Cleaning

This chapter addresses the spaces of hygiene, such as bathrooms, water closets, and kitchens, in late-Soviet and post-Soviet apartments. It examines the discrepancy between the late-Soviet institutional programming of homes, the aspirations of professional architects, and the desires of homeowners when it came to spaces of hygiene. It also explores the invisibility of the bathroom in the Soviet world of images and its powerful entry into visual culture, art practices, and socioeconomic anecdotes of the first post-Soviet decade. The chapter suggests the shift of the post-Soviet bathrooms from the realm of utilitarian auxiliary spaces of an apartment into the status of representational spaces. It reviews the troubles of the communal apartment residents with hygiene.