Russia

16 families in an apartment

They are the Remnants of the Soviet era: Kommunalkas, the community apartments. However, unlike temporary students-WGs in the West, are Kommunalkas diced mostly wild. Mandlmeier was in a guest.

Sorry, but this is the First thing I notice: the smell. In the stairwell it smells strictly. The front door is not closing properly and the Kiosk is just around the corner. With Beer. A Lot Of Beer.

However, if you are the first challenge to his sense organs and on the third floor of a beautiful and wonderfully run-down Jugendstilbaus is arrived, and opens a Kingdom. The realm of voices and moods, of the people and opinions of the courts, and rumors, the realm of the communal flat at the Ligowski Prospekt three in the Russian metropolis of Saint Petersburg.

The dirty stove in the communal kitchen

The apartment occupies an entire floor and is a simple floor plan. The twelve-Meter-long and four-metre high communal hallway, to the right and to the left ten square meters of a tiny communal room off. At the end of the hallway, the sink and the toilet. And a kitchen. For all of you. For sixteen families, for the communal inhabitants, male, female, young and old.

Kitchen command center and brain of the communal

The hallway is dark, the colour of the wall is crumbling. Half of the lights not lit. At the end of light. The light of the day in the kitchen, in the heart of the communal flat, in your command center and your brain. Here Polina. Polina is the oldest communal-resident, within the meaning of the period of residence, the Mittdreißigerin was born here and has most of the rights.

The oldest resident of Polina with her Baby Alexandra on the lap

Because: “Here, a clear hierarchy prevails” reveals the sympathetic mother by the name of Polina, the secrets of the peaceful communal Co-existence, while to her breast a Baby sucks, which flirt with me. “The inhabitants, the inhabitants here the longest, have the most rights. As I. You are allowed to have in the kitchen, a table and a corner away from the stove.”

Each family has its own toilet seat

Five tables and two stoves for sixteen families. Who wants to cook, must be present. The only washing machine is in continuous use. Click! The light switch of the toilet. Polina’s life companion Evgenij greets friendly. In one Hand you have the pink toilet paper in the other, the cream-colored toilet seat. Each family has its own. “Good Day!”, Evgenij says. “Welcome to us! Here the boundaries between intimacy and community.”

An Asian woman in SIPS with your house Slippers. I don’t know that it is another Uzbek, your name I learn. Of the sixteen families, half are almost Uzbeks, are guest workers, who earn in Russia a multiple of their salary in Uzbekistan. First of all, you don’t talk to me, are suspicious of the Reporter from the West. Later on, we make friends.

Only the Uzbeks interfere with the comfort

Polina likes to talk a lot and open the door and asks me after five minutes in your room. As I enter the building-Eckappartment with elaborate stucco, I look for the redhead Joaschik in the way. The Communal Hangover. Used to be a rat and a wave lived here parakeet, then you were gone…

Cheap, but shabby: the bathroom

The oak parquet creaks confidential. I feel on the single Sofa. “Why do you live here? With so many people and so little comfort?”, I asked Polina. “Because that’s convenient,” she smiles. “And cheap. We pay a third of what the other numbers in the centre. And we are not so bad here. It is however, comfortable. Only the Uzbeks are becoming more and more. This is less comfortable.”

Uzbeks are indispensable, such as Tajiks since a couple of years ago from the streets of St. Petersburg. You can use at the checkouts of the supermarkets and clean rooms in the Hotels, they are as street cleaners, market vendors and taxi drivers on the road. You are a guest worker, living on their families in Central Asia are separated, to support their families in Central Asia financially. With money from Russia.

Eaten separately

“Plow,” says the particular anonymous Uzbek woman: “Please!” I’ll try the Uzbek national dish of rice, carrots and mutton meat. Delicious!

The Uzbek resident of cook your national dish

Those who believe that communal residents eat together sometimes, you are wrong. Do not eat at all. At least not visible. Because cuisine, prepared in the community, the meals are taken separately in the individual rooms. Sometimes on the floor for lack of seats – as in the case of the hospitable Uzbek couple.

“Who should we choose?”

“We live together with all the peaceful”, says later, Polina, I’m after the Uzbek Plow coffee. And an extensive narrative of an hour in Russian cuisine philosophy. Who else wants to know how a Russian ticks, must in the kitchen!

Eaten is cramped and in the private rooms

“Duma Elections? When I was choose the last Time anyway?” Polina asks her partner Evgenij. Baby Alexandra is flirting back at the breast. Hangover Joaschik wants to play. “At the beginning of the 2000s,” says Evgenij, the shows, unlike Alexandra and Joaschik to have a serious conversation interest. In Addition To Polina.

“Who should we choose?”, the young man says. “A real Opposition, we do not have. A with the own program, which would have promised us a better life.”

Polina added: “Such a big country like Russia needs anyway an Imperial style of leadership with totalitarian traits. Who wants to change must risk civil unrest. I don’t want to.”

Putin secures with stability, the consent

“This Imperial style of leadership with totalitarian trains” take as many Russians, as they believe, to have peace of mind.

“Today’s Russia is reminiscent of the Soviet Union of the seventies. At the end of the business and a new life is collapsing begins. But we will not experience it. That is why we have no big plans for the future,” says Polina. Her friend agrees: “We live here and now. Nothing prevents us to be happy in this country. Or we prefer to say: Nothing we hate so much here, that we would have to leave. Clearly, we in Russia have defects. But what country has not?”

Stability is what the Kremlin chief Putin secured the consent in the country. The consent of many of the Polina’s and Evgenijs. But for how long? The current economic crisis makes a stable future of Russia is always uncertain. The prices are on the rise and wages to fall. And the communal? The communal remains. Here the people will find their Grip. In spite of the clear hierarchy. Or maybe thanks to it?