid for the right to trade at the market. We were shocked!”
Moskva’s old-timers from Varsonofyeva’s NGO found unexpected allies among the local residents, unhappy about the noise, traffic jams and disorganized trade brought about by the “refugees” from Cherkizon. Sadovod, the NGO named after a local market, started petitioning the Moscow mayor’s office and collecting the signatures of the residents and traders. When this did not help, NGO members began criticizing the mayor and his policy on markets in the local press and on federal television channels. “Luzhkov should come here and see what he has done,” said a local resident who identified himself as Ivan Petrovich. “The whole area is becoming unfit for living.” Sadovod demands a halt to the “migration” of Cherkizon’s traders to Moscow’s southeast, and for the old contracts with the local businessmen to be kept intact.
This wave of criticism obviously comes at the wrong time for Mayor Yuri Luzhkov and his government, since the elections to Moscow city Duma are due to be held next month. “The policy of Moscow city government is to remove all open air markets from the city,” said Vladimir Slepak, the head of the city authority on markets. “Old time markets need to be replaced by roofed trade centers where civilized trade will be conducted. The decision to close Cherkizon was in line with this policy. In fact, we planned to shut it down by December this year, but the federal government butted in with its sudden move.”
The idea of closing markets can indeed look good to those Muscovites who can afford to buy clothes at shopping centers. But Moscow is not yet a city of millionaires. “Clothes at the trade centers cost a lot more than at markets because trade centers are usually used by brands, not by individual producers,” said Leonid Razvozgaev, a trader and an activist from the anti-government Leftist Front political group. “The government’s policy will hit poor people in both Moscow and the regions. I know a small town in the Krasnodar region that sent eight buses to Cherkizon every day to buy clothes for the local market. What will people in that town buy now?”
