Russians Close Door on Communal Living

Multi-family flats join the long list of Soviet failures

 

Another Soviet experiment is biting the dust. Moscow city council has started abolishing the despised beehive-like communal apartment of the communist era shared by many families. They are being replaced by cheaply built one-bedroom flats.

Housing officials are realistic about the speed with which the 270,000 families living in the city's 118,000 remaining kommunalkas can be rehoused, however, and their initial 10-year programme has already been extended.

"The time has come to move people into separate apartments," said Mikhail Kulikov of the munici­pal housing department. "Life in a communal flat where people with different temperaments and lifestyles are thrown together to share one toilet and one kitchen is no longer considered a normal existence."

The kommunalka was conceived as a means of eradicating class divisions after the revolution. Large houses were subdivided for the proletariat, and a family was housed in each room. The planners hoped that this would forge bonds between residents, and regarded the innovation as an exciting experiment in socialist living.

But the buildings began to feature in dissident Soviet literature as one of the greatest evils of the regime. In his recent memoirs President Vladimir Putin described the tensions of grow­ing up in a St Petersburg communal flat, recalling the kitchen arguments between his parents and their neigh­bours, and the joys of chasing rats on filthy stairways.

In Moscow property developers have bought out many of the families housed in handsome, pre-revolutionary buildings near the centre. Most of less desirable buildings are in less fash­ionable parts of town.

Anna Azimova's home in a Stalinist-era block in the north of the city is an extreme example of the genre. There are 16 rooms and 14 families: 43 people sharing one kitchen and one shower. Each family has about 12 square metres of space.

To avoid queuing for the shower, Mrs Azimova, who is the deputy head of the local school, gets up at 4.30 am. To escape the crush in the kitchen she prepares breakfast, lunch and supper for her family while her neighbours are sleeping.

To exist in such close confines the residents have developed a set of unwritten rules that dictate who must take responsibility for every­thing from washing the floor to changing the light bulbs. Only the building's three confirmed alcoholics neglect these duties, preferring to torment their neighbours by stealing food from the kitchen and inviting stray acquaintances from the nearby railway station for all-night vodka parties.

To the eight children who cycle up and down the central corridor, the lifestyle has a definite appeal. Their parents see its positive side only rarely. At New Year and Christmas they try to put aside their differences and pull pieces of furniture into the hall to make a long banqueting table. But this time they decided not to, because the ceiling was leaking too badly.

"We're meant to live as a big family, but it doesn't work like that. The walls are so thin you can hear people talking quietly. When the alcoholics start drinking together the other 40 of us can't sleep," said Natasha Zamarakhina, 25.

She moved in five years ago, shortly before the birth of her son. Her husband has lived there all his life. "The gossiping is the most depressing thing," she said. No one can do anything here without it being discussed by the 13 other families."

Ms Zamarakhina has little hope that she will be rehoused soon. Faced with a long queue of people awaiting new homes, the council gives prece­dence to second world war veterans, Chernobyl victims and invalids.

The housing department is also committed to obliterating Moscow's crumbling five-storey 1950s blocks of flats and has contracted developers to build much taller blocks to allow for the gradual resettlement of communal flat inhabitants.

IV. At Leisure

 

Jokes

1.

One bright summer morning a young man was whitewashing his garden gate. Though the man didn't seem to enjoy his job, he did his best to finish it up soon, for his wife expected it done by dinner time. He turned round when he heard his neighbour shout: "Hello, boy!" and saw that the old man was painting the door of his house.

"Aren't you lucky?" the old neighbour said. "You've only a fortnight leave. As to me, I'll be free for two months and I'm afraid my wife will make me paint the house from top to bottom."

2.

The landlady was showing the room.

"What are all those spots on the wallpaper?" asked the prospec­tive roomer.

"Oh, nothing. The man who lived here last was an inventor. He invented some kind of explosive."

"Are those spots the explosive?"

"No,— the inventor."

3.

The woman on the phone was terribly excited.

"I'd like to insure my house," she said to the insurance man. "Can I do it over the phone?"

"I'm afraid not, madam, but I think we can send someone over to see you."

"But I can't wait," she cried nervously. "The house is on fire."

4.

An absent-minded writer was very busy at his desk one evening. Suddenly his little boy came into the room.

"What do you want?" asked the father. "I'm very busy now." "Oh, Daddy," said the boy. "I only want to say 'good-night'." "I have no time," answered the writer. "Tell me tomorrow morn­ing and if I've time, I'll listen to you."

When a man came home one evening, he found the house locked up. He tried to get in at various windows on the first floor but couldn't. Finally he climbed upon the shed-roof and with much difficulty entered through a second-storey window. On the dining-room table he found a note from his wife: "I have gone out. You'll find the key under the door mat."

6.

An absent-minded man often lost his umbrellas. He lost them in trams, trains and shops. His wife was very angry with him and often said: "We can't buy umbrellas every day."

One day this man saw an umbrella in the tram.

"Today I'll not lose it," he thought and brought it home.

When his wife saw the umbrella she began to laugh and said: "But you haven't taken any umbrella with you today!"

7.

If Sherlock Holmes were alive today he would be 143 years old, according to the evidence in the books about him. He would certainly no longer be living at 221B Baker Street, having retired to keep bees in Sussex during the First World War.

Yet letters addressed to him continue to arrive at Ba­ker Street, many of them with requests for the great de­tective's help.

They contain such phrases as: "The police are stump­ed¹" and "I beg of you, please hurry."

As there is no 221В Baker Street, the postman deli­vers them to number 221, the headquarters of the Abbey National Building Society. They get at least one a week. Many ask Holmes for his autograph or photograph. And a recent letter from an American girl, for instance, ends. "Please help me. I'm putting my entire confidence in you."

Where a person appears to be in genuine difficulties, he or she is advised to get in touch with a solicitor or the police.

Where the writer appears to believe that Holmes personally will open their letter, he or she is let down gently. They are told: "We are sure you are aware that Mr. Holmes is no longer with us."

to stump –ставить в тупик, озадачивать

8.

Here are some interesting facts about Britain:

The oldest dwelling house in the country is considered to be the Fighting Cocks Inn which was built in the year 800. The inn itself was opened much later, in 1543.

The most ancient city in England is Chester.

The highest mountain on the British Isles is Ben Nevis, in Scotland.

The narrowest street in Britain is Nelson Street in King's Lynn, near Norfolk. Here you can shake hands through the window with your neighbour living across the street.

The oldest working clock in the world is in Salisbury Cathedral, England. It dates from at least 1386.

 

9.

The late Thomas A. Edison was showing a party of friends over his beautiful summer residence, equipped with many labour-saving devices. One exception, however, was a turnstile so stiff that it required considerable strength to force a passage. One by one, his guests pushed through. At length one of them ventured to say, "Mr. Edison, why do you have everything so perfect, except this awful turnstile?"

"Ah!" replied the host, his eyes twinkling. "Everybody who pushes the turnstile around, pumps eight gallons of water into the tank on my roof."

Labour-saving device – устройство, облегчающее труд

Crossword puzzle

 

Across clues

3.a place where fruit trees are grown 4. a pair of wooden or metal covers on the on the outside of the window 6. a continuous feeling of worry about work or home. 7. a container used for cooking 11. a container for pepper 13. an ornamental branched holder for a number of lights 14. many houses are made of this material 15. a bed for a newborn baby 16. a seat without a back

 

Down Clues

1. a small uncomfortable room at the top of a house 2. a decorative cover fixed over a lamp to reduce or direct its light 5. tools which are used for cooking in the kitchen 8. a thing that you use for making clothes smooth 9. a piece of furniture for one person to sit on, which has a back 10. a large brush with a long handle for sweeping floors 11. a bucket 12. a glass or clay container used for storing food

 

Poems About Home

Who’s In?

"The door is shut fast

And everyone's out."

But people don't know

What they're talking about!

Says the fly on the wall,

And the flame on the coals,

And the dog on his rug,

And the mice in their holes,

And the kitten curled up,

And the spiders that spin —

"What, everyone's out?

Why, everyone's in!"

Elizabeth Fleming

The Flight of Time

Swift the moments fly away,

First the hour, and then the day;

Next the week, the month, the year

Go away and disappear.

 

***

The moments fly, the minutes fly -

a minute's gone, an hour is gone.

Anonymous

I remember, I remember,

The house where I was born,

The little window where the sun

Came peeping in at morn;

He never came a wink too soon,

Nor brought too long a day,

But now, I often wish the night

Had borne my breath away!

I remember, I remember,

The roses, red and white,

The violets and the lily-cups,

Those flowers made of light!

The lilacs where the robin built,

And where my brother set

The laburnum on his birth-day, —

The tree is living yet.

Thomas Hardy

 

The Law of Hospitality

There is a very simple rule

That everyone should know;

You may not hear of it in school,

But everywhere you go,

In every land where people dwell,

And men are good and true,

You'll find they understand it well,

And so I'll tell it you:

To everyone who gives me food,

Or shares his home with me,

I owe a debt of gratitude,

And I must loyal be.

I may not laugh at him, or say

Of him a word unkind;

His friendliness I must repay,

And to his faults be blind.

Gelett Burgess

The Barn

Rain-sunken roof, grown green and thin

For sparrows' nests and starlings' nests;

Dishevelled eaves; unwieldy doors,

Cracked rusty pump, and oaken floors,

And idly-pencilled names and jests

Upon the posts within.

 

The light pales at the spider's lust,

The wind tangs through the shattered pane:

An empty hop-poke spreads across

The gaping frame to mend the loss

And keeps out sun as well as rain,

Mildewed with clammy dust.

 

The smell of apples stored in hay

And homely cattle-cake is there.

Use and disuse have come to terms,

The walls are hollowed out by worms,

But men's feet keep the mid-floor bare

And free from worse decay.

Edmund Blunden

 

Proverbs About Home

 

1. To get out of bed on the wrong side.

2. Money spent on the brain is never spent in vain.

3. A creaking door hangs on its hinges.

4. A drop in the bucket.

5. A new broom sweeps clean.

6. All doors open to courtesy.

7. As you make your bed, so you must lie on it.

8. Charity begins at home.

9. East or west – home is best.

10. There is no place like home.

 

V. CREATIVE TASKS