oscow's Annual Hot Water Shutdown is a Whiff of the Past.

Ah, summer in Moscow.

Sipping cold beers at sidewalk cafes that pop up where once only the Soviet elite could gather. Picnicking in Sparrow (formerly Lenin) Hills or taking boat rides on the Moscow River. Spending long weekends at the dacha. Not to mention holding one's nose on the Moscow metro.

It's the hot and sticky season in this city of about 12 million people, and with many Muscovites going without hot water these days, you can put the emphasis on sticky. It is a rite of summer peculiar to the Russian capital: For three weeks, staggered in blocks between May and September, officials shut off hot water to various neighborhoods to clean and repair Moscow's centrally planned central heating system. Some residents respond by hauling out the 10-gallon pot, setting the morning alarm a half-hour early and boiling themselves a nice, hot bath. Others flock to the city's private bathhouses or impose on friends and relatives. Then there's that subset who would rather just let hygiene slide.

"You can tell on the metro which neighborhoods are without hot water," one woman said. "The people have greasy hair, but a lot of the women are still trying their best to look good."

The whole system seems so, well, Soviet: Society resolutely sacrificing as one to overcome a common problem, like the citizen harvests that fell apart once Mikhail Gorbachev loosened the reins. The reality is the practice has nothing to do with ideology and everything to do with technology.

"You cannot do the repairs and electrical work on the heating system with water in the system," said Svetlana Davidova, a federal official who oversees energy provision in Moscow. "As long as we have this centralized heating system, it will always stay like this."

For some, the water deprivation is "an annual catastrophe," as one woman put it. For others, like Yuri Sakhno, it's a minor nuisance.
"I don't give it much thought, to be honest," said Sakhno, the 25-year-old general manager of a Moscow appliance store. "It's hot out now, so. . . . "
Sakhno sells electric boilers for those who can't stand even temporary discomfort. He's out of stock now (the smaller boilers usually fly off the shelves soon after they come in), except for a deluxe model that costs about $400 -- far more than many Russians make in a month.
"I see no reason to buy something that you'll need for only, what, a week or two?" Sakhno said, ignoring for the moment that his job is to sell these things.

Others scoff as well, like the pensioner who said she could not afford to pay even for the electricity to run a boiler, much less buy one.

So what do Muscovites do?

Some have the cold-water shower down to a science, which in May and June can be downright frigid. Run the water, get wet. Kill the water, get soaped. Run the water, get rinsed. Kill the water, get dry. All of this is easier because many Moscow baths are really "sh-baths" -- shower heads dangling on the end of a snakelike pipe.

Friendships and family relations get closer--or strained.

"I call up my friends, and I say, 'Hi, so do you have hot water?' If it's 'yes,' then I tell them, 'Great, I'll see you soon,' " said Anna Markova, a 15-year-old high school student out for a walk with a boyfriend on a balmy afternoon. Markova, dressed in jeans and a Metallica T-shirt, said she hopes Moscow's heating system does not change soon. "I don't complain about it because this is Russia," said Markova, sipping from a can of something called "Gin and Tonic," a premixed cocktail now popular on Moscow's streets. "It's why it's so interesting here."

Besides, having only cold water beats having no water at all. Ask Nikolai Vasechenkov, who arrived in Moscow a few weeks ago from southern Russia.
"In the Crimea, this happens all the time," said the 23-year-old Vasechenkov, who was hoping to land a construction job even though he had no permit to live or work in the capital. "There they announce what hours water will be available, what hours it won't--all year long. Things are a lot worse there."

Moscow operates a 60-year-old all-in-one system that uses hot water for steam-heating radiators and for the bath.

To say the least, it is a testament to central planning. Rather than each building having its own boiler and furnace, and thereby individual control, everyone gets heat and hot water from the same source.

The government is like a big landlord, with an eye on the energy meter and a firm grip on the thermostat. If it's too cold or too hot, Muscovites can do little, except grumble and open or close windows. When the heat is shut off in May, it stays shut off until autumn even if temperatures plunge toward freezing, as they did this past spring.

The system, with its Soviet tinge, is an example of the inconsistencies one sees in Russia's struggle to join the free-market First World.

Young professionals and entrepreneurs, people who are destined to form the backbone of any middle class that Russia is able to create, furtively are telephoning friends and family in search of a hot shower.

It may indeed be interesting, as Anna Markova insists, but whether it is productive is a different issue.