Хроники московского быта. Сталинка / Chronicles of Moscow Life: The Stalin Houses. (Documentary. Russia, 2012)(TV Tsentr, 01:45) -- > Success or failure at the exasperating and time-consuming game called Soviet Life was often judged by a v. simple measurement: square meters. If you secured a Moscow apartment w/ a lot of ‘em, you were clearly a winner. But the biggest winners sometimes took the biggest risks, too… In 1931 the elite of Soviet society flocked (or were self-herded) to the first of the great Stalinist apartment bldgs, a huge complex on the Moscow River with sq. meters up the wazoo for all residents – which came to include marshals and ministers, Peoples’ Artists and decorated diplomats, Heroes of the Soviet Union and even Stalin’s own children. This (still standing) structure became known as the Дом на набережной/House on the Embankment, and its eliteness demographic came to entail a v. high mortality factor: the House saw fully one third of its residents simply disappear from the premises over it first two decades. Um, yikes. Suddenly your apartment doesn’t look that bad after all. This v. watchable documentary deals with various of the Stalin Empire-style bdlgs, including the “wedding cake” towers and rather more squat efforts, but the accent is definitely on the famously resident-unfriendly House, with the fate of Aleksei Stakhanov – yes, the original Stakhanovite, who received his apt. in the House in, you guessed it, 1937 – serving as the highlight (or p’haps lowlight) of the film. Directed by Elena Nemykh and Natalia Akulenok. Highly recommended.
Posted on: Fri, 23 Aug 2013 09:15:11 +0000
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