Tag #148045 - Interview #83579 (Rita Razumovskaya)

Anyway, this flat on the Petrogradskaya side was quite dark, and in 1924 we moved to the house on the corner of Siezdovskaya line and Sredny Avenue. Later there was a café on the first floor of this building for a long time, and above this café you could see the balcony, where I spent my entire youth. We lived in a huge communal apartment [9]; as a matter of fact, those were two flats with different entrances, only the kitchen and the corridor were common. There was a very interesting staircase. This building was built at the end of the 18th century, and the stairs were built in the wall, almost as in ancient Orthodox churches, there were no stairwells. The stairs led to the gallery, paved with stone blocks just like the street. We also had huge windows, looking over the yard. When you stood on the third floor of this gallery, the angel from the Church of Saint Catherine [one of the oldest Catholic churches in Russia] seemed to be very near. I remember this angel with the cross from my early childhood.

We had three rooms. One of them was huge, something like thirty square meters. And the only entrance to the room, where I lived together with my sisters – it was about eighteen square meters – was from this huge first room. There was also a small room, my parents’ bedroom. Their windows went straight out on Sredny Avenue and there was a wonderful view out of those windows of the city, roofs of the buildings and the Neva River. The apartment was a very good one; my parents chose it on their own: in those times the authorities gave apartments for free. And Father liked this particular one. My granny lived in the large room; her part was separated off with shelves. She had her own place, and she didn’t let anybody in.

In the same apartment a worker’s family lived together with us.