It is often overlooked how much technology can be an expression of ideology. Take the heating of my apartment, for example: it perfectly embodies a central ideal of Soviet communism – central planning.
The water running through the radiator is heated centrally for city blocks or entire quarters in big stations, and piped into my house. This enabled the state to decide when it was time for the citizen’s apartments to be heated, and when the heating was supposed to stop. Such an important decision was not to be left to mere individuals.
The party, in its infinite wisdom, set the time to start heating at October 15th and the time to stop at April 15th. If the Soviet weather deviated from this central plan, then surely it had to be the weather which was at fault. It was up to the citizens to demonstrate this to the weather by showing indifference to living in overheated or freezing apartments. A truly Communist weather would eventually learn to accommodate the plan. To this day, the heating is supposed to be turned on and off at these dates, even though now some provisions for completely unusually warm or cold weather have been made. Usually, though, the gas price and the amount of debt the utilities companies are in now plays a much bigger role.
The Room-Temperature Equation
The disdain for individual control continues in the apartments themselves. Thermostats are unknown. The temperature of the room is a product of a complex set of variables such as the room’s size and insulation, the size of the radiator, the temperature and throughput of hot water and, last but not least, the outside temperature. Naturally this leads to quite a range in temperatures between apartments, seasons and also times of the day.
Since radiators only come in a few standard sizes, bigger apartments are often permanently on the verge of freezing, while very small apartments tend to be overheated.
In fall and spring the heating is generally too much, which leads to the use of the “Soviet thermostat” (see picture of the widely spread “fortochka”): opening the window to lower the room temperature, often permanently for days or even weeks. In the middle of winter on the other hand some additional heating would be required.
Even the changes of temperature during the day play a big role. It is not uncommon to go to sleep in an overheated apartment, under just a thin blanket, and to wake up shivering before dawn because the inside temperature has dropped by ten degrees overnight.
At this point at the latest I curse the Soviet Communist Party, and in my bones I can feel the truth in the capitalist belief that centralized planning is not a good idea. At least not when it comes to heating my apartment.
Text by Alex Godde, Germany
Photo by Pierre Jeanmougin, France
