Russian apartments and houses
Before the revolution most of the Russian population lived in the country but then 70% of population started to live in big cities like Moscow and Saint Petersburg. Such number of population residing in big cities is explained the disruption of everyday life like a bloody civil war, the devastation of large parts of lands, many failed harvests and rapid industrialization. Thus, new factories were built and important social problems appeared particularly in Russian housing:
- The kommunalki flats
- Upgrades to Russian housing
- Developing the dachas
- Russian housing today
The kommunalki flats
The Soviet government decided to devastate the big houses and apartments of the aristocrats and they devided them into communal flats. Especially it was easy made in big cities like Moscow and Leningrad.
The kommunalki, or corridor flats, were rooms for families along a corridor and entrance hall; no private cooking or toilet facilities. Families used a communal kitchen, toilet, and bathroom – common spaces usually at the end of the corridor. Occupants maintained a collective cleaning schedule of these common spaces. Visits to the local bathhouse compensated a little for the absence of adequate washing facilities.
The whole complex was a domestic collective – a tool within the system of social engineering.
Upgrades to Russian housing
Then the liberal government came to the Russian housing problem in a different way of building 5-storey block houses with the separate apartments in the outskirts.
There was a big demand for that apartments like khrushchevki . Thus, building faults got appeared because there were hasty construction and no lifts. Therefore people enjoyed their private space.
In the early 1960s, the government became to start cooperative housing again because of the long waiting lists. So, buyers began purchase their own apartments giving the end for kommunalki.
During the period between the Revolution and the collapse of the USSR in 1991 some representatives of the political, military, and cultural elite received comfortable and luxury apartments. Moreover, there was a lot of blocks built for the purpose.
Thus, Yuri Trifonov has described life in such blocks in the House on the Embankment. A block was near the Kremlin and contains luxury flats and also a museum demonstrating the life of that time.
Dwellers who fell out of favor with Stalin feared a knock on the door in the early hours and the subsequent transfer to the notorious Lubyanka prison.
Therefore the famous Mikhail Bulgakov and Maria Tsvetayeva described the environment of kommunalka. Also a notorious poet Vladimir Vysotsky told about kommunalki in a humorous way.
Developing the dachas
The word dacha comes from the verb ‘dat’ meaning to give. It was during the time of Peter the Great who gave lands near his capital for horticultural development and the building of small wooden houses for summer use.
The construction of houses was so simple and with no amenities like electricity and water. Therefore they were useful for summer use and not to be the alternative source of accommodation.
Dachas are becoming more sophisticated in terms of amenities and provision of space. Some are now complete country houses if the location is so good.
Russian housing today
Since the collapse of the USSR, privatization of state-owned apartments gave a beginning of building of new private houses and flats. There was a sale of multi-family flats of the Soviet Union and development of single-family accommodation.