Police as Leverage

My landlord is a bad landlord. He is not mean but he is, in my estimation, irresponsible. So I don't like him, because he is my landlord.

 

He is 20 years old. Obviously, he didn't purchase the flat himself but the parental powers that be decided that he should run it himself. After he reduced the price from $US 300/mo to 250/mo on the condition that I pay for 3 months at once, I paid in cash. He missed our meeting the next day and sounded miserable and barely awake at 12p when I called him the next day, it was becoming clear that my annoying landlord was an unusual sort of annoying landlord. The long and the short of it is that for about 2 weeks I arranged some 10 meetings at which time he was to provide me with some pretty straight forward furnishings. He would agree and never show up. The wasting of my time was irritating as was the lack of furnishing. Yelling at him after some of the more ridiculous periods of irresponsibility left him murmuring an insincere apology, of the sort I am sure his parents have heard about a million times. I was exasperated. 

 

I disengaged. The more energy I put into the landlord the worse off my life was. I bought the furniture and paid outstanding bills, figuring that I will renegotiate once I have some leverage (i.e. when rent is due, in February).

 

I related my experience with my landlord to locals. All agreed that he sounded pretty lame and often were a little embarrassed as I was a foreigner and all. They situation needed to be rectified, respect for me regained and the dignity of Kyrgyzstan preserved. The solution offered by many was interesting and one which never would have occurred to me.

 

I should make him pay bills, provide promised furnishings and generally not be a recluse by telling him that if he does not do so that I will tell the militsia (police) that my landlord is not paying taxes. I did not sign a contract upon moving in, though I asked if that wouldn't be a good idea. And for the most part people do not pay, or significantly underpay, their taxes.

 

This solution was not much help for me. My visa status was flocculating between legal, semi-legal and not-so-much legal during the time. And arguing with officials may be fun if you speak the language but my Russian and Kyrgyz are not quite there. Suggesting a crime that I cannot prove and insinuation are sections we didn't cover in 3rd year Russian at UW.

 

I stopped volunteering information about my situation to other people and things got better when I stopped dealing with the landlord. But since then my friends at the bazaar have had an interesting experience that brought up the militsia as an instrument of extraction rather than as a force for order.  

 

I've only received the following story from the side of my friends. It only reflects my one-sided understanding, not Truth.

 

My friends were coming home one evening. Some neighborhood acquaintances were hanging out around a bottle of vodka. They had been there for some time. The drinkers asked my friends for a cigarette, then if they wanted to drink. My friends don't drink and don't smoke. The drinkers asked my friends for money. When this too was denied they started pushing. A fight started. My friends won and apparently threw in a couple of blows for good measure.

 

The instigators of the assault threatened to write a "declaration" to the militsia. They had a few bruises and stuff on their faces and the right to self-defense does not include the right to throw a few extra punches after you have won I guess. Also, as a rule it’s not so nice to get the police involved in matters such as this. The police earn an official salary of no more than $US 50/mo. They use their position to earn significantly more. A "good living" in Bishkek is estimated at about $1000. Very few militsianiri (police officers) fail to provide a good living for their families.

 

My friends came to me. I am the rich American friend who uninvolved in the local community significantly, I won't cause them shame or trouble or other further problems. The silence was bought for around $150. I wasn't happy about helping out in this situation but their friends and I figured that I was not in a very good place to weigh the situation. When in doubt it seemed better to help the friends.  The situation was of enough concern for the guys that they slept outside at the dacha at the foothills of the mountains for the night of the incident.

 

What I found of interest here is how the mechanisms of the state which are theoretically intended to regulate and organize society (tax collectors and militsia) were viewed as mechanisms for extortion. The social capture of these basic capacities and duties of the state indicates that frequently people view the state as a reliable tool for resolving social disputes in their favor. It does not rule from on high, but rather can be fairly manipulated for advantage in a petty dispute. This is not the sort of civic engagement that international actors are pushing for.