Communal Apartments: New Online Resource

[Slava Paperno]

Dear SEELANGERs,

Please note a new major resource created by the Colgate-Cornell team 
(joined now by Nancy Ries of Colgate and Ilya Utekin of European University 
in St. Petersburg).

http://kommunalka.colgate.edu

Communal Living in Russia: A Virtual Museum of Soviet Everyday Life

The site took almost two years to produce, even though it was based on 
years of earlier research by Ilya Utekhin.

You'll see three hours of video interviews filmed in St. Petersburg 
kommunalkas, 350 photographs, dozens of essays, and other materials.

The site is bilingual: all materials, including the videos, are available 
in Russian and English. Select a language when you enter and change it at 
any time. Bilingual displays of all texts are also available.

Don't miss the "Your Tours" section where you can compile series of 
exhibits for your students, to be used as assigments or for in-class 
demonstrations. You can write your own introduction and conclusion to your 
tours, and even annotate the exhibits. Or you can ask the students to 
create their own compilations and share them with fellow students or submit 
them as homework.

Those of you who may have used "Michael and Svetlana," "Interviews from 
Russia," "Children from Russia," or "Life on the Atomic River" will 
recognize the documentary style of the kommunalka videos: they are expertly 
filmed by the award-winning filmmaker Slawomir Grunberg and, like those 
films, this new Web site brings exciting questions to the classroom:

Why does Iraida Yakovlevna say "Mne otdel'naya kvartira ne nuzhna!"

What does Alla Ignat'evna mean when she says "V novostrojkakh polnaya 
bezdukhovnost'."

Did the really live "kak odna bol'shaya sem'ya"?

Why is the toilet seat hanging in the kitchen, next to a toothbrush?

Why does the young man refuse to fix the leaking faucet?

What would you do if you had a similar huge hole in the kitchen ceiling?

And so on... It's an interesting world, one where much can be learned. The 
site went up only a week or so ago, but I see that it is already discussed 
in blogs. One posting that I found through Google says "After viewing the 
photo galleries or watching the video tours, you don't need any further 
information about Soviet mentality and Soviet way of life anymore. This 
virtual museum shows and says everything." (from 
http://www.urlfan.com/local/soviet_lifestyle/72701135.html )

The project was supported by a grant from the National Ednowment of the 
Humanities. The names of the principal authors and the many friends and 
colleagues who have helped are shown in the About page.

Please write off-list with any questions. We would be gratefull for 
opinions and suggestions.

Slava Paperno 

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