Everybody is shocked by the pictures of shared toilets for the Olympics in Sochi that are making the rounds. Putin’s government has reacted to the international outrage by issuing really funny disclaimers.
However, these toilets are well in keeping with an old Soviet tradition of not using separate stalls in toilets. This is a toilet in one of the Russian cities that is also used by athletes at the local gym:
And this is from an opera theater in Vladivostok:
People should be grateful that there are actual commodes and not just a hole in the ground, which is what we were using at my high school (and all other schools).
Clarissa's Blog 
Hole in the ground with stalls is much better than this. How on Earth did that tradition appear?
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That is what you usually see in Kyrgyzstan, Turkish style toilets with stalls. Although sometimes you find western style toilets. I don’t ever recall any place in Bishkek that had no stalls. In the countryside the outhouses are are shacks over holes in the ground. But, nobody can see you in the shack.
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Who said there were stalls? 🙂 No, we were all squatting next to each other.
This was part of the collectivizing policies that aimed to destroy privacy.
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I was referring to Stille’s “Hole in the ground with stalls is much better than this.” In Kyrgyzstan I never saw anyplace without stalls and I lived there nearly four years. As far as I can tell this was true during Soviet times as well. Certainly a lot of the stalls in Bishkek were in fact built during Soviet times. I suspect it has to do with the Islamic influence making Kyrgyzstan much more conservative than Russia.
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“Certainly a lot of the stalls in Bishkek were in fact built during Soviet times. I suspect it has to do with the Islamic influence making Kyrgyzstan much more conservative than Russia.”
– Very interesting.
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Are those baskets what I’m afraid they are? For used TP?
Even in commie days Polish toilets weren’t horrible (though in the countryside outhouses were the rule).
But in cities there was a tendency to use German style toilets with a viewing shelf… still, there were always stalls (though you better have your own TP) and no weird ideas that the pipes were too delicate for toilet paper (people used to regularly flush down coffee grounds and worse).
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Be grateful there are baskets. In Soviet school and university bathrooms there was no TP and definitely no baskets.
“But in cities there was a tendency to use German style toilets with a viewing shelf”
– Do I want to know what a viewing shelf is?
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Voila!
Large ….. movements (le mot juste!) can take a few flushes to dislodge…..
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This is called “a viewing shelf”? Man, this is hilarious. You made me laugh with this.
Yes, I did experience this thing but I can’t remember where. It was. . . an interesting experience.
Germans do have a weird fascination with this kind of stuff.
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“Germans do have a weird fascination with this kind of stuff”
Yep. I wondered where the idea for such construction came from and apparently Germans at one point wanted to closely examine things in the name of….. I don’t know, health (or maybe Germans as a rule are into that stuff, go figure)
Poles were never had that particular fascination (plenty of unhealthy obsessions of other types though) and I assume it was intertia that made them widespread here but in the last 15 or so years they’re been disappearing in favor of types with more water and less shelf (though the shelf models still tend to be found in institutional settings).
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“Yep. I wondered where the idea for such construction came from and apparently Germans at one point wanted to closely examine things in the name of….. I don’t know, health (or maybe Germans as a rule are into that stuff, go figure)”
– People must have really run out of topics for chit-chat to use this method of generating conversation starters.
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Reblogged this on WORK IN PROGRESS and commented:
Now we know why Communism failed. — John
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We need to maintain our nuclear deterrent against these weirdos. If they are capable of a society in which even elite Olympic athletes have to sh*t within sight of each other, then they are more than capable of blowing up the world.
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What is this? An advent of 3-year-olds on my blog? Does your mommy allow you to spend time online without supervision?
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