Map in four parts / from the collection of The Khariton Akhvlediani’s Adjara State Museum Batumi / Georgia

хрущевки пятиэтажки
Chroesjtsjov/Khrushchev-building

As a solution to the housing problem architects in the former Soviet Union developed a prefabricated building system for low-cost social housing. Between 1956 and 1985 a resembling type of flats was built across the Soviet Union. These flats were called ‘Khrushchev-building’, a five-story apartment house.
Khrushchev (Sovjet-president from 1953 to 1964) combined the method of construction of 18th century American settlers (called conveyor-building) with the idea of the German plattenbau.

In the Khrushchev flats, people with very different backgrounds, ethnicity and class, lived together.

Stills from a documentary about the Khrushchev Building. Watch it here.

Ivan Shishkin, The Morning in a Pine Forest (Утро в сосновом лесу), 139 x 213 cm, 1889

In many Soviet-homes you’ll find a copy of this painting as tapestry or painting on the wall. During soviet era, ‘the morning in a pine forest’ turned out to be a very popular scene, being reproduced on various items.

Konstantin Savitsky is co-author of this famous painting. On the original Peredvizhniki exhibition the painting was shown by two authors (Shishkin and Savitsky). It was assumed that Savitsky had painted the bears and Shishkin the forest but later the scholars found that preparational drawings of the pine forest were made by both Savitsky and Shishkin. Later Savitsky withdrew his signature from the painting and it is currently attributed solely to Shishkin.

René Magritte, The Blank Check, 1965

The Russian ship SS Admiral Nakhimov (a former passenger liner of the Weimar Republic,’SS Berlin III’) was famous for bringing (illegal) western luxury goods to the ports of the former Soviet Union.
On 31 August 1986, Admiral Nakhimov collided with the large bulk carrier near the port of Novorossiysk and sank.

Set design by Irakli Gamrekeli (1894-1943) for F. Shiller’s play The Robbers (1933).