Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A communal apartment in the former Soviet Union, typically shared by several families.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Russian коммуналка

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Examples

  • An only child, he -- like millions of other Russians -- grew up in what is called a kommunalka (communal apartment), sharing a bathroom and a windowless kitchen with several other families.

    The Man Who Would Be Tsar 2008

  • It is also a peacemaker: when the kommunalka bathroom is finally clean, one neighbor will pour the other the traditional one hundred grams, to make up.

    Peace Meals Anna Badkhen 2010

  • It is also a peacemaker: when the kommunalka bathroom is finally clean, one neighbor will pour the other the traditional one hundred grams, to make up.

    Peace Meals Anna Badkhen 2010

  • Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin was born in St Petersburg - then called Leningrad - in 1952, and grew up in a kommunalka, the miserably cramped communal flats that housed millions of urban Soviet families.

    The Independent - Frontpage RSS Feed 2011

  • In his early childhood, the Prokhorovs lived in a kommunalka, a communal apartment where multiple families shared a bathroom and kitchen in what most Russians remember as the dreariest days of the Soviet era.

    BusinessWeek.com -- 2010

  • The prices are a far cry from Soviet times when Russians paid monthly rents of a handful of dollars, but lived often several families to a shared apartment or kommunalka.

    The Economic Times 2008

Comments

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  • That peculiarly Soviet tradition of the communal apartment.

    August 26, 2008