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'It's like I drew a door and disappeared through it' (2021)

Homeless people in Russia have their own terms for things — people who aren’t homeless are “domestic” people, while they themselves are “street” people, or simply “bums.” Meduza’s special correspondent Irina Kravtsova spent several days with homeless people in St. Petersburg, asking them the most obvious questions “domestic” people usually have: Why can’t they just update their documents, get a job, and rent a place to live? According to Igor Antonov, who’s worked with homeless people for years, questions like these underestimate the extent to which life on the street can transform a person. When it comes down to it, returning to a “normal life” is easier said than done.

According to Igor Antonov, who’s worked with homeless people for years, questions like these underestimate the extent to which life on the street can transform a person. “It’s very difficult to catch someone right at the moment their life is falling apart — when they get sick, they lose their job, they started taking payday loans, and use alcohol to blunt the pain,” Antonov said. According to Denis, the daughter eventually kicked them out, but he was close to leaving himself because he could hardly restrain himself from hitting her and “going to jail under [article] 105 [murder], seeing how she “shakes down her mother for money.”

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