Pride and luxury: a private bathroom in the Soviet Union

In the distant 60s, in many villages and cities of the USSR, centralized water supply was completely absent. People used wells to get water, but in most cases it was wasted for cooking or drinking. It is clear that in such conditions there was no question of a separate bathroom, and all personal hygiene procedures were carried out in the courtyard.

Personal hygiene in the Soviet Union, or How Soviet citizens washed themselves

Most of the Soviet citizens at that time lived in communal apartments or barracks, and young people lived in dormitories at higher institutions. And if the communal apartment also had a bathroom, it was sometimes quite difficult to get into it due to the large number of people living in a small area, because several families used it at once.

But in the barracks there was no such luxury. As for the dormitories for students, they also did not have access to a shower every day - in order to wash themselves, they had one day a week, which was called “bathhouse”. On other days it was impossible to get into the shower room - it was locked.

In order to somehow maintain the cleanliness of their bodies, people washed themselves or simply wiped themselves with water in the kitchen or in their room.

The only optimal and convenient option that Soviet citizens happily used was visiting a public bathhouse. True, it was not possible to go there every day - whatever one may say, our people were hard-working, so usually there was only one day a week when a person could afford to visit the washroom.Then they washed the laundry that had accumulated over 7 days.

We see a completely different picture in Soviet cinema. The people there are always clean, dressed in ironed clothes, the women are styled and have long-lasting makeup, the men are clean-shaven and perfectly combed. It’s clear that in reality, when you stand at the machine from morning to evening, this is almost impossible.

But people of that time knew very well what a public bathhouse smelled like when several dozen working people of various stripes gathered there: builders, miners, tractor drivers, milkmaids. And everything looked completely different from how it looked in the movies, but more vital and not entirely fragrant.

That is why a separate bathroom for a Soviet citizen became a special luxury and joy. It was this room that became the pride of every individual apartment, although it looked very modest and extraordinary.