“Someone was kicking my bedroom door: I woke up with a jolt. It was four in the morning. Two guys holding bottles of vodka insisted we got to know each other. Their room was at the end of the corridor. On the way we bumped into an old woman, the one who can never get to sleep. With a wave of her hand she seemed to say don’t worry, I keep watch day and night. After two or three hours of more or less disjointed conversation, I left my neighbours room and went to get breakfast ready in the communal kitchen. I started to cook an omelette on one of the gas cookers; suddenly I realized it was the wrong one I was using. Here, everyone is supposed to use their own things: tea towels, towels, knives and forks, pans, even your own toilet seat. In the Kommounalki , apart from the flat, nothing is communal, nothing is shared. And woe betide anyone who, like me, uses a neighbour’s stove. With one of the residents, a woman of 65 in a pink flowered apron and scruffy slippers, staring angrily at me, I hastily moved my frying pan onto the right stove. Her mood softened a little, and the lady in the apron told me that everyone called her Françoise Sagan. I’ve read all her books, she’s my idol, she said with a hint of pride. And then, cutting short her emotional outpourings, she reminded me that it was my turn to wash the kitchen floor as well as doing the washing-up”.

From “Kommounalki”, published by Actes Sud Françoise Huguier’s first days in this communal apartment in Saint-Petersburg were especially troubling. She first became interested in this unusual form of communal living when she stopped over in St Petersburg on her way to Siberia in 1991. She later decided to explore it further. She knew she would need to make several visits, and find a way of getting behind these closed doors. To avoid being considered as a reporter, Françoise Huguier decided to rent a room in one of the apartments and stay there on a regular basis.