ABSTRACT
A classic view of mass housing apartments is shown on Russian television every New Year’s Eve. In Eldar Ryazanov’s 1975 movie Ironia sud’by (Irony of Fate), a man wakes up in what he believes to be his bedroom and finds himself in the company of a woman he has never seen before. It turns out that after a vodka-soaked night and an unplanned flight he has mistaken his Moscow tower-block apartment for a similar one in Leningrad, which happens to be situated on a street with the same name. The film is a typical comedy of errors and a not-too-subtle satire on drab standardized apartment blocks, where not only streets, buildings, and entrance doors are of the same type, but equally bathrooms, furniture, and apartment keys. The film ridicules the state-sponsored, one-size-fits-all architecture in a far more open way than one would expect to be tolerated under a socialist regime, and at the same time offers a tongue-in-cheek portrait of the average Soviet living environment.
