Kommunalki

[joliecanard.livejournal.com]

http://kommunal.da.ru/

Have fun touring the old communist communal apartments!  (In Russian, sorry beginners.  But you can look at the pictures!)

They still exist in some places.  I recall a few nights renting a room in a kommunalka in Tbilisi.  This was 2005, people.

Comments

[flameaside.livejournal.com]

'Have fun'?

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

"In some places"? That's what I call optimistic. In St.Petersburg, more than 900,000 people still live in communal apartments. My friends in Moscow were renting rooms in communals apartment for two years. After one year in Presnya neighborhood, thay gave their first room up: there was, initially, only one apartment-mate -- an old lady -- but after a year, one more neighbor showed up after his prison term ended. They moved to a communal apartment next door to Tretyakov Gallery. Again, they only had one neighbor, an old lady; and in a year -- guess what? -- old lady's grandson's prison term ended, and the nice 20-years-old boy (who was sentenced for three years for stealing people's cell phones in the streets) moved in. In a week, they moved to a one-bedroom in Maryina Roshcha, which costed them three times as much as kommunalka room did.

[archaicos.livejournal.com]

With such luck they could win big in a lottery. :) Too bad they wasted the luck on the rooms.

[wolk-off.livejournal.com]

With _such_ luck all they could do big in a lottery was LOSE :)

[joliecanard.livejournal.com]

I just didn't really know how many, so I said something incredibly vague. Thanks for the info.

[ulvesang.livejournal.com]

call me a weirdo, but i find it rather fascinating. I mean, not only because I like old buildings/things, but i'm not sure of the price for such a place, but if it is(was?) in fact quite low, it would be quite a nice place (for the money, I mean).

Of course, this is assuming that the people with whom you live aren't total freaks/social outcasts who live on the fringe of civilisation... or the fringe of humanity...

I mean, it looks nicer than a studencheskoe obshchezhitie... I would live there if it was a good price...

at any rate, it would be interesting to see how people live(ed) there.