pieces of cold, boiled meat, some heated their food with electric stoves, and old Meldesh who lived with his old woman and grandson, well he boiled tea by setting a fire right on the balcony of their third floor. Many Kazakhs, accustomed to the spaciousness of their courtyards, with kindled fires that popped and sparked, built hearths on the site in front of the house. From an outside perspective, it seemed that these new houses were not objects of socialist brilliance, but sinking ships set on fire. People scurried between houses and hearths, some crushed down grain in a mortar, some pounded nails into their walls with a hammer, their fires burned with might and main on the balconies, the stoves in the yard scattered about their sheaves of sparks – in short, the seven-story com- munist dormitories whiled away their God-given days as they could. Tomorrow these families would celebrate a housewarming event, and the residents of the houses, according to the traditions of one hundred and thirty nationalities living in Kazakhstan, will sing songs and dance from day till night. The people settled in these buildings were mainly chauffeurs, tractor drivers, mechanics, carriers, combine operators and builders, who would park their cars and tractors near the houses. And when three dozen tractors belonging to the owners of one hundred and twenty-eight apartments start immediately at dawn, it may seem to some that the end of the world has come, at that point it will be impossible, by God, to guarantee that some of them will not jump off their balconies in fright. The first morning of the communist hostel had come. The dawn was bright, one of those that are mentioned in the newspapers. It was a peaceful, quiet, rainbow-clean morning. The sun floated up, with the brightness of a new day, as if it was completely oblivi- ous about the storm brewing in some dormant faraway universe. And this sun carried future events to the unsuspecting residents of the new homes, who were coming to their senses after the housewarming party. Since these are communist houses, of course, toilets were also included in them. If there is an easily accessible toilet, then there is no person in those buildings who wouldn’t want to use it. The proclaimed Shurshit, Temirbek, a resident of the first floor, like all people on this Earth, began a new day with a