трехдневный
It’s a small
Apartment
;
I’ve barely enough room to lay my hat and
a few friends.—Dorothy Parker
Kommunalka in St. Petersburg
Nowadays, kommunalkas—“communal apartments” where Filip Filipovich’s purple complexion took on a
several families, sometimes three generations deep, are forced faintly grey tinge.
to share the common areas—are a dying breed. It’s probably ‘So I can eat in the bedroom,’ he said in a slight-
a good thing. (Your editor-in-chief lived in one until the age of ly muffled voice, ‘read in the consulting room, dress
eight). The first kommunalkas were a quick fix to the post-rev- in the hall, operate in the maid’s room and exam-
olutionary housing crisis: eager workers were flooding the cit- ine patients in the dining room. I expect that is
ies, but there were no construction funds in the Bolshevik pig- what Isadora Duncan does. Perhaps she eats in
gy bank. Confiscating classic-sixes from the rich and subdi- her study and dissects rabbits in the bathroom.’
viding them among the poor not only solved the problem, but Just like the khruschevkas (рage 104), the communal
helped spread the new regime’s message that sharing is caring apartments were a desperate measure that stuck around way
– a platitude that resonates especially deep when not sharing past its expiration date and wrecked many a life, not to men-
is punishable by labor camp. A famous passage from Mikhail tion many a date. Still, like most artifacts of the Soviet era, the
Bulgakov’s Heart of a Dog recounts an elderly professor’s hor- damn things deserve documentation, and maybe even the
ror at having a formal dining room expropriated: tiniest bit of nostalgia. We visited one of the last kommunal-
‘No one in Moscow has a dining room.’ ‘Not even kas in St. Pete.
Isadora Duncan,’ squeaked the woman.
readrussia.com/2008/WiNTer/ 83 Photo: Shutterstock
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132