Lesson 1: Myths and Legends of Soviet Russia

For the whole of her history Russia has defied Western logic. We never knew exactly what to expect of her. She is the largest and richest country in the world. Her defiance and self-reliance threatened our leaders. While we built our bomb shelters to protect ourselves from Russian invasion and bombs, the people of Russia wondered what on Earth we were doing. While the Russian people could not like our arrogance and individuality, they could not wholly dislike us either. We were too similar. In the winter of 1991 we became even more similar. One day the Russian people woke to a whole new government and regime. They were no longer Soviet citizens, they were no longer communist, and they were no longer a rich country. This is not to say that Russia was not inching closer and closer to Democracy. Thanks to Gorbechev Russia was becoming a more democratic nation by the minute. But in one felled purely Russian (which means mostly foolhardy) swoop, Yeltsin took the Russian White House and Parliament by tank. The majority of the Russian people simply watched in on TV in concern and curiosity. History was being made overnight, but that’s the way it happens in Russia. Only progress is slow in Russia, revolutions come and go. We sat back feeling victorious, wondering what the world would be like with one more powerful ally and one less major enemy.

I have learned that when most people think of Russia they think of fur hats and long winters. They think of vodka and heavy, hairy men. When Americans think of Soviet Russian they think of harsh censorship and dictators. They think of breadlines and poverty. They think of the enemies of freedom. In Soviet times and right after the revolution of 1991, news coming out of Russia was slow in coming. No one really seemed to know who these Russians were or really how much they were changing. In this lesson we will take a look at some the myths and legends of Soviet Russia, so that we may begin to understand from where Russia came.

Communal Apartments

“Contrary to the myth, they {Communal homes} were not a product of collectivist ideology. Rather, they developed out of urban overcrowding and the low budgetary priority that the Stalinist regime gave to housing - these, and a dose of Revolutionary schadenfreude (propaganda) which made local authorities eager to force then to give up part of their apartments to proletarians. A whole folklore exists about the humiliations, petty vindictiveness, fights and resentments associated with involuntary communal living.” (Fitspatrick, 2003).

In the beginning a good communist may have been eager to help the state solve it’s housing crisis by giving up some personal and private space to make a new apartment. But, communal living was not about just living in another person’s home. First, communal living was a spatial issue: take a one room divide and have a whole family live in it. No one at the beginning figured this to be an ideal solution to the housing and economic crisis at hand, but all thought it would be a temporary inconvenience before the great rise of the modern Soviet State. As you will see in this section, for every “inconvenience” the state put it’s citizens through there was always a dream behind it, something to keep the citizen’s striving for something better. That striving was to be done always communally and not individually though. No one loved communal apartments and restlessness and dissent occurred frequently. State propaganda was created to help the everyday man keep within the mindframe of the communal striving for greatness. Here is an example of such propaganda: “A popular kitchen slogan made headway at the time, “Down with the Dictatorship of the Kitchen!” The individual kitchen was denounced as a symbol of the nuclear family and women’s enslavement to everyday life. By contrast, the communal home was not just a retreat for the individual, a place marked by personal traces and memories; rather it was a public and therefore ideologically charged site. The communal dwelling’s simple and stark geometry had be enjoyed for it’s own sake.” (Boym, 163, 1996) Another form of state control of dissidence, took place in the home itself. While neighbors were “comrades”, they could also potentially be your downfall. If your neighbor desired your window, they could easily have it, if they reported you to the officials. For every form of state or official control, there is always a form of personal, unofficial control a person has over their life in the form of loopholes and other such strategies. While the state seemed in complete control, they never had the kind of control needed to keep human nature at bay for long. There is, and was, always another way to accomplish your goals, especially if you had a family member in the right kinds of governmental offices.

It is also a myth that communal homes are a relic of the past. Today, there are still communal apartments in large cities. But, today communal homes are not forced on people. People live in communal homes for economic and sometimes nostalgic reasons. While many believe that the Soviet communal housing has failed miserably, I do not think it has completely failed. While this experiment has not brought communal living between separate families, I do believe that it has brought a greater sense of community within the family. Here I am not speaking of the nuclear family, but the whole family, three generations or more, including the extended family. The family simply proved to be a stronger economic and political force than any singular nuclear family could be. The family and it’s properties are strongly defined and separated symbols from public space. Boym’s “minimal boundaries of communal privacy (1996, 167)” are becoming relics of the past, where now these boundaries only exist within the Russian family home. Unlike the West, it is the family that passes on its identity as Russian through the symbol of the family communal home.

. The larger trend in Russia now is that of owning or renting private apartments and owning a dacha (summer cottage) in the country or suburbs. One of the greatest feats of Russian physics and mathematics was the division and trading of home spaces. If by chance, you inherited a communal apartment (which meant you had two rooms, but not in the same place), you could potentially trade those two rooms to someone who had one nice room closer to the center of the city or in a better neighborhood. Soviet people collected home spaces, like trading cards. They were always trading these home spaces up for something better, even if you didn’t have more room, a better neighborhood was worth it. Some Soviet people would spend years collecting and trading property in order to get the kind of apartment in the neighborhood they wanted.

These two articles are for those who wish to study more about communal homes and Soviet Russia.

http://www.therussiajournal.com/index.ht...

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v25/n19/fitz03_.html

Section Bibliography

Boym, Svetlana. 1996. Everyday Culture. Russian Culture at the Crossroads: Paradoxes of Postcommunist Consciousness. Dmitri E. Shailn, ed. Pp. 157-183. Boulder: Westview Press Inc.

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