The Evil of Banality

Putin lived with his parents in one small room. Most people in that area, that part of Leningrad, where communal flats were the rule,. That's the way they lived. But it was very colorless, very dull, dark. There wasn't a great deal going on. He continued living with his parents right up to the time he was 25 in one room with them. The stairs were kind of collapsing. There were rats. There were cockroaches. You didn't have a bathroom. There was a toilet. But that was all. And it was shared among three families, a shared kitchen, and Putin lived there too.