Needed by Nobody: Homelessness and Humanness in Post-Socialist Russia (review)

Many ethnographies of post-socialism have been published since the breakup of the Soviet Union. Whether addressing the tumultuous decade of the 1990s or the somewhat more stable "New Russia" of the 2000s, especially in Russia themes of crisis, political stagnation, economic hardship, poverty and struggles for daily survival predominate. A book on homelessness resonates thematically with other post-socialist ethnographies "from below." But this insightful, original ethnography of the homeless — the most marginalized category of "Soviet leftovers" — should not get lost in the shuffle.

In Needed by Nobody: Homelessness and Humanness in Post-Socialist Russia, Swedish anthropologist Tova Höjdestrand makes an important contribution to the literature on homelessness. She illuminates the lives of individuals at the lowest rung of Russian society, derided as bomzhi (people without a propiska, or required registration at a specific address) and "seen by all as pathetic losers."(15) Conducted at multiple sites in St. Petersburg in 1999, including the Moscow railway station and various charities, Höjdestrand tells a compassionate and richly detailed story about the hundred or so people without regular housing with whom she met on a regular basis. The book is organized in chapters that take readers from macro- to micro-levels of spatial and social exclusion, ending with death or disappearance. The 1990s, we learn, was a "liminal period" with scarce state regulation of public space, at least relative to the West and what followed in Russia. The homeless found "refuse space" to sleep within areas of "prime space" where they eked out a living, but the lack of regulated space also subjected the homeless to random acts of police brutality and violence.

Offering a well-written, compelling description of Russian homelessness would be enough to recommend this book, but Höjdestrand accomplishes much more. Readers gain an in-depth analysis of Russian society from the ground up through the lens of homelessness. For example, the discussion of drinking practices is excellent. Many of the homeless are hard drinkers. Even when the homeless work to earn money, they often profit directly from the alcohol consumption of others, whether in terms of empty bottles they can collect money for or for in-kind payment in liquid form. The homeless even pool resources to buy drinking "substitutes" in the evening, such as Bomi, a purported facial lotion, with a high alcohol content. Even begging itself is not considered begging when the request is for a drink. Hojdestrand stresses that "most people — not only the homeless — drank habitually and hard."(14) Furthermore, drinking among the homeless had its dangers while simultaneously enabling survival, serving as "a shortcut to instant humanness."

While the entire book is interesting, I found the second half stronger than the first. Höjdestrand's analysis shines when discussing intimate social contexts, such as the homeless's lack of family ties and their "profound ambivalence" towards one another in spite of mutual need. Although this is a relatively minor complaint, the frequent references to the clichéd concept of the Russian soul, or dusha, were distracting. After all, Höjdestrand's informants "rarely used the word dusha."(11) But perhaps I side with those who find it challenging to get beyond the tired romanticism of the word. Still, apart from these allusions to dusha, Höjdestrand generally avoids romanticizing the homeless.

The book concludes by calling for more research on people without an explicit Soviet reference point, for whom "before" (unlike the homeless) refers to post-Soviet chaos. I concur, but the good news is that her research itself opens up a range of important questions. Although the book is a must-read for scholars of post-socialism, it has much to offer those interested not only in homelessness, but in gender, family and social change. We learn that conflicts with kin frequently cause homelessness, leading to more fractured ties. So how are kin relations holding up in a society where informal networks are meant to...