On 28th of October 2003 police officers of Kirovskiy district raided the squat Pekarnia (Russian for bakery). The reason for cops to check the house was that a day before one of the homeless people, who live at 2nd floor (the squat Pekarnia is located at the 3rd floor), fell out of the window and was taken to hospital because of severe head injury.

One day after the accident, when the cops came to the house, there where 2 people inside Pekarnia. One of them was taken to police station as a captive, the other one was asked to find the people who live permanently in the squat. Cops took sound system from Pekarnia to be sure that the squatters show up at the police station in the evening.

In the evening some squatters went to the police station to free their companera who was caught and also to get the sound system back. The squatters were first accused of "creating criminal circumstances", and were demanded to leave the house, because "the house is empty, and nobody should live there". Cops gave the squatters one week (until 4th of November) to move away from the house or to show official documents from KUGI (City/State Property Comittee) about the rights on the house.

Discussions or some demands to KUGI would be hopeless, as far as the house is officially "in dangerous condition and don't fit in to the sanitary norms". Squatters decided that still they have no reason to move away from this house, which used to be empty. Now the house has normal conditions for living, meetings, for countercultural and other events. Also the squatters decided not to give any bribes to the cops just because of the fact that the house is situated on the territory which is controlled by them.

The future of Pekarnia is now mostly dependent on the activity of the squatters and other anarchist and antiauthoritarian activists, but also on the next steps of the authorities.

You can see some pictures from the squat at  http://www.pectopah.tk

Tuuli, Petersburg, 30.10.2003