“Doing bad things at night” Why Russians hate their neighbors and aren’t afraid to talk about it
Most Russians treat their neighbors well and think that people living nearby are quite friendly and polite. But this is survey data, and in practice neighborhood wars don’t get any less bloody over the years.
“The Petrovs only realized that they were flooding their downstairs neighbors too much when the grandmother on the floor below stopped banging on the radiator,” is an anecdote that is still relevant today. Thousands, if not millions, of Russian citizens at certain times sincerely hate their neighbors. And they don’t hesitate to write about it on Internet forums and in social networks.
Citizens-alcoholics, hooligans, slackers
Every popular social network has groups dedicated to one topic – hatred of those who live behind the wall (below, above). There are dozens of videos on YouTube with the direct title “I hate my neighbors.” In most of the videos, tired people talk very emotionally about how they have been driven to this life. The most popular song on the subject is Semyon Slepakov’s “Bitch Neighbor,” which has 13 million views.
“Slut, slut, slut neighbor. There’s no humor in this song. Bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch,” the performer sings. In the comments, those who agree with the content of the lyrics pour out their hearts.
“I live in a private house, my neighbors only have animal friends. I would kill such neighbors along with their bitches. There is no peace neither day nor night,” writes the mother-in-law.
Photo: Akhmetov Vadim / TASS
“Thank you Simon! In response to the incessant drilling, I play this song, let the neighbors listen to it. Kind of calmed down, I’ll have to put it on every time,” thanked Captain NeL.”
You need my neighbor.” He is polite, handy (as the song says) and has nine children. They live upstairs. It seems like they run around in a bunch and break everything, and he follows with a mat, hammer and drill and fixes everything! The worst thing is that he only knows “yes” and “thank you” in Russian. No matter what you say to him, he shakes your hand with a smile,” complains Korben on GoGo.
There’s a group on VKontakte with the heartbreaking title “I Only Hate My Neighbors.”
“With their music, they bore me all night long into the morning, like a nightclub opened there. It’s loud, and the bass vibe is just chilling. You’d still hear regular music, but no. How I hate it,” wrote one of the haters.
In the same group, user Roma Batareikin describes all the stages of fighting with neighbors: “There are several stages of war with neighbors: 1) you have a nervous breakdown, and you look for a victim, and you spitefully lie, and then the neighbor finds out about herself by some loud word. And you do something that annoys her. 2) It dawns on them that you are not happy with them. You draw conclusions, as yet insignificant. 3) After a while, your neighbor has a nervous breakdown and remembers that you snitched on him or pressured him somehow, and you become a victim to him. 4) After a long period of mutual influence, the victim is the one who is in a less favorable position, such as living on the floor below. 5) The oppressed person either moves on or tolerates it. The victor realizes that the defeated person won’t move anywhere, and moves himself or they can’t even live together behind a concrete floor.
“Doing Bad Things at Night.”
There are many folk recipes for dealing with bad neighbors, but most of them involve simple revenge.
Photo: Artem Pigarev / Kommersant
“Revenge on neighbors can be all sorts of nasty things, depending on where they live – from above, from the side or from below! And, of course, depending on what kind of neighbors they are: drug addicts, drunkards, or a crazy grandmother. There are many ways to show them dirty tricks, such as pouring all over the door or the keyhole with assembly foam, – wrote user “VKontakte” Vladimir Popov. – Another option – superglue, also in each keyhole … There are many ways to ruin the lives of neighbors – cut cables, for example, television, Internet, set fire to the doorbell buttons, pile a bunch of crap under the carpet, stuff the door with all kinds of junk, then there old closet, couch, and so on. Paint those same neighbors’ doors with stinky, long-drying paint! The main thing is that these neighbors then do not do the same for you. All these unpleasant things are best done secretly and late at night.
Such a naive approach to solving an important housing problem is chosen not only by teenagers, whose actions can be justified by hormonal changes, but also quite adults.
Famous blogger Ilya Varlamov published in LiveJournal a whole post entitled “How to get back at your neighbor. In it, he advertises a Chinese hammer – a device that is attached to the wall, floor or ceiling and knocks on it with an unpleasantly loud sound. The know-how can be tested over the phone, that is, remotely. The device is equipped with a timer and Bluetooth.
“Imagine: you go to work and the hammer hits the floor or ceiling, avenging your neighbors for their constant drilling,” Varlamov admires.
Oleg Ivanov, psychologist and head of the Social Conflict Resolution Center, opposes the banal harassment of neighbors. “As a conflictologist and mediator, I am against such radical methods of dealing with problematic neighbors as glue in the lock, planting special odorants, cutting off the telephone or wired Internet and so on,” says the expert. – First of all, you should try to negotiate amicably, without foul language or physical violence. Nevertheless, you will have to live “wall to wall” with your neighbors for a long time. Therefore, it is better to agree than to argue. However, situations are different. And if a conversation or a notice on the wall can affect some people, it will not affect others. For example, if the neighbor violates the law on silence, listening to loud music, behaves in a hooligan manner and does not respond to your comments, it is best to contact the law enforcement authorities. The mere threat of calling the police is often enough to stop the disturbance. However, if the threat does not work and the police have to call, the neighbor will be held administratively liable for violating the law and will have to pay a fine. Of course, further neighborliness will have to be forgotten, since the neighbor will be resentful of the person who called the police. But the series of murders will most likely stop.
Photo: Artem Pigarev / Kommersant
If the conflict has dragged on, it is possible to resort to the help of a mediator, Ivanov stresses. He will conduct the so-called mediation procedure to clarify the contradictions. But this requires the consent of the neighbor, without which the procedure is obviously impossible.
Chechnya on the Wire
An interesting study on the topic of good neighborliness was recently published by the Domofond portal (available to the editors of Lenta.ru). It suggests that those who want good relations with their neighbors should go to Chechnya, and specifically to Grozny. For the past three years it has been the leader in the rating of Russian cities in which man is a friend to man, and not the incarnation of evil who never parted with his drill.
Respondents – about 60,000 people in total – were asked to rate the statement “My neighbors are generally friendly and polite” on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 means “strongly disagree” and 10 means “strongly agree”. An average score was calculated for each region, reflecting how satisfied citizens were with their relations with their neighbors.
Grozny received 9 points (2017 – 8.8 points). Nalchik rose from third to second place in 2017. The capital of Kabardino-Balkaria scored 8.3 points, which is 0.5 more than a year earlier. Anapa took third place: residents rated the good neighborhood at 8.3 points. The top 10 also included Gelendzhik, Nizhnekamsk, Obninsk, Neftekamsk, Almetyevsk, Surgut and Severodvinsk.
“I grabbed a frying pan and choked” An old lady from Moscow turned the life of her provincial neighbor into a nightmare
The worst in terms of relations with neighbors were Buzuluk in the Orenburg region (6.7 points), Voskresensk, Noginsk, Lyubertsy and Pushkino, Norilsk and Achinsk (Krasnoyarsk region) near Moscow, and Chita.
Moscow and St. Petersburg occupy the second part of the rating with 7.4 points each.
The researchers gave examples of negative comments about neighbors: “Neighbors have a lot of young people, they drink, listen to music” (Krasnoyarsk), “Loud neighbors” (Krasnodar), “Cattle, barbecues on the lawn – the order of the day, pigs are neighbors” (Novosibirsk). Compared to the characteristics on the Internet, these are not compliments.
The national average score for relations with neighbors is 7.6 out of a possible 10. The same score has been in the last two years. “All in all it’s good, bitch, man” ©.
***Feedback to the Home Department: If you witnessed an important event, have news or an idea for a story, write to this address: dom@enta-co.ru.
If your neighbors are harassing you, what should you do?
When you’ve been harassed by neighbors in your apartment or house. What to do. I will tell you a few stories of my acquaintances and personal experiences with my neighbors. Surely you have not once asked a similar question. Not everything is so smooth, especially if you live in an apartment building.
Neighbors, then above, then below, then to the side. There’s nowhere to go, somehow you have to try to get along. You have to try to get along somehow. Of course, ordinary people, if you are not happy with something in your neighbors and try to explain. If your behavior does not fit into the norms of living together in a house.
What to do when your neighbors are annoying
I’ve written an article before about the “law of silence” and assignment. It will also be helpful to read it here. Especially if your neighbors have idiots. I write people with low social responsibility, no thought process in their heads and all hope is that they understand what people want from them.
Is it possible to live peacefully with you? You don’t have to talk to them more than once, and that’s enough time to determine if they are idiots, or if you can still negotiate with them amicably. If not, there is no need for that. There’s the law, there’s law enforcement, there’s local authorities. In general, you will learn everything from this article.
To live peacefully, you need to make contact. Communicate from time to time, smile, talk. In most cases, that’s enough. But establishing a good relationship is also full of dangers.
I will tell you a story from the life of friends in the village. The old man lived nearby because it seemed harmful to them. He was always nagging at her, threatening her with his finger, always displeased with everything. He complained. In general they were afraid to make him angry, not to quarrel too much. And the constant quarrels with the management of the dacha community because of his complaints was annoying. So the neighbors took him out.
Neighbors carried out: 10 legal methods that help calm violent neighbors – video
And so the owner read that the grandfather should be appeased and he will not be so harmful. Also. I baked a pie and went to Grandpa’s house and gave him a treat. Grandpa hit him with a warning, but he took the house, and he took the pies. Well, thank God, thought the woman, now he was softer.
And the grandfather liked the pie, and he really softened up. He did not grumble or swear. But another disaster opened up. Grandpa came to believe that they were not only neighbors, but also bosom buddies. He began to come to visit every day and ask what was baked today, “Ali pies – delicious buns.” He would sit down and talk about his life, his children, grandchildren and all his friends. How he worked, how he chased girls. The whole story of his life. And you couldn’t get rid of him. I had to sit and listen. That’s how we got rid of the enemy and gained a “friend. So you don’t need to get close to your neighbors, you have to keep your distance. Just politeness and nothing more.
How to build normal relationships with neighbors
Is it possible to live with neighbors without conflict? Normal relationships can be built on some common interests. Men have soccer, hockey, women have their own interests, who builds where or where they lose weight. But you shouldn’t get too close. And then you end up like with grandpa. Then you can’t get rid of him. You don’t know what kind of people they are. It’s like me, one time I was having a beer with my neighbor, and I took money. So he started asking for money, like B. to blame, but insistently and even with demanding forced notes in his voice.
So they just casually met, talked about general topics and that was it. Then some contentious issues are still easier to resolve. At least out of politeness will make concessions.
Dogs are a very complicated issue. No neighbors have a dog, but there is the presence of these animals. Almost everyone has one in their apartments, I have a dog, I’m not talking about private homes. I don’t have one, though. I just don’t see the need for it, even though I live in a house. It’s really a neighborhood thing.
People buy a dog but don’t know how to use it, raise it, get used to it. And some don’t even take care of it. They cry, bark, whine, and make other neighbors very uncomfortable. If you can’t wake your dog with silence, why did you buy it? As a toy? What are the neighbors to do now? Hear and bear it? Why?
You got a dog, you are responsible for it. Soundproof the apartment, sedate it. But your neighbors shouldn’t have to get a dog so they won’t be inconvenienced. That would be fair. And you don’t have to express dissatisfaction that your animal is bothering someone. Yes, it can be a nuisance. Can you imagine? Didn’t you know? That’s the kind of neighbor you live with dogs.
Loud neighbor. Neighbors cleaned up with dogs. Tolerance or fairness.
In this case, a good relationship is a big plus. But only if the dog owners are normal people. I personally was not so lucky. At first the relationship was not bad. But no amount of questioning and persuasion helped. They nod but do nothing. The dog howls all day until you get home from work. I had to enforce the law, the neighbors and their dogs are annoying. Sorry it’s nothing personal. But I appreciate my life for you and your dog. Oddly enough, some owners of their pets are extremely surprised by this fact.
For some reason, they all think that people around them should tolerate their desire to have a dog, respect and value the dog, more than their own health and the right to peace of mind of their place of residence. Is this strange? This tolerance is already beginning to permeate our society. Animal owners think they will save them, otherwise they would be killing puppies and carrying out the Holy Mission. And we are taking care of ourselves in the wrong and wrong way, taking care of our health. Just when you think a dog has gone stray. They kiss their pets on the ass, feed them with their tongues and select meat. At the same time, they don’t go and raise their children. It’s a goddamn paradox… and is that even normal…? This is where a psychologist comes in.
Have you ever thought of a strong man? It’s not physical strength that can be developed by exercise, sports, but internally, spiritually.
