
A Virtual Museum of Soviet Everyday Life - smacktoward
http://kommunalka.colgate.edu/index.cfm
======
mcprwklzpq
There are still a lot of "communalkas" in russia. In Saint Petersburg there
were 76 600 of them in 2017 [1] and in Moscow 58 000 in 2008 (down from 118
000 in 1998) [2]. These are only that "communalkas" that are owned by the
people that live in them. You can imagine how hard it is to turn a
"communalka" into a flat that is owned by a single family. If somebody tries
to buy the whole "communalka" any owner can refuse to sell and every owner has
the "first right" to any part of the "communalka" so owners that want to sell
their part have to get signed refusals of that right from all other owners.

There are also flats that have single owner but rented as "communalkas" to
multiple families, and number of these flats is growing.

You can see "communalkas" in many soviet and russian movies, for example in
"The Pokrovsky Gate" (1982) [3].

1 [rus] - [https://mirndv.ru/blog/peterburg-gorod-mostov-belyh-
nochej-i...](https://mirndv.ru/blog/peterburg-gorod-mostov-belyh-nochej-i-
kommunalok/)

2 [rus] - [https://www.cian.ru/novosti-v-rossii-po-prezhnemu-mnogo-
komm...](https://www.cian.ru/novosti-v-rossii-po-prezhnemu-mnogo-
kommunalok-230249/)

3 [rus] -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xo5PiDzYQCg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xo5PiDzYQCg)

------
trhway
The communal housing in USSR appeared mostly as a result of "working class"
(in wide sense, i.e. peasants, workers, low level clerks/bureaucrats) moving
into the large and very large apartments (like an apartment taking whole floor
of a building) where a "class enemy" (aristocracy, rich and/or high positioned
people from pre-Revolution who had emigrated if they were lucky or got killed
otherwise as result of the Revolution and the Civil War) lived before. Giving
whole such an apartment to a family of a worker would be too much from a
social and practical point of view. Also the USSR was supposedly building a
worker paradise and communal living was like a virtue as well as a virtue
building process.

The new and smaller housing, especially the even smaller mass apartments of
Khruschev times almost never was communal except for the cases of very tight
hosing situation in the town or some other relatively rare situations.

~~~
heneryville
Given that the revolution was in 1917, and how much the working class
urbanized following the revolution, I'd have a hard time believing that pre-
revolution housing stock was sufficient beyond the first decade. Surely much
built-to-suit communal housing must have been made in the 60+ years of
communist rule.

~~~
hamilyon2
No, gp is right. New-style buildings had other names, like stalinka.

------
zarro
Those Soviet Khrushchyovkas are the most depressing, abysmal buildings built
in the history of mankind and I for one cannot wait until the day they
demolish the last one of those despicable creations.

~~~
vbezhenar
For me they are beatiful. Because they allowed a lot of people to have their
own house. It's incredible achievement. They should be replaced by better
houses with time, of course.

~~~
disordinary
That's a good point, after WW2 the Soviet Union had the double problem of a
rapidly urbanising population and having to rebuild all the destruction. They
needed a quick solution and what they chose worked.

~~~
ineedasername
It came with a high cost. Roughly 20 million died under forced labor camps,
collectivization efforts and resulting famines, gulags, and resettlements.

~~~
disordinary
I don't doubt it. It was a rapid modernisation and raising of living
standards.

~~~
ineedasername
Are you saying it was necessary or justified? It sounds like your meaning is
that such mass murder, combined with murder via incompetence, is a necessary
part of modernization.

~~~
disordinary
No, I didn't say that. I meant there was a lot of work pushed on the people by
a ruthless government.

------
anvarik
I grew up in CCCP Kazakhstan with my grandparents, we had a 1bd apartment at
the 5th floor of a 5 story building. None of my relatives were sharing housing
afai remember - it was a small town around Qaraghandy. I still go and visit
them time to time.

------
ineedasername
I'm fascinated by cold war era details about Russia. It has so many parallels
to the west, but it's just different enough that there's a strange uncanny
valley effect.

------
yters
Living in Russia is always associated with the Soviet union, like China is
always associated with the Communist government. But communism has formed a
very small part of these countries' histories. I wonder why the focus on just
the communist aspects of these countries.

~~~
vkou
Because the pre-communism period was in most respects, even worse. China had a
century of occupation and decades of civil war. Russia was a backwater, with
constant repression and terrorism of it's population. Hell, it had _serfdom_
until the mid 19th century. (Which was reintroduced in all but name through
the kolhoz system.)

The repression of the regimes that followed didn't spring up in a vaccum, but
was a natural evolution of the political environment they operated in.

~~~
yters
Did the pre-communism period engage in widespread religious persecution and
send millions of Russians to the gulags to be worked to death?

~~~
the_af
Yes:

From Wikipedia:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogrom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogrom)

> _A pogrom is a violent riot aimed at the massacre or persecution of an
> ethnic or religious group, particularly one aimed at Jews. The Russian term
> originally entered the English language in order to describe 19th and 20th
> century attacks on Jews in the Russian Empire (mostly within the Pale of
> Settlement)._

~~~
yters
While that is religious persocution, it is persecution of a particular
religion. The Soviets oppressed _all_ religions since theism threatened the
state's power. Same as in China today.

~~~
the_af
Maybe
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Muslims#Russian...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Muslims#Russian_Empire)
and
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circassian_genocide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circassian_genocide)
then?

~~~
yters
Certainly bad, but does not seem at the scale or intent of the gulags.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulag)

At least it is hard to see how the Soviets were an improvement on the past.

~~~
the_af
Peasants, workers and people from non-aristocratic families could rise to the
top?

~~~
yters
Could they? Seems like everyone became a serf of the state. Plus, the millions
sent to the gulags couldn't rise.

~~~
the_af
Yes, they could. The state was formed by people from non aristocratic
backgrounds and it is undeniable there was upward mobility compared to the
rigid caste system of the Russian Empire.

You can argue that it was a totalitarian government ruled by dictators, but
you cannot argue that it was ruled by an aristocracy or that a peasant
couldn't rise up to rule the country.

A well connected Party member or apparatchik could live relatively decently
regardless of his ancestry, on "merit" (connectedness) alone. Yes, he could
also get shot or imprisoned, but the same was true with the Empire, where he'd
never rule.

Stalin was born in a poor family. Lenin's was wealthy middle class, but not
aristocratic. Trotsky was born to (wealthy) farmers. Kruschev was the son of
peasants and Brezhnev the son of workers. Just to name a few...

~~~
yters
Sounds like they just created a new aristocratic class that was even more
brutal. Still hard to see an improvement.

------
m0zg
I lived in one of these for 3 years. It wasn't too bad but only because I
happened to have a room with a very tall ceiling (easily 3m) and was young.
Think of it as a small studio with a shared kitchen and bathroom, or a better
variant of a dorm, except your neighbors are mostly hostile to you, and some
of them are alcoholics.

Another saving grace was that it was 10 minute leisurely walk from the
university I was attending at the time. How people raised families in the
worse variants of these I will never know, thankfully. The only real snag was,
I eventually had to move my fridge into my room, because neighbors would steal
my food otherwise. Not because they didn't have their own, but because of
"Soviet mentality" where private property wasn't really respected, and
everyone stole what they could.

This is the period of my life I recall when some latte-sippin' macbook pro
totin' millenial here in the US tells me that socialism wouldn't be too bad.

------
youdontknowtho
I know that we are all supposed to be "communism is teh bad", but the history
of the Soviet Union is more complicated than just saying it was Communist,
right? I'm actually kind of asking in hopes that someone who knows something
about the subject can respond. I don't think that you can divorce what
happened in the Soviet Union from the term Communism, just like you can't say
that "real capitalism" has never been tried. I just imagine that it's way more
complicated than "Commie == Bad".

~~~
asveikau
It's already been mentioned in this thread that the pre-1917 Russia had a lot
of people living in poor conditions and had fallen behind Western Europe.

I am also not an expert, but my understanding is that they made some progress
on things like education and literacy rate. See:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_Soviet_Union](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_Soviet_Union)

It doesn't excuse the many things that went wrong during the period. But my
intuition is you cannot say it was composed 100% of bad actors and total
maliciousness or even incompetence.

~~~
romwell
And human rights, actually.

No-fault divorce, universal suffrage, equality of races - at least in official
policy - all at once, by the 1920s. It was unprecedented.

And it worked, to a certain extent at least. Women got education and entered
the (educated, professional) work force (and, during the war, combat
divisions). The change for Jewish people (officially oppressed with race-
specific laws in Imperial Russia) was immense (Trotsky, one of the top guys,
was Jewish - as were many others, before Stalinism).

There was an explosion in arts: a revolution in cinema, music, literature,
poetry, architecture, visual arts.

Basically, a lot of the bad things that people associate with Communism are
Stalinism, but that came in the 30s, and went away by the 60s.

Now, a lot of other bad things were there from day 0, and some developed post-
Stalin. But there were a lot of changes from 1917 to the 20s, to Stalinism, to
WW2, and then to Khruschev and Brezhnev.

The country stabilized in the Kruschev-Brezhnev era, and remained static for
so long that even those who liked the regime got tired of it. But it's
important to see what the changes were.

~~~
beerandt
But equality of race (or really nationality, at the time) is relative, in the
sense that quality of life was worse than probably what most minorities
experienced in most other Western countries at the time.

And equal suffrage in a single party system? What is that worth?

------
systematical
I've spent a lot of time in hostels. It's not so bad. Difference is, that was
by choice.

------
jhallenworld
You must also watch Ushanka Show:

[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClXTAMdHwvWdmFyOlQmEtpQ/vid...](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClXTAMdHwvWdmFyOlQmEtpQ/videos)

------
dkural
Most ordinary Russians in large cities still live in very cramped conditions
with multiple families sharing a 3-bedroom apartment. I've visited such an
apartment that my friend was living in, in the suburbs of Moscow. All the
rooms became bedrooms due to lack of space in the evening, no such thing as a
living room etc.

~~~
cpursley
Yeah... I currently live in Russia. This is not even close to true. Maybe
there's a few communal apartments still in St Petersburg. But most Russian
families not only have their own private apartment, buy they outright own it
(no mortgage) unlike Americans who are up to their eyeballs in debt.

~~~
varjag
Several generations living in very cramped conditions in the same apartment is
extremely common in Russia. Precisely because they can't afford to buy
anything, mortgage or not.

~~~
PeterisP
Several generations of one family in the same apartment and communal
apartments are two very, very different things.

~~~
varjag
Yes and the GP post wasn't referring communal apartments.

------
richardhod
This website appears to have been designed in about 1997

------
coldtea
So, slightly better than current San Francisco situation!

------
amai
But basically every family also had a Dacha outside of the city:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dacha#Soviet_Union](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dacha#Soviet_Union)
.

~~~
knd775
Basically every family? That doesn't seem right. The wikipedia page you linked
says that nearly all _affluent_ families had dachas, making up about a third
of the overall urban population.

~~~
mantas
Most families living in urbanised locations had access to "communal gardens".
For the general public, it'd be a tiny patch of land where you may build a
tiny shack to put your tools in.

Now if you're working for a prestigious institution in high-up position, that
patch of land gets bigger, you may be able to pull together resources to build
a summer house there and the whole communal garden might be a prime location
surrounding a lake, bordering a forest and so on.

