As early as 1921 the Committee for the Improvement of Workers' Living Conditions had put the idea of the "new Socialist dwelling" -- or "communal living space" -- to the 4th Congress of the Komsomol.
It was not until 1927-28, however, that the new dwellings began to be constructed. To this day they haunt Russian people.
At first, pre-revolutionary apartment houses such as the famous "Port Arthur" building at 31 Smolenskaya Ulitsa, deserted for a decade, were reconstructed along the new Socialist lines. Soon clusters of purpose-built new Socialist apartment blocks followed.
The idea was that there should be no bathrooms of showers in these apartment buildings. Instead a shower and laundry block would be built for each group of apartment buildings in an area.
Some of these buildings can still be seen, for example at 21 Staro-Peterhofsky Prospect (constructed 1927-29) and 40 Kondratievsky Prospect (1929-31).
But the showers have not functioned for several decades and the inhabitants have no place to wash themselves. The laundry still functions at 21 Staro-Peterhofsky Prospect, but at other sites the laundry blocks have long since fallen idle.
But the revolution did not stop at the bathroom. Nor did Socialist living require that a home have a kitchen, so several apartment buildings were constructed without them. Instead there was a common canteen on the ground floor.
Typical examples of such houses are 1 Trinity Square (constructed 1929-33) near the Peter and Paul fortress and 7 Rubensteina Ulitsa (1930), just off Nevsky Prospect, as well as the "Port Arthur" building (dating from 1904, but rebuilt without kitchens in 1927). At 1 Trinity Square there were "electric shelves" in each room, which could be used for heating food, though they were unsuitable for cooking. At other buildings not even the electric shelves were installed.
But even in the majority of apartment buildings which did feature kitchens, they were usually small and shared by three or four families. Typically there was just one tap, which was used both for washing of people and dishes. There might be room for a small table. Gas stoves appeared only in the middle of the 1930s after severe criticism of the "new Socialist dwellings".
In such kitchens one could hardly manage to cook. But one was not supposed to. If there was no canteen on the ground floor, one could go to the nearest "factory-kitchen," either to eat in the canteen there or to carry the food home to eat there.
Leningrad's first factory-kitchen was set up in the home of a pre-revolutionary beer baron at 12 Staro-Peterhofsky Prospect. It was named after Lenin. An article published in Leningradskaya Pravda (March 17, 1927) gives a glimpse into the conditions. "In the box where the bread was kept there were not only numerous cockroaches, but two cats...In the dish with the cabbage salad there was a mouse."
By the late-1920s a group of architects was at work designing purpose-built factory-kitchens. Such buildings appeared simultaneously in different parts of the city in the late 1920s and the early 1930s, for example at 68 Bolshoy Prospect on Vasilevsky Island, at 45 Bolshoy Sampsonievsky Prospect, and in Stachek Square where the former factory-kitchen is now part of the Kirovsky department store.
As official enthusiasm for factory-kitchens grew, more and more appeared. Even churches were converted, the campaign against religion co-inciding with the factory-kitchen's hour of glory. (One former church factory-kitchen can still be seen at 61 Bolshoy Sampsonievsky Prospect).
The factory-kitchen campaign climaxed with the construction of a huge example at 114 Moskovksy Prospect in the 1930s, with an output of 50,000 dishes a day.
But the pot was about to boil over. At the 17th Congress of the Communist Party in 1934 the kitchenless new Socialist dwelling and the factory-kitchen were condemned as "leftist tendencies." Every Soviet family was given the right to cook their food at home. The construction of communal dwellings and factory-kitchens stopped. Several new Socialist dwelling ideologists lost their jobs. Some were even imprisoned.
But what happened to the new Socialist dwellings that had already been constructed?
In some buildings appeared communal kitchens shared by several apartments or a whole storey. In others, rooms within individual apartments (usually shared by two or three families) were gradually transformed into kitchens.
As for the factory-kitchen buildings, Leningrad's first factory-kitchen was turned into a maternity hospital and later a medical laboratory. The biggest, at 114 Moskovsky Prospect, became the St Petersburg Food Factory where salt, sugar, flour and cereals are packed for subsequent sale in the shops.
But most factory-kitchens were transformed into canteens or cafes. That usually left vast stretches of the buildings unused. Some remained that way and fell into various states of derelict.
The history of the new Socialist dwelling was a short one, lasting just seven years. But all over St Petersburg its traces can be seen in the buildings it left behind.