"The Tear of Socialism"

The communal house of Soviet engineers and writers is a monument of Soviet constructivism, located on the corner of Grafsky Lane and Rubinstein Street. Built in 1929-1931 according to the project of architects A.A. Olya, K.A. Ivanova and A.I. Ladinsky, the experimental house was supposed to demonstrate the advantages of a new socialist life, which at that time was opposed to "backward bourgeois comfort."

The six-story building housed 52 apartments with the number of rooms from one to four. On the ground floor there were common areas: children's rooms, a reading room, a dining room for 200 people with a kitchen block. In the apartments themselves, kitchens were not expected: tenants had to eat in a common dining room with 200 seats. There were bathrooms in the house - but one per floor!

For the many inconveniences that the new way of life brought with it, the house was nicknamed the “Tear of Socialism". In the first half of the 1960s, redevelopment was carried out, and each apartment finally got a separate kitchen and toilet.

On the fifth floor of the house in the 30th apartment from 1932 to 1943 there lived the “siege muse of Leningrad” poetess Olga Berggolz, as evidenced by the memorial plaque on the facade.