Photo Friday - Хрущовка

Хрущовка (pronounced khrushchovka) is a type of low-cost, concrete (sometimes brick), three- to five-storied apartment building developed in the Soviet Union during the late 1950s. They were developed due to a severe housing shortage because of WWII. The fighting on soviet land caused mass destruction and the bulk of what was not destroyed was lost to German occupation during the first few months in the war.

Fast forward to after the war with limited housing it was important to get as many low-cost living spaces built in a short period of time. You could consider khrushchovka an early type of prefabricated buildings. Concrete panels were made at concrete plants and completed bathroom cubicles were completed off site as well and then these were trucked to sites. Early designs have all the rooms separated and connected with a small hallway, while later designs, to save space, attached the living room to the bedroom(s) requiring residents to pass through the living room to reach the bedrooms. And I can personally attest to the very thin walls, I think my neighbor has been trying to build a new apartment inside of his apartment for the past week. Elevators were considered to costly and at the time Soviet health and safety standard required buildings over five stories to have elevators, so most khrushchovka are not over five stories. My building, as well as the one pictured are five stories high.

At the time of construction these were considered a temporary 25-year-fix, but many communities cannot afford to build new apartments so millions of people across the former USSR live in this style of apartments. Even in cities that have the ability to make new apartments, the cheap rent in khrushchovka still attracts people. Today the word хрущовка is typically used only to describe very tiny one bedroom apartments with similar exterior as shown in the photographs.

-M

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