Talk:Khrushchevka

Elevators

Don't most of these buildings have elevators nowadays? If so, this should be mentioned in the article. Esn 01:16, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

no. YOu cannot retrofit elevator into a khruschovka. And 5-storeyed buildings were not supposed to have one. `'Miikka 01:26, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

O' YES, actually they tried several upgraded versions of khrushchevkas with outside elevators, albeit mainly to serve the more livable part, the added "penthouse" atop of an older building, which had to be seriously reinforced to hold the additional weight. Steveshelokhonov 23:56, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Hehe: I was writing "into" not "onto". Anyway, your observation is interesting and certainly deserves some text added (do you have references?). Now that you mentioned it I do remember various attempts to "upgrade" khrushchovkas, but after "evroremont" (Евроремонт, euro-remodelling, article about a notable phenomenon is missing!) and other things they are ain't khrushchovkas no more. `'Míkka 00:46, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Acoustics good for a choir singing with neighbors, and Gavanna owners joke

A popular Soviet-time joke about everyday life in a low-end "khrushchevka" apartment was that "every khrushchevka resident has his (her) own Gavanna" (humorously alluding to both the city of Havana, and to low-end amenities in "khrushchevkas"). Although I've never lived in a khrushchevka, but visited some in Moscow, in Leningrad, and in several cities across the former USSR (from the Baltic States to Uzbekistan, Siberia, and Sakhalin). Only good humor could help survive a khrushchevka under those living conditions, and the "lucky" people actually developed a whole range of jokes: from Gavanna to "acoustics good enough to sing in a choir" with neighbors. Steveshelokhonov 00:09, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Cause of "housing crises"?

Isn't it the case that this type of quick-build was necessitated by the dreadful destruction caused by WW2? Shouldn't the article say something about this? Camillus (talk) 23:10, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

Not just the WWII destruction, but even more so, the fact that not all that much housing (in term of apartment count) was built under Stalin. During Stalin's era, mostly two kind of apartments were built: (1) large, high-quality apartments (some even with a servant's room) for the high-ranking civil servants, executives, and professionals; (2) shared apartments (kommunal'naya kvartira) for the masses, where an apartment could have 5 or more bedrooms and just one kitchen and bathroom, typically with a separate family living in each bedroom. Khrushev's housing construction drive aimed at providing a separate apartment (either a "council flat" from the state, or one provided by the employer, or a family-owned unit in a housing co-op) to each family, by means of drastically reducing construction costs and getting rid of all non-essentials. It still took until the late 1970s or even 1980s to mostly fulfill this vision. Vmenkov (talk) 03:57, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

I am afraid your simplistic version is quite mistaken about what was actually with Soviet housing. I will try to write an article on this topic. `'Míkka>t 17:00, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Such an article would indeed be very welcome! Vmenkov (talk) 09:31, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

This simplified version is just a lie. Kommunalkas mostly werent built. It was houses of nobility from pre-soviet era. Stalinkas wee built in a slow pace. Also, war reduced an amount of livable houses. Lack of possibilities in pre-war era didn't give a chance to start massive house production. https://www.vestnik-mgou.ru/Articles/Doc/11360—Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.18.188.5 (talk) 09:40, 9 April 2021 (UTC)

Mongolia?

Hi, could these two buildings be Khrushchovkas? They are situated in Nalaikh, a mining town very near Ulaanbaatar. Yaan (talk) 13:00, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Looks very similar. but you cannot know it from sight. Besides, the term is a vernacular without strict definition; it refers to housing with apartments of simplified floorplan, introduced by Khrushchev. It is quite possible the style was applied in Mongolia by Russian architects, but you can know it only from some texts, not from picture. - Altenmann >t 15:45, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks a lot anyway. Yaan (talk) 16:28, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

China

China is filthy with these things, particularly in second-tier cities that have seen booms in population. They even make new ones now that look like the old, but with all the mod coms. Never heard anyone refer to them as "Heluxiaofu lou" (the name of Chinese article), but Krushchev got a pretty chilly reception in China after his Secret Speech, so that's not surprising. 207.188.232.179 (talk) 13:26, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

Yes, the typical 5-6 story buildings of cheaper Chinese apartment complexes (小区, xiaoqu) are quite similar to their counterparts found in Soviet mikroraions. In China, they seem to have built them way into the 1990s. You certainly get the deja vu feeling when walking up the stairs... One can even easily translate the Russian подъезд podyezd with the Chinese 单元 danyuan. (The term for one section of a long, multi-stairway apartment building; a podyezd/danyuan consists of one stairway and the apartments that are accessible from that stairway. There does not seem to be a common term for that "unit" of a building in American or Australian English, perhaps because such design is not very common in N. America or Australia). There are a few visible differences, however, due to climatic and cultural factors (here, comparing Central European Russia - about 55° northern latitude with China's Yangtze Valley, about 30°N):

• A Soviet building would typically be 5 stories tall, sometimes 3-4 (in smaller towns). I think the building codes required an elevator in taller buildings, so you'd hardly ever see a 6- or 7-story building. (Newer, post-Khrushchev elevator-equipped buildings - from the 1970s on - would usually have 9 or 12 floors, or [in bigger cities] more). In China, 6 floors walk-ups seems to be common.
• Soviet buildings could be oriented every which way, based on the terrain, street plan, etc; a typical arrangement would be to place them so that every 4-6 buildings form a large rectangular courtyard between them, for kids to play etc. In China, the tradition calls for buildings to be aligned along the E-W axis, with windows facing N and S. So most commonly you'd have lots of long buildings standing parallel to each other, in rows. There are exceptions in both countries, of course.
• A Chinese building would be "thinner" than a Soviet one. So typically in China you'd have 2 apartments per landing, with every apartment having both a northern and southern exposure. The common Soviet design would call for 4 apartments per landing, so most units would have all windows facing to only one direction. This, incidentally, meant that in China you'd often have a window in the bathroom - a feature virtually unheard-of in the USSR.
• Generally, Chinese apartments seem to be more spacious than their Soviet (Khruschev- or Brezhnev-era) counterparts - but then I probably have not seen Chinese apartments from the 1960s or 70s.
• The Soviet designers, due to the harsh winter, went for a really solid heating system. Typically, a small natural-gas or fuel-oil building heating plant shared by several buildings, or even a city-wide cogeneration plant would pump hot water through the buildings' heating system. (Very pleasant: no noise, no streams of hot dry air, and it feels real warm throughout the building...). You'd have double-glazed windows, too. In Central China, where palm trees grow (though winter days can be near-freezing), heating apparently is not felt necessary (while good ventilation is!), so in winter you'd just put an extra sweater (or two, or a coat) on... A broken window in a hallway of Soviet building would be a source of unceasing complaints (well, at -20 C it has to be), while in China they'd have the hallway windows open throughout the winter, and some buildings may not even have an entry door. (I suppose that in Beijing or Harbin this all would be very different, of course).
• While natural gas or electric stoves are common in both countries, in some (older/cheaper?) Chinese buildings people apparently still would use those round clay-and-coal-dust briquettes for cooking.
• The preferred bathroom design in the USSR/Russia calls for each apartment having one little room with a bathtub and a sink in it, and another little room with just a toilet - the arrangement often seen in some parts of Europe and in Australia. The North American style layout, with both the bathtub and the toilet in a single "bathroom", is known to Russians as the "combined bathroom", and viewed as an unpleasant example of Khrushchev's economizing, found only in smaller, less desirable units (true Khrushchyovkas). In China, it's usually all "combined", as in North America.
• Soviet apartment bathrooms would typically have the shower-above-the-bathtub arrangement (similar to most Western countries), while in China, you get your bathroom floor washed while you take a shower (same as in budget hotels).

-- Vmenkov (talk) 21:33, 15 March 2012 (UTC)

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Cultural Significance of the Khrushchyovka

I think this article could be expanded to the benefit of readers if it discussed the cultural significance of the Khrushchyovkas in post-Soviet societies. I noticed the article mentioning the Soviet film "The Irony of Fate" in a pop culture reference. Maybe the article could benefit from having a description of the film and what role Khrushchyovkas play in the film in order to expand on the reference. There are many good articles in the Calvert Journal that could aid in this.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Gillybean399 (talk • contribs) 19:53, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Brezhnevka

Should there be a page on on Brezhnevka to cover post Kruschev developments--24.77.16.87 (talk) 04:29, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

+1 to the notion.

I tried to add "brezhnevka" word to an article to "tower blocks" and found there is NOTHING on the word "brezhnevka" in Wikipedia. 81.89.66.133 (talk) 09:29, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

Requested move 4 January 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) The Night Watch (talk) 04:12, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

---

Khrushchyovka → Khrushchevka – WP:COMMONNAME in reliable sources, WP:CONSISTENT with spelling of Nikita Khrushchev and other articles on related subjects (intitle:Khrushchev, intitle:Khrushchyov).

Google Books Ngram shows that the proposed spelling was always the majority spelling until 2015. The current spelling was almost never used until 2009, and recently broke even (maybe Wikipedia feedback effect, since this article was created in 2006?).

Google Books

• "Khrushchevka" -Wikipedia Page 38 of about 31,400 results (375 shown)
• "Khrushchyovka" -Wikipedia Page 36 of about 26,700 results (356 shown)

Google Scholar

• "Khrushchevka" -Wikipedia Page 24 of 247 results
• "Khrushchyovka" -Wikipedia Page 15 of 148 results

 —Michael Z. 21:58, 4 January 2023 (UTC)

• Support per strongly-researched nomination. —Roman Spinner (talk • contribs) 10:58, 5 January 2023 (UTC)
• Support per Khrushchev, Chebyshev etc. --Smedja (talk) 22:33, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Un-capitalized

Most of the English-language sources cited use a lowercased form of the name. Google Ngram indicates the lowercased form has been slightly more common in the last 15 years.[1]

On the one hand, we usually but not always capitalize common nouns derived from proper names, but on the other, some of the sources italicize the word as a romanization from Russian, which does not have that rule.

Both forms are in use, but lowercased seems to be slightly favoured. So I will edit the article to un-capitalize khrushchevka.  —Michael Z. 16:13, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

(Prevailing Russian usage seems to be un-capitalized).[2]  —Michael Z. 16:16, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

KhryushchEvka

I think Wikipedians did a mistake renaming "khrushchYOvka" as "khrushchEvka". You see, for a long period of time, the Ё was not represented in Russian JCUKEN (ЙЦУКЕН) keyboard layout of typewriters. So, the lack of the Ё symbol is not "common name" but rather, a common technical limitation. Nowadays, there are decrees that make Ё and Е equal in Russian documents, just to prevents situations liek that. 81.89.66.133 (talk) 09:33, 30 March 2023 (UTC)