Kommunalka

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Kommunalka (Russian: коммуналка , belittling of Russian: коммунальная квартира , communal apartment or flat share , from Latin communio 'community' and French / German quarter ) is a form of housing that has existed in Russia since the 19th century , in which several Parties share an apartment. Nikolai Gawrilowitsch Tschernyschewski describes it in his 1863 story “What to do?” (Russian Что делать? ). Several people or even several families share an apartment and also the use of the facilities, such as the sanitary area with toilet and the kitchen, that is: one party lives in one or more rooms exclusively while the other parties share the sanitary and kitchen facilities must share.

Originated in the Russian Empire due to a lack of living space, this type of living continued to exist in the Soviet Union for the same reason. Kommunalkas are still present in Russia, as in other former parts of the USSR, although their number is rapidly decreasing. There are still many communal kas in the historic city center of Saint Petersburg . According to the city administration, 20% still live there, around 660,000 people in 105,000 shared apartments. Living in communal houses has similar advantages and disadvantages as living in western communal communities . However, since families predominantly live together here and the number of people is usually larger, the potential for social conflict in particular is even higher. It is not uncommon for a communal apartment to have between ten and twenty residential units connected by a long hallway. The residential units can be rented or purchased. The fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin grew up in a Kommunalka in St. Petersburg was mentioned several times in reports about him.

Kommunalka in art

The Russian installation artist Ilya Kabakov has dealt with the topic of Kommunalka several times in his work . In 1988 the Feldman Gallery in New York showed Kabakov's first Komunalka installation entitled “Ten Characters”.

In 1996 Kabakov worked with the University of Graphic Art and Book Art and the Institute for Art History at the University of Leipzig as part of the “Teaching by working I” project, together with students, on an installation in which the living situation in a communal room is reproduced. The location of this recreated apartment was the carriage house of the Herfurth villa .

literature

  • Sandra Evans: Living Soviet . A literary and cultural history of the Kommunalka. Transcript Verl., Bielefeld, 2011. (= Lettre ). ISBN 978-3-8376-1662-0 (Also Diss. Tübingen 2010.)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Article in the Tagesspiegel about W. Putin with a mention of the “Kommunalka”, September 2004
  2. ^ Philipp Pott: Moscow communal apartments 1917 to 1997. Material culture, experience, memory. Zurich: Pano 2009. pp. 274–281
  3. ↑ gfzk -Ilya Kabakov: Voices behind the door, 1964-1983 , accessed on July 14, 2020.