How Russia's Shared Kitchens Helped Shape Soviet Politics

In the decades following the 1917 Russian Revolution, most people in Moscow lived in communal apartments; seven or more families crammed together where there had been one, sharing one kitchen and one bathroom. They were crowded; stove space and food were limited. Clotheslines were strewn across the kitchen, the laundry of one family dripping into the omelet of another.

As the Soviet Union industrialized from the 1920s to the 1950s, and millions poured into Moscow from the countryside, one of the goals of the new government was to provide housing for the workers. It started putting people into apartments that had been occupied by the rich or by aristocrats who had been driven out by the new regime.

"The communal apartment was like a microcosm of Soviet society," says Anya von Bremzen, author of Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking. "People from all walks of life, sometimes absolute class enemies, living next to each other. The expression was 'densed up.' The allotment was 9 square meters per person."