A communal apartment or kommunalka (Russian: коммуналка, коммунальная квартира) appeared in the Soviet Union following the Russian revolution. Communal apartments emerged as a response to the housing crisis in urban areas and were a product of the “new collective vision of the future”. A communal apartment was typically shared between two to seven families. Each family had it own room, which served as a living room, dining room, and bedroom for the entire family. The hallways, kitchen, bathroom and telephone were shared among all the residents. The communal apartment was the predominant form of housing in the USSR for generations, and still exist in “the most fashionable central districts of large Russian cities.”
Famous quotes containing the words communal and/or apartment:
“A communal horse anybody can ride.”
—Chinese proverb.
“Should not every apartment in which man dwells be lofty enough to create some obscurity overhead, where flickering shadows may play at evening about the rafters?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)