Last Hurrah in the Kommunalka

Yulia Bugakova, 26, a Tomsk State University geography graduate, decided 2 1/2 years ago to leave her native city in Siberia and travel 3,700 kilometers to find a better life in Moscow.

Like many other young Siberians having recently moved to Russia's capital, she spent her first few months in a dormitory, before winding up in a kommunalka, or communal apartment, in the Kitai-Gorod neighborhood, not far from Red Square.

Kommunalkas first appeared after the Bolshevik Revolution, when a massive rural exodus created housing crises in major cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Kommunalkas consist of private living quarters scattered around shared communal areas, usually including a kitchen and at least one bathroom. Up to six families can share these communal areas at a given time.

Yulia recently learned that she would be evicted because her room had been sold. This photo essay features Yulia enjoying her last ???????????µ́?»???? (get-together) before leaving her kommunalka behind.

Yulia managed to find another kommunalka nearby, but she ended up leaving soon afterward because of a new problem. "One of my flatmates is horrible!" she said. "Last night he brought home a prostitute, they had noisy sex and, when he left his room to pee, I was in the corridor and saw him walking around naked. … So disgusting!"

Yulia is currently back in her hometown Tomsk, but hopes that she will be able to return to Moscow one day, to a room of her own.

See our previous Photo Gallery:

Dormitory Life of Moscow's Students

Pascal Dumont / MT

More image galleries