There are few resources in the city for the homeless,
and even fewer ideas about how to help them. However, some individuals are
trying to make a difference in their own way. CHARLES DIGGES spoke with
Valery Sokolov, the president of a homeless shelter in the city, who has his
own ideas about how to help those in need.One of the oldest names in the St Petersburg newspaper business has been relaunched with a little help from a newborn Scottish counterpart after a three month hiatus.
The Big Issue of Glasgow, Britain's newest paper produced and distributed by the homeless, set aside five pence (seven cents) from each issue sold and donated the balance to the "Nochlezhka" (Shelter) foundation for the homeless at Pushkinskaya 10 in St Petersburg.
The total donation came to [[sterling]]10,000 ($15,400) and Nochlezhka used part of the money toward restructuring and rereleasing its newspaper, Na Dnye (On the Bottom), which hit St Petersburg streets April 3 for the first time in three months.
"The task of the newspaper is to survive and publish as many issues as possible," explained Valery Sokolov, the 28-year-old editor and president of Nochlezha.
"The more issues we publish, the more money the homeless distributors make."
The projected circulation for the new bimonthly format is 30,000 per edition, which Mr Sokolov said he was sure will sell out -- the prior run of 12,000 issues never took more than five days to disappear.
The lead headline in the April 3 issue, "You can't buy an insurance policy against homelessness," was a dig at privatization laws and new market services that have facilitated wide scale real-estate swindles accounting for 20% of the new homeless.
On the mornings of April 3 and 4, 20 homeless distributors left the Nochlezhka
foundation with a chance to make some money, the first such opportunity many
have had for years.
Distributors wear badges indicating they are official salespeople of the newspaper, and gather around the city's Metros, bus stops and train terminals.
Overall, 80% of the money collected from sales goes to the homeless workers, the rest to Nochlezhka for production costs.
The new issue features front page interviews with three homeless men and women, comments from deputy mayor Vitaly Mutko on the continuing Metro closure on the Kirov-Vyborg line, and a look at the facts and myths about the city's organized crime gangs.
Papers produced for and by the homeless have long been a grassroots enterprise in Europe and the United States. The newspapers produce jobs, confidence and a boost up from the skids.
Newspapers for the homeless were in fact born in pre-revolutionary Russia where dozens were published at the beginning of the century and into the 1920s.
One of the papers was called Na Dnye, to which the modern edition owes its name.
The publishing initiative began at Nochlezhka with the publication of a collection of sociological essays on the city called "Petersburg in the Early '90s: crazy, cold, cruel."
In 1994, the collection turned into the monthly newspaper Na Dnye.
To be homeless in Russia is to be without the stamp in your passport called "propiska," or living permit, and to be without a living permit means you haven't a hope of finding a job.
A lack of propiska can mean a vicious cycle of trying to find a job without a registration and trying to find a place to live without having a job.
"At present," Mr Sokolov explained, "the homeless are guaranteed only two rights by our government: the right to be born and the right to die."
As such, selling Na Dnye is the one chance many on the city's streets have at supporting themselves.
On April 4, things were going so well that Mr Sokolov anticipated it would be
possible with their budget to begin publishing weekly.
Mr Sokolov says the paper's editorial policy functions "as a go-between for non-government social organizations and the government that so far doesn't support them."
Past special features in Na Dnye have highlighted drug abuse, orphanages, the status of invalids, alcoholism, and naturally, homelessness.
As for Na Dnye's readership, Mr Sokolov indicated they are a like-minded public who agree with the paper's often strident approach.
"After all," he said, "we have never received a letter to the editor."