Definitions
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A
communal apartment in the formerSoviet Union , typically shared by several families.
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
rolig commented on the word kommunalka
That peculiarly Soviet tradition of the communal apartment.
August 26, 2008