The Living and the Dead

Originally published, in Russian, in The New Tab
Text by Marfa Khvostova
Images by The New Tab

One frigid January night, 82-year-old Svetlana Mitina froze to death in a dilapidated house in Kurgan, a city at the southern end of Russia’s Ural Federal District. The city administration had long resisted condemning the building, even though the roof had fallen in, the stove intended as a heat source no longer worked, and there was no glass in the windows. In the lead-up to Russia’s 2024 gubernatorial elections, Mitina’s relatives had gone to the local government radio and television broadcasting company for help. At the time, the station wasn’t able to run any “negative stories.” Marfa Khvostova, a freelance journalist working for the independent online publication The New Tab, went to Kurgan to report on the story state-run media didn’t want to touch.

The night of January 21, temperatures in Kurgan dropped to their lowest point so far that winter: minus 24° Celsius (minus 11° Fahrenheit). In the ramshackle house at 45 Ordzhonikidze Street, 82-year-old Svetlana Mitina, who had long since retired from a career at the local weather station, was freezing. The cold was seeping in through the boarded-up windows, the crooked door, the ice-cold floor, and the leaky roof. The woolen blankets covering the doors and the tent of plastic sheeting the pensioner had constructed over her bed to protect against the wind were not enough to keep her warm.