Communal lifestyle: norm and anomaly in the everyday space of the soviet city
The article is devoted to the specifics of the communal lifestyle, considered as one the key phenomena of Soviet everyday life. The communal apartment in Soviet Russia is investigated in the context of the perception by contemporaries of the socio-cultural norms and everyday practices, the shaping of the Soviet lifestyle. The article analyzes the tendencies and measures of the policy of the Soviet government, ideological, socio-economic and sociocultural factors influenced the transformation of the communal lifestyle into a new model of social interaction, a structure-forming norm of everyday life. The strategies and practices of the communal lifestyle are demonstrated on materials from 1917 to the mid-1930s, characterizing the processes of transformation of the borders of private life, destabilization of the sphere of dwelling and the consolidation of the Soviet social hierarchy in the everyday experience. The article examines the paradoxes of the communal lifestyle: the practice of «compaction» of dwellings, the introduction of a uniform standard of living space, the absence of household isolation, the loss of the sense of ownership and the status of the household. The new strategies for the receipt of basic resources that have arisen in the communal environment are noted. The study involved unpublished documents from regional archives, diaries, revealing the processes of the formation of a communal lifestyle in the capitals and in the province. The phenomenon of a communal apartment is studied in several aspects - as the area of the formation of the Soviet type of person, as an ideological means for introducing a new hierarchy and value system, and finally, as a unique type of dwelling that has become a symbol of the Soviet era.