Paul Goble
Staunton, Aug. 22 – Rising housing costs in Moscow and other major Russian cities have prompted an increasing number of people there to purchase individual rooms in communal apartments, a form of housing most had tried to escape and until recently believed that they had escaped forever.
Demand for single rooms in communal apartments has driven up their price by more than ten percent in Moscow and almost as much in 64 of the 70 largest cities in the Russian Federation, Novyye Izvestiya journalist Oksana Samoylenko reports (newizv.ru/news/2025-08-22/kommunalki-vozvraschayutsya-rossiyane-nachali-massovo-skupat-komnaty-v-gorodah-437713).
According to an Apartment World study she cites, the average cost of such a single room in a communal apartment where kitchens and bathrooms are shared has now reached 4.6 million rubles (46,000 US dollars). Increases albeit smaller ones for this form of housing are also up elsewhere, it says (mirkvartir.ru/journal/analytics/2025/08/13/komnaty-v-rossijskih/).
Communal apartments, known universally in Russia as kommunalki, appeared in massive numbers in the 1920s and 1930s Soviet Union when Moscow promoted rapid urbanization as part of its industrial development program. Notorious for the difficulties of life they created, they became the subject of innumerable novels and films.
Now, they are returning because the cost of apartments, even studio sized, in Russian cities has increased so rapidly that many Russians cannot afford them and so, if they want to benefit from urban live and access to better jobs, they are choosing to go back to the kommunalka-style of living.
The lack of privacy in such arrangements almost certainly means that those who return to communal apartments will have fewer children than those who can afford their own apartments or houses, and that means this choice will further depress the birthrate in the Russian Federation, exactly the reverse of what the Putin regime hopes for.
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