#9 - JRL 7434
Date: Mon, 24 Nov 2003
From: Peter Ekman <pdekman2000@yahoo.com>
Subject: Fire at Druzhba Norodov
Regarding the fire at the dormitory of the University of Peoples’ Friendship named after Patrice Lumumba (UDN) which killed 28 students, I may be able to offer some background and raise some issues that need to be examined. These issues are 1) the plight of the students, 2) racism, 3) the general condition of Russian dormitories (this could happen again tomorrow), and 4) general Russian fire safety.
I worked for 4 years ending in 2001 about 3 blocks from UDN on Ulitsa Miklukho-Maklaya, and lived not much further away, but haven’t been back since. I’ve only been inside UDN building 2 or 3 times.
If you visited the Park Place complex in Moscow on Leninsky Prospect, you were only a block away from UDN. Park Place was built on UDN land under UDN sponsorship, though I doubt that the students benefited from any of the money generated. UDN is located in southwest Moscow between metro stations Yugozapadnaya and Beleovo. The area is notable for all the foreign students (mainly African, but also Asian and Latin American) who attend UDN. The area is the closest thing that Moscow has to a black ghetto. Racist incidents happen there with some frequency with skinheads and (allegedly) with the police. I think the police were viewed as the greater threat.
The area is also known for its many other educational establishments, including Pushkin Language Institute, the Geological Prospecting Academy, and the Institute of Bio-Organic Chemistry.
UDN was founded in the early 1960’s as an offshoot of Moscow State University to educate foreigners from socialist countries. With the fall of the Soviet Union, funding was cut and many students were stranded in Moscow. Many people continued living in the dormitories even if they didn’t continue as students. I don’t know why new students continue to arrive from these countries, but they must be after all it’s been a decade since the Soviet Union fell, and (as of 2 years ago) the area is still dominated by black students. White Russian students do still apply to and attend UDN but they seem to be a minority. The general atmosphere from the street outside the university is that not much teaching and learning happen there. Russian leadership knows about the university’s plight, Education Minister Fillipov is the former UDN rector.
The plight of the students who have been burned out is obvious. Many are poor and black in a racist country that doesn’t want them there. Many have, for a long time, considered themselves refugees who want nothing more than to leave Russia for Western Europe or America. Perhaps the governments of these countries can find it in their hearts (if governments can be said to have hearts) to open their doors to these students.
Racism is the main underlying issue that should be examined. The question of whether the fire brigades reacted especially slowly to the alarm because of its location will certainly be raised. (I can state this as a fact, even though I am 1000 miles away from the scene.) Russia is, I’m sorry to say, a racist country, even by American standards. These students are regularly threatened, and are often treated as outcasts.
The general conditions in Moscow dormitories is frightful. When I lived in the Moscow State University dorm for 3 months in 1994, I was constantly amazed by the filth, "eternal flames" in the kitchen facilities where gas knobs on stoves were almost always broken, so the fire was constantly lit, and the general lack of fire safety. This was probably the best dormitory in Russia. Hopefully, the situation has improved since then, but I doubt that it has improved much. I’ve visited several dormitories since then and my sister-in-law still lives in a dormitory. I think that a similar fire could happen at anytime.
Finally, fire safety throughout Russia is terrible. Just consider the USUAL Russian practice of disposing of lit cigarettes in waste paper baskets without extinguishing the lit end. I am a smoker, and I have watched this happen a dozen times a day over 7 years. Ultimately the fire inspectors must take much of the blame. Needless to say that the fire inspection service is considered one of the most corrupt government agencies in Russia.
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