How Soviet Kitchens Became Hotbeds Of Dissent And Culture

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/05/27/314961287/how-soviet-kitchens-became-hotbeds-of-dissent-and-culture

by GuiA • 12 years ago

142 40 12 years ago

npr.org

isalmon• 12 years ago

> "They were horribly built; you could hear your neighbor"

Pretty much every single apartment complex in the US I lived in (MA and CA).

bdamm• 12 years ago

The article then claims that these kitchens were private spaces. Doesn't that seem like a contradiction? If you can hear your neighbours then you can surely hear them playing Elvis.

guard-of-terra2• 12 years ago

You can hear them, so what? Listening to music wasn't any crime. Possession of some samizdat surely was; but reading books is not the loudest hobby.

Loud arguing lands somewhere in between. Still, what choice would you have?

olegious• 12 years ago

Actually my experience growing up in the USSR was completely different- you couldn't hear your neighbors because the walls were so thick (and not just our apartment, but all apartments that I remember), that was one of the surprising things about moving the US- hearing your neighbors through the walls.

Strom• 12 years ago

I still live in an apartment of the type referred to in the story. These are indeed quite sound-proof and I found the remark surprising in the article. I would say the main sound leakage in the default design are the electric socket holes in the wall, although not much. Still, these holes were filled with foam when I moved in and now everything is rather sound-proof.

tolyk• 12 years ago

You have probably been lucky to live in either Stalinkas or buildings built before the revolution. Buildings built before the revolution were mostly constructed for nobility therefore of a very good quality. Building build during the Stalin era(stalinkas) were also of the superior quality(and still are highly valued at Russia's housing market). Stalin's idea was that working class is a new nobility and therefore should live as the nobility. However construction rates were so slow, that by the time Kruschev came to power people were still living in wooden barracks sharing them between multiple families. Kruschevkas were never intended to be permanent housing, but rather temporary solution for the housing problem. It was intended to replace them with better quality housing once all Soviets had roof over their head. Which unfortunately never happened

qwerta• 12 years ago

In my experience those houses were mainly compared to traditional well build stone houses, that's how they got bad reputation.

rdtsc2• 12 years ago

Quite the opposite. Where I grew up they were built from large bricks, or concrete, and they were lots more sturdy and better built that man homes in US that are build from wood and covered in reinforced card-board (what others call "drywall").

I had relatives from back there look at my typical American built house and comment "oh nice hut, like a summer dacha or something". Thinking about it, I guess it is a ridiculously expensive wooden hut, but oh well. That is the standard here.

guard-of-terra2• 12 years ago

With not much other public spaces, where else will you go? There were a few counter-culture places in Moscow and Leningrad for the select, and kitchens for everyone else.

Still, it is impressive how viral some culture was. With nothing more than tape recorders and word-of-mouth, some soviet rock bands still had millions of listeners and could easily fill a stadium for a gig (and indeed did a bit later, when it became possible). Same for books and poetry.

This internet-level virability is no longer seen. Today you can't do much on the word-of-mouth - cultural space is too crowded.

alex_doom• 12 years ago

I love that they turned used xrays into bootleg vinyl recordings. Disrupt! :P

dominotw• 12 years ago

It is suprising how little is known about private life before khrushchev era.

I am currently reading a book called the Whisperers[1] which chronicles what really went on "behind the scenes" in Stalin's russia

http://www.amazon.com/Whisperers-Private-Life-Stalins-Russia...

arethuza• 12 years ago

Really good book. However, it's perhaps the only book I couldn't finish because I found it so upsetting.

firstOrder• 12 years ago

In a country with little or no place to gather for the free expression of ideas and no place to talk politics without fear of repression

Edward Snowden revealed that the USA was monitoring its citizens and storing that data in a way that far outstrips anything the KGB was ever capable of. Should he fear repression? He should, the government wants to lock him up and throw away the key for revealing this, just like they did to Manning for what he revealed. Actually, NPR spends most of its time bashing Snowden.

They seem gaga for dissidence in some foreign country, in a government that hasn't existed for over two decades though.

vvpan• 12 years ago

NPR bashing Snowden? Don't listen to it, but I'm very surprised.

electronous2• 12 years ago

just like they did to Manning for what he revealed.

She, not he

Dylan168072• 12 years ago

'he' at the time, dysphoria nonwithstanding.

mseebach4• 12 years ago

Without defending the NSA excesses, the difference is in the repression, not the monitoring. There is little evidence that the NSA monitoring was used for repression of citizens, and even less evidence of the sort of repression that was rampant in the Soviet bloc.

olifante• 12 years ago

nice blindfolds you have there. Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, the largest prison population by far among rich countries, institutionalized rape, drone executions without a shred of legal process, militarized police and you're still making excuses for what was not so long ago the beacon of modern civilization and democracy.

Zigurd4• 12 years ago

Do you think that people who want fundamental change in the US are not harassed and repressed, and their activities criminalized?

turingbook• 12 years ago

Nobody else feels that recording music on exposed x-ray film is very cool?

fit2rule• 12 years ago

I think its totally cool, and I've been trying to work out how to do it myself for the last 10 minutes .. if anyone has any tips about this, I'd love to know. There's a few lung xray's waiting for my industrial tracks in the drawer .. ;)

farva• 12 years ago

You'll need a recording gramophone like this one: http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/164f/

anovikov• 12 years ago

Except that it's not Khruschev's apartments. The building which interior we see on the photo is obviously not new, and Khruschev was in power for only 8 years, 1956-1964. So it couldn't be in that poor state in 'early 60s', those blocks have been brand new back then, or most of them, not even built yet.

'Khruschevkis' have been built since ca. 1959 through in fact, late 1970s (and very little, mainly in Moscow, were built before Khruschev was ousted), and they actually had thin walls through which you can hear. Most people in Khruschev's era lived in wooden temporary buildings (many of them stand till now, completely uninhabitable) built right after the war, or dormitories, or communal apartments (which were build in Stalin era and were normally very well built, except a family got a single room in 6-8 room apartment). Very few, upper class people could get a whole apartment of that kind. These indeed, had thick walls, high ceilings, were well-designed and still form a highly sought after part of real estate in Russian cities (while not many were built).

And yes, Khruschevkis were a good thing because they, as primitive and oversimplified as they were, were the only way for most families to move to the city from countryside, or to get their private housing for the first time.

dzhiurgis• 12 years ago

Turns out there is a wikipedia page for it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khrushchyovka

Uhhrrr• 12 years ago

Reminds me of Txoko's, the cooking clubs which were basically the only place Basques could congregate under Franco: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Txoko#History

webmanoffesto• 12 years ago

I teach English in a technical college, mainly to construction majors. I'm surprised but happy that I've come across great construction-related articles via Hacker News. the New Bay Bridge, in California (unsafe, late, and over budget); the CitiCorp Center in Manhattan (was in danger of collapsing); and this one.

How Soviet Kitchens Became Hotbeds Of Dissent And Culture

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