A communal apartment or kommunalka (Russian: коммуналка, коммунальная квартира) appeared in the Soviet Union after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, as a product of the “new collective vision of the future” and as a response to the housing crisis in urban areas. A communal apartment typically consisted of an apartment shared between two to seven families. Each family had it own room, which served as a living room, dining room, and bedroom for the entire family. The hallways, kitchen, bathroom and telephone were shared among all the residents. The communal apartment was the predominant form of housing in the USSR for generations, and still exist in “the most fashionable central districts of large Russian cities.”

In the 20th century, the USSR undertook “intensive industrialization and urbanization,” shifting from eighty percent of the population living in rural villages and towns at the time of the Revolution, to nearly the same percentage living in cities by the 1990s. People were driven from the countryside by poverty, collectivization, and Soviet industrialization campaigns. This exodus put enormous pressure on existing urban housing accommodations. Communal apartments were one answer to the housing crisis, and many considered them a step up from the alternatives of housing communes, hostels and barracks.