In Saint Petersburg, Residents Stuck in Soviet 'Kommunalkas'

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In Saint Petersburg's largest communal apartment, people barely talk to each other. Living conditions here are dismal and most residents dream of leaving the place for good.

Located in the center of the former imperial capital, the "kommunalka" flat occupies the entire ground floor of a building, with 34 rooms coming off a corridor almost 100 meters (330 feet) long.

Once a part of Soviet life, communal apartments have all but died out in modern Russia -- apart from Saint Petersburg, where tens of thousands remain stuck in the falling-apart spaces.

"No person should have to live in these conditions," said Rosa, a 50-year-old resident of the brick building on Detskaya Street, rocking her granddaughter.

Until recently, around 100 people lived in the communal space here and queues to use the showers or toilet were a common sight.

Today, about a dozen people occupy the apartment and the building constructed in 1958 is falling into disrepair.

The cracked walls are covered in graffiti, and inside, the floors are bare.

Communal rooms are dimly lit and those who live there cook on old electric hobs.

Worst of all, Rosa said, is that "the doors to the entrance are always open so anyone can just walk in from the street."

As a result, the inhabitants keep contact between themselves to a bare minimum.

- 'Wasn't too expensive' -

From the outside, the four-story building, originally designed to house doctors, seems in a good state.

The upper floors have been turned into traditional apartments. But in the 1980s the lower level became a "kommunalka" when the doctors' offices moved out of the area.

"We rented two rooms here because it wasn't too expensive," said Rosa, who moved to Saint Petersburg from the North Caucasus city of Pyatigorsk to help her daughter with her child.

"I hope we'll be able to move out soon, my son-in-law should be buying a place."

Renting one room in the communal flat costs up to 5-6,000 rubles (up to 80 euros, $90) a month.

- Post revolution origins -

Communal apartments appeared in Russia after the 1917 Bolshevik revolution amid an acute housing crisis.

Flats that formerly belonged to wealthy Russians were used to house workers and peasants who had moved to cities, with the original owners usually confined to a single room.

In the 1980s, some 40 percent of housing in the center of Leningrad -- as the city was then known -- was communal.

But when the Soviet Union collapsed, many of these apartments were bought by affluent Russians, and in 2008, a program was introduced to rehouse those still living in "kommunalkas".

However, around 83,000 still live in such accommodation in the city of five million people.

- 'Dreaming of moving out' -

Dmitry, who also lives in the kommunalka on Detskaya Street and, like Rosa, declined to give his last name, said that seven years ago their "accommodation was ruled to be 'unsanitary' by the city."

City hall offered to rehouse those who were renting the living space but others owned their rooms under a law that was brought in during the perestroika reforms of the 1980s.

Those who owned the property "were left with nothing," said the 47-year old driver, who arrived in the flat in the 2000s.

"We can't sell our rooms and it's obvious that nobody wants to buy them," said Dmitry.

Since the ruling about the state of the building, only he and a dozen others have stayed.

"It's because the authorities won't suggest anything else," he said.

Dmitry said that about a year ago authorities began what he called "cosmetic" works on his building, but he claimed this was "just a ruse."

It allows officials to revoke the unsanitary rating for the building without "finding a solution or doing anything to improve people's quality of life," he said.

"Everyone dreams of moving out.

"Nowadays, kommunalkas are just a place for people on the fringes, like seasonal workers or Saint Petersburgers like us who don't have the means to leave."