CITY STARTS RAZING CHERKIZOVSKY
By Natalya Krainova / The Moscow Times

The Moscow Times
Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Workers tearing down Cherkizovsky Market, once Europe’s biggest market,
in northeastern Moscow on Tuesday.

City authorities on Tuesday began demolishing the sprawling
Cherkizovsky Market, which was closed in June over sanitary and safety
violations amid a broader crackdown on smuggling.

The once-bustling, 300-hectare bazaar was deserted except for several
photographers and reporters, a few guards and several migrants helping
clean out the market, who said they were not former vendors.

Earlier this summer, the complex in eastern Moscow employed tens of
thousands of migrants, but only a few dozen were there Tuesday. Some
managed to find jobs elsewhere in the city, but many have left for
home amid signs that City Hall wants them gone.

Dozens of illegal migrants were deported following the closure and
many others were left in dire financial straits.

The city has promised to help find new trading space for Russians
who had been selling domestically made goods, but Mayor Yury Luzhkov
said in July that helping accommodate "our friends from China is not
our job."

Several migrants hung onto a fence surrounding the market and silently
watched a crane lifting an empty pavilion onto a truck. They said
they came to see the market one last time.

Denis Saakyan, 38, and Artur Sarkisyan, 32, said they were going home
to Armenia after working at the market for nine years because they
didn’t hope to find another job in Moscow.

Saakyan said renting space at other Moscow markets was too
expensive. He lambasted authorities for closing down the market amid
a crisis. "They closed all of our options," he said.

Windows of many kiosks showed merchandise – boxes of cigarettes,
cookies and candy – scattered on floors. A man in sunglasses and a
baseball cap sat on a chair, waving a large Russian flag, not far
from one of the market’s open gates.

Asked whether he was guarding the kiosks from looters, he nodded. He
refused to say anything about himself.

The city plans to build a fourth ring road, sports facilities,
trade centers and office buildings through the market, a spokesman
for the Eastern Administrative District said on customary condition
of anonymity. He said there were some 15,500 kiosks to dismantle.

One tenant, Vernissage v Izmailovo, will dismantle its 600 kiosks by
2010, its director, Alexander Ushakov, told Interfax. He lamented
the closure, noting that it wasn’t the first time a sports center
had been planned for the area.

"Back in 1936, they were planning to host the Olympics. They were
building a huge stadium for 200,000 people, but then they froze
construction and the architect was shot," he told the agency.

A few days ago, a forest ranger in Malakhovka, 30 kilometers southeast
of Moscow, discovered a tent camp with some 200 Vietnamese who lost
their jobs at an illegal sewing factory that made goods for the market,
RIA-Novosti reported Monday.

Cherkizovsky was closed June 29 after inspectors found a host of
violations there. The crackdown followed a demand by Prime Minister
Vladimir Putin earlier that month for "convictions" in the 2008
seizure of $2 billion in goods purportedly smuggled from China.