Soviet Communal Living: An Oral History of the Kommunalka

169 Pages·2011·3.01 MB·English

by  Paola Messana (auth.)

PA L G R AV E
Series Editors: Linda Shopes and Bruce M. Stave
Editorial Board
Rina Benmayor Alexander Freund
Division of Humanities and Communication & Department of History &
Oral History and Community Memory Archive Oral History Centre
California State University Monterey Bay University of Winnipeg
United States Canada
Indira Chowdhury Anna Green
Archival Resources for Contemporary History College of Humanities
India University of Exeter
United Kingdom
Pilar Dominguez
Department of Historical Sciences Paula Hamilton
Division of Political Thought and Social Movements Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences &
Las Palmas de Gran Canaria Australian Centre for Public History
Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria University of Technology Sydney
España Australia
Sean Field Paul Ortiz
Centre for Popular Memory Department of History & Samuel Proctor Oral
Department of Historical Studies History Program
University of Cape Town University of Florida
South Africa United States
The Order Has Been Carried Out: History, Memory, and Meaning of a Nazi Massacre
in Rome, by Alessandro Portelli (2003)
Sticking to the Union: An Oral History of the Life and Times of Julia Ruuttila, by
Sandy Polishuk (2003)
To Wear the Dust of War: From Bialystok to Shanghai to the Promised Land, an Oral
History, by Samuel Iwry, edited by L. J. H. Kelley (2004)
Education as My Agenda: Gertrude Williams, Race, and the Baltimore Public Schools,
by Jo Ann Robinson (2005)
Remembering: Oral History Performance, edited by Della Pollock (2005)
Postmemories of Terror: A New Generation Copes with the Legacy of the “Dirty War,”
by Susana Kaiser (2005)
Growing Up in the People’s Republic: Conversations between Two Daughters of
China’s Revolution, by Ye Weili and Ma Xiaodong (2005)
Life and Death in the Delta: African American Narratives of Violence, Resilience,
and Social Change, by Kim Lacy Rogers (2006)
Creating Choice: A Community Responds to the Need for Abortion and Birth Control,
1961–1973, by David P. Cline (2006)
Voices from This Long Brown Land: Oral Recollections of Owens Valley Lives and
Manzanar Pasts, by Jane Wehrey (2006)
Radicals, Rhetoric, and the War: The University of Nevada in the Wake of Kent State,
by Brad E. Lucas (2006)
The Unquiet Nisei: An Oral History of the Life of Sue Kunitomi Embrey, by Diana
Meyers Bahr (2007)
Sisters in the Brotherhoods: Working Women Organizing for Equality in New York
City, by Jane LaTour (2008)
Iraq’s Last Jews: Stories of Daily Life, Upheaval, and Escape from Modern Babylon,
edited by Tamar Morad, Dennis Shasha, and Robert Shasha (2008)
Soldiers and Citizens: An Oral History of Operation Iraqi Freedom from the Battlefield
to the Pentagon, by Carl Mirra (2008)
Overcoming Katrina: African American Voices from the Crescent City and Beyond,
by D’Ann R. Penner and Keith C. Ferdinand (2009)
Bringing Desegregation Home: Memories of the Struggle toward School Integration in
Rural North Carolina, by Kate Willink (2009)
I Saw It Coming: Worker Narratives of Plant Closings and Job Loss, by Tracy E.
K’Meyer and Joy L. Hart (2010)
Speaking History: Oral Histories of the American Past, 1865–Present, by Sue
Armitage and Laurie Mercier (2010)
Surviving Bhopal: Dancing Bodies, Written Texts, and Oral Testimonials of Women
in the Wake of an Industrial Disaster, by Suroopa Mukherjee (2010)
Living with Jim Crow: African American Women and Memories of the Segregated
South, by Anne Valk and Leslie Brown (2010)
Gulag Voices: Oral Histories of Soviet Incarceration and Exile, by Jehanne M. Gheith
and Katherine R. Jolluck (2011)
Detained without Cause: Muslims’ Stories of Detention and Deportation in America
after 9/11, by Irum Shiekh (2011)
Soviet Communal Living: An Oral History of the Kommunalka, by Paola Messana
(2011)
Oral History and Photography, edited by Alexander Freund and Alistair Thomson
(2011)
Memories of Queer Latino San Francisco, by Horacio N. Roque-Ramirez (2011)
Soviet Communal
Living
Soviet Communal
Living
An Oral History of the
Kommunalka
Paola Messana
SOVIET COMMUNAL LIVING
Copyright © Paola Messana, 2011.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2011 978-0-230-11016 -8
All rights reserved.
First published in 2011 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®
in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world,
this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited,
registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills,
Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.
Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States,
the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-349-29247-9 ISBN 978-0-230-11810-2 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230118102
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the
Library of Congress.
Saint Petersburg, 2002, Plastic bags in a kitchen, “Kommunalki,” © Françoise
Huguier
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.
First edition: March 2011
Contents
Series Editors’ Foreword xi
Foreword xiii
by Vasily Rudich
Introduction 1
CHAPTER 1
“Uplotnienie”: Filling Up 7
CHAPTER 2
White Army, Red Army 11
CHAPTER 3
T e Visit to Lenin 15
CHAPTER 4
Like Life in Naples 19
CHAPTER 5
I, Princess Golitsyn 23
CHAPTER 6
Spy Stories 25
CHAPTER 7
T e Black Crow 31
CHAPTER 8
Even the Baltics 33
CHAPTER 9
T e Siege of Leningrad 39
CHAPTER 10
T e Denunciation 43
viii / Contents
CHAPTER 11
Summer 1948 49
CHAPTER 12
T e Ambulance, the Dead, and the Others 53
CHAPTER 13
T e American Legacy 57
CHAPTER 14
Jewish Poison in the Pots 61
CHAPTER 15
T e Letter 67
CHAPTER 16
New Year’s Eve Celebration 71
CHAPTER 17
How T irty People Can Share an Apartment 75
CHAPTER 18
T e Gulag and the Roslovian Smell 79
CHAPTER 19
Ballad of a Soldier 87
CHAPTER 20
Lenins, Nothing But Lenins 93
CHAPTER 21
Disidence 97
CHAPTER 22
T e Passageway Room 103
CHAPTER 23
T e Prostitute 107
CHAPTER 24
T e French Lover 111
CHAPTER 25
Masha L. and the Spirit of the Kommunalka 115
CHAPTER 26
T e English Girl and the Blackmarketeer 123
Contents / ix
CHAPTER 27
An Offi cer in the Strategic Nuclear Forces 129
CHAPTER 28
From Putsch to Putsch 135
CHAPTER 29
Seventeen Years after the Fall of the USSR 139
CHAPTER 30
Two Sisters through History 143
Appendix A 145
Appendix B 147
Apendix C 149
Apendix D 151
Notes 157