The cave is probably the most ancient natural shelter of man. In soft rocks (limestone, loess, tuff), people have long carved out artificial caves, where they built comfortable dwellings, sometimes entire cave cities. Thus, in the cave city of Eski-Kermen in Crimea (pictured), rooms carved into the rock have fireplaces, chimneys, “beds,” niches for dishes and other things, water containers, windows and doorways with traces of hinges.

This is a chapter from a wall newspaper published by the charity project “Briefly and clearly about the most interesting things.” Click on the newspaper thumbnail below and read other articles on topics that interest you. Thank you!

The wall newspaper “Dwellings of the Peoples of the World” is a short “wall encyclopedia” of traditional dwellings of peoples from all over the world. The 66 “residential real estate objects” we selected are arranged alphabetically: from “abylaisha” to “yaranga”. All wall newspapers published by our charity project “Briefly and clearly about the most interesting” are waiting for you on the website. There are also Vkontakte community and a thread on the website of St. Petersburg parents Litvan, where we discuss the release of new newspapers. Anyone can receive our newspapers for free at distribution points in St. Petersburg.

How it all began

According to the hypothesis put forward by the American archaeologist John Clark, the appearance of long-term sites and dwellings is associated with an increase in the duration of childhood. While the younger generation is being trained, the mobility of the hominid group is limited. “The young chimpanzee achieves independence between seven and eight years, and the transfer of the more complex skills possessed by early hominids must have required an even longer time,” Clark wrote.
Housing provides greater security for offspring. This is very important for apes, who rarely give birth to more than one offspring. And the problem of predators becomes especially critical when they live not on a tree, but on the ground. It is better to take care of the child in a relatively safe place, where one of the parents looks after the offspring while the other gets food. True, does some kind of “wind barrier” provide protection? Doubtful... A predator can easily find people hiding behind a flimsy fence by smell.
Another hypothesis, developed by the Soviet archaeologist V.Ya. Sergin, suggested that long-term dwellings arose in places where large game prey was butchered and eaten. Of course, small prey is literally eaten on the move. But when you manage to get an elephant, you can’t eat it and drag it away in one sitting. The entire community is invited to the place of prey (whether it is killed by a skilled hunter or an animal that has died a natural death) - this is what, for example, modern pygmies do in Central Africa. The meat should not go to waste, it should be consumed whole, simultaneously driving away the scavengers approaching from all sides. A family of ancient hominids would camp around their prey and throw a feast for several days; tools and raw materials for their preparation were brought here; a hearth was being built... However, no, there were no hearths at that time. And around, perhaps, there was some kind of barrier made of branches pressed down by stones - protection either from the wind or from curious people.
It is clear that the above presents a very speculative picture. What gave people the first semblance of a home? Wind protection? From the sun? From predators? From prying eyes? From otherworldly forces? From the rain? From the cold?... An aesthetic feeling of “comfort”? Together?
Be that as it may, modern hunter-gatherers, when stopping for a rest - even for one night - often build themselves simple shelters.
To begin with, it would be nice to find out when they appear - the first dwellings. But it's easy to say! As American anthropologist Jerry Moore writes, “Ideally, every site should be something like the ash-covered ruins of ancient Pompeii: a moment frozen in time.” But, alas, Pompeii of the Paleolithic is unknown to us. And the most ancient dwellings were obviously short-lived. A settled life is not for ancient hunters. If the analogy with modern hunting groups is correct, their shelters were nothing more than fences of branches and, possibly, skins, at best, weighed down with stones. After a few days, people moved from the place and abandoned the remains of their homes, which fell apart, rotted and, most likely, disappeared without a trace. All that remained was the rubbish people had thrown in - scraps, bones, broken tools; perhaps depressions in places where supports were dug into the ground. If, as a result of a happy accident, all this was quickly buried under a layer of sediment, a certain “imprint” of the dwelling was obtained, the contours of which, in principle, can be identified by the distribution of cultural remains.
However, such a print still needs to be read. Research in this direction became possible only after the advent of a fairly advanced excavation technique - one in which a significant part of the area of ​​​​the ancient site was revealed, the ancient “floor” on which people lived was cleared. Any significant finds - bones, tools, etc. - fixed in place and plotted on the plan; then the entire ancient “residential complex” is analyzed. Now, by the way the clusters of artifacts are located, you can try to understand where the booty was cut up, where the tools were made, where the bones were thrown, and where the dwellings were located - if they really were here.
It was as a result of the use of such technology that it was possible to discover residential structures of the Stone Age. Of course, the oldest of them are the most controversial.

Early people

So, the oldest find of this kind was made by British anthropologist Mary Leakey in 1962. At one of the sites of the Olduvai Gorge (which gave the world Homo habilis - Homo habilis), about 1.8 million years old, many stone tools and remains of animals were found - ancient giraffes, elephants, zebras, rhinoceroses, turtles, crocodiles... So, at one From parts of this site, Leakey's team discovered a number of stones arranged (laid out?) in the shape of a circle. As Mary Leakey wrote, this ring display is “the oldest structure made by man. It consists of individual lava blocks and ranges from three and a half to four meters in diameter. The similarity is striking to the crude stone circles built for temporary shelter by modern nomadic peoples.” So, Mary Leakey believed that she had found the oldest house on Earth. The stones, in her opinion, served to strengthen poles or branches stuck into the ground and forming something like a wind barrier or a simple hut.
Another Olduvai site, famous for the discovery of the skull of Paranthropus Boyce, revealed an oval accumulation of crushed bones and small stone fragments. It is surrounded by a relatively finds-free space, outside of which there are also bone fragments and tools. Mary Leakey suggested that in this place there was once a wind barrier that surrounded the central part of the parking lot.
Later, similar finds were made outside Olduvai.
Is this evidence enough to say that already one and a half million years ago our ancestors could build simple dwellings for themselves? Alas, not all experts agreed with this interpretation. And the older the site, the fewer sets of facts archaeologists have to work with.

Man's first house

Today it is simply impossible to imagine people’s lives without buildings and structures. No one can live without housing. Any person, no matter what level of cultural development he is at, has one or another home - from luxury apartments to an abandoned basement. I wonder who was the first to come up with the idea of ​​building houses, and what was the very first house like?

Man Cave

Many are inclined to think that the very first home for man, albeit primitive, was a cave.

Not certainly in that way. The dark and damp caves were unsuitable for life. If people climbed there, it was in some special emergency cases - an attack by some primitive animal or severe cold, wind and rain. Of course, these were far from the most beautiful houses in the world. The caves were also used for religious rituals.

Weatherproof shelters

So the very first houses were not caves. Naturally, these unusual houses have not survived to this day, but it is possible to “reconstruct” their appearance if you get acquainted with the buildings of today’s tribes, whose life is as close as possible to primitive times.

So, living in a warm climate, people built not houses, but so-called wind barriers. The materials for construction were branches, tree bark, and grass. Such a shelter could only provide shelter from bad weather, but did not save from danger.

Lifestyle change

And only when people changed their nomadic lifestyle to a sedentary one, the very first houses appeared. They were huts and huts woven from thin branches. And those who could not sit still, but still liked to roam, learned to build portable dwellings such as tents. Here's how they were built: they built a “frame” from strong and large bones of animals, for example, mammoths. This “frame” was hung with the skins of killed animals in cold weather and tree bark in warm weather. This “house” was, as they would now call it, portable, that is, portable.

Scientists attribute the dwellings of ancient people to the very first method of defense in history, which was used by man to protect himself from external threats. The second way was clothing. Let's look at how the house has changed in the history of mankind in our article.

Paleolithic era

Previously, scientists believed that during the Paleolithic (the first period of the Stone Age) people did not have settled dwellings, hunted, and led a wandering life. Archaeologist I. Bayer discovered and described a Paleolithic dwelling during excavations at the beginning of the 20th century. However, at that time the discovery was not given serious significance. The study of the issue began later by archaeologists P.P. Efimenko and S.N. Zamyatin. These specialists were able to study and describe in detail the first dwellings of ancient people. This became possible thanks to a new technique.

Essence of the method

Previously, excavations were carried out using a caisson method: the territory was divided into squares and each section was explored. All finds were described, photographed, and further dug. This approach made it possible to study each site thoroughly, but did not provide the opportunity to create an overall picture of the study area.

Archaeologists Zamyatin and Efimenko conducted excavations over vast areas. The territory was also divided into squares, but the archaeologist could see major finds in their relative positions. Thus, the opportunity arose to study the dwellings of ancient people.

A new method was used to study dwellings during excavations in Gagarino, as well as in the Kostenkovsko-Borshchevsky district of the Voronezh region. As a result of the research, it was concluded that many Paleolithic inhabitants led a sedentary life, including hunters.

The described method is used today by specialists all over the world.

Structures made from skeletons

The dwellings of ancient people were discovered repeatedly during excavations. They dated back hundreds of thousands and millions of years. Many interesting details were discovered in such buildings.

During the Upper Paleolithic era, there was a revolution in the process of building and ordering housing. Perhaps it is associated with a radical change in the climate of the East European Plain.

23-18 thousand years ago there was a severe cold snap. The northwestern territories of Russia are covered with severe ice. The permafrost area extended to the Black Sea coast. Ancient people were faced with a serious choice - to leave these territories or change their way of life. The population chose the second path, although it was not easy.

The choice was determined by the favorable conditions of the forest-tundra or forest-steppe. Many bushes and grasses grew here, and therefore mammoths and other game were found. Conditions for hunting are quite suitable. But the severe cold, down to minus 50 degrees, required warm clothing and the construction of comfortable housing.

Before the climate change, light huts were built on the ground. In the center of such a building there was a hearth, around which there was a spot with the remains of bones and other traces of the life activity of the ancients. The houses were probably covered with animal skins. This type of construction was common throughout the world during the Upper Paleolithic and in later centuries.

Alexander-Telman type

Such dwellings of ancient people resembled those described earlier. They were also round with a hearth in the middle. The floor went down and there were holes for household items. The structure of the hearths became more complex: they also deepened, and there were pits around them for cooking. Stones and large mammoth bones were placed along the contour of the dwelling to give strength to the entire structure.

Aleksandrovsko-Pushkarevsky type

These structures were elongated, had a length of 20-35 meters, a width of 5-6 meters. The floor in the central part and the hearths went deeper down. There were sections inside. Various items were stored in holes in the floor. Food was baked in pits near the fireplaces.

The roof of these dwellings was a gable structure.

The emergence of new types of dwellings was explained by the adaptation of the ancients to changed climate conditions, as well as the emergence of a new people from the Danube coast.

Kostenkovsko-Avdeevsky type

This variety represents the most complex design of this era. The dwelling looks like an oval-shaped depression 30 meters long and 8 meters wide. The lesions were 1-1.2 meters in diameter. The storage pits were round or pear-shaped.

The ceiling was constructed from large mammoth bones. Skulls and flat mammoth bones were attached to the floor at the entrance. The roof was made from tusks. The section for storing items was also separated by bones.

There were numerous holes on the floor that served as cabinets and drawers.

Anosovsko-Mezinsky type

Such buildings appeared 20 thousand years ago among the inhabitants of the Russian Plain. These are ground-type houses of a rounded shape, 6-9 meters in diameter. Inside, archaeologists discovered many mammoth bones. Dwellings were built from them. The bones were placed in a thoughtful order, with amazing beauty and symmetry. Archaeologists were especially struck by the “herringbones” formed by the mandibular bones.

If we talk about how to draw the dwelling of ancient people, then it will be a rather interesting combination of large and small mammoth bones. This is clearly visible in the photo.

Such structures had pits for storing things. Many designs surprised with their expressiveness, and they even decided to preserve them in museums. The Kyiv Zoological Museum displays a life-size reconstruction of similar houses.

The primitive dwellings of ancient people of this type were located in a certain way: in a circle, inside which people led their daily lives. Such villages dated back to 14 thousand years ago and were located in Eastern Europe. After the disappearance of the mammoth, the “mammoth” buildings also disappeared.

Archaeologists are very struck by one feature of the described buildings. They had a “clean” floor. Scientists still cannot understand why there are no traces of human activity left on the floor. Or were these structures not houses at all?

Some experts suggest that the structures with accumulations of bones were intended for religious activities, and not for living. Other scientists believe that mammoth bones were used by the ancients as musical instruments.

It must be said that the presented dwellings were found only in Eastern Europe. In other areas of the planet, people lived in caves and grotto niches.

Tent houses

In addition to those presented, dwellings in the form of tents were also known. Such a house could be carried with you. This feature was used by nomadic ancient people.

Such dwellings resembled Indian wigwams and Asian tents. The huts were built from animal bones and covered with their skins. The houses were quickly set up and also easily cleaned if necessary.

There was a fire going on inside. The smoke was released through a hole at the top of the structure.

Neolithic houses

During the final era of the Stone Age, people began to build houses from stone. There has been a transition from agriculture to cattle breeding.

Dwellings were characterized by permanence. Houses were no longer moved from place to place. People no longer wandered after animals, but grazed livestock near their houses.

The dwellings of this era were distinguished by a more complex structure; they were divided into rooms with different purposes.

Studying

Nowadays, the study of ancient houses begins in high school. This topic is quite interesting for students. In 5th grade history lessons, schoolchildren get acquainted with the dwelling of an ancient man. Teachers tell children about different types of houses presented in different historical eras.

At the end of the lesson, the children are given the task of creating a project “Dwelling of Ancient People” in the form of a presentation.

Apartment buildings appeared in ancient Rome. The expanding city required to accommodate an increasing number of people in a fairly limited area, so residential buildings began to grow upward. As a rule, one such house occupied an entire block, had a closed shape and a courtyard. They were called insula (island) and reached a height of up to five floors. Each floor was divided into separate apartments that were rented. The higher the floor was, the lower the rent was.

The second coming of high-rise buildings began in Europe in the 17th century. The development of industry required more and more workers and, as a consequence, the availability of cheap housing.

This trend came to Russia only two centuries later. In Moscow, the first apartment buildings appeared in 1785 - 1790. The first such three-story house was built according to the design of M.F. Kazakova on Ilyinka. An equally famous architect who built apartment buildings in Moscow at that time was Osip Bove. In 1816, on Nikolskaya Street, Beauvais built a large house three floors high. This building was intended to generate income, and its customer was the famous bookseller I.P. Glazunov. On the lower floor of the house there were shops with separate entrances, and on the upper floors there were small apartments. Galleries were made from the courtyard and each apartment had a separate entrance.

Capitalism, slowly but surely developing in Russia, was the main driving force behind the development of cities. Therefore, by the end of the nineteenth century, there was a real boom in apartment buildings, which continued until 1914. Thanks to this trend, the historical center of most large cities was formed. The customers for the construction were all classes: mid-level entrepreneurs, merchants, large industrialists, educational institutions, partnerships, joint-stock companies and even churches and monasteries. This wave of construction of apartment buildings was due to the need for housing for people of liberal professions, engineers, students, workers, and scientists. On the other hand, capital appeared that needed to be invested in something. Thus, in the summer of 1911, approximately 3,000 apartment buildings with a height of 5-7 floors were built. The Moscow authorities were preparing the sites, laying electrical cables, sewerage, and water supply. In addition, they were engaged in landscaping and cleaning up the streets. Further rent of land made it possible to recoup the costs of all of the above. Apartment buildings were very beneficial to the government, owners and tenants, since they satisfied the demand for housing from the population and replenished the city treasury through taxes from the owners of apartment buildings. Thus, in 1913, out of 47,600,000 rubles of city income, taxes paid by owners of apartment buildings and other personal real estate amounted to 7,000,000 rubles. So the apartment buildings fully justified their definition. In Russia before 1917, there were more than 600 apartment buildings. In Moscow during this period, about 40 percent of residential buildings were apartment buildings. Moreover, the larger the apartment building, the lower the cost of apartments in it.
In those days, you could rent the cheapest room for the night for 20 kopecks, and a bed for only 5 kopecks. Renting a room designed for an official with average income cost 10 - 15 rubles per month. People with income could afford to rent an apartment in an apartment building in Moscow for 30 rubles; the most profitable at that time was considered the Afremov apartment building, which was located at 19 Sadovaya Spasskaya Street. The eight-story building was built in 1904, and its could be considered a skyscraper. No less famous was the apartment building of the merchant Solodovnikov, located on Gilyarovsky Street. You could rent rooms in this house for 10 rubles a month. As for the cost of renting luxury apartments in apartment buildings, it could exceed 100 rubles. For example, in the most luxurious apartment building on Sretensky Boulevard, which belonged to an insurance company, room rent was 500 rubles per month.

The resettlement of several families in one living space was considered as a forced and temporary measure. However, at the beginning of the twentieth century, after a series of revolutions, the country completely changed its political and economic course. The civil war, unrest, later active industrialization and the deterioration of the situation in the countryside led to a more intensive growth of the urban population. Essentially the same principle of apartment buildings evolved into communal apartments. The densification of representatives of the former privileged classes was accompanied by the transformation of their large apartments into communal apartments. At the beginning of the first five-year plan, the need to preserve communal apartments unexpectedly received ideological justification. During these years, the idea of ​​a socialist restructuring of everyday life was actively promoted in the RSFSR. The program of its collectivization, i.e., the abandonment of the family economy as the main form of organizing the private life of people, was widely discussed. In this regard, it was assumed that the individual housing of an urban family, as a legacy of capitalism, should be replaced by collective housing, in which joint consumption and collective leisure would be organized.

The front door to a communal apartment is difficult not to recognize. The number of calls, randomly scattered in the best traditions of the avant-garde, are signed with the names of the residents and the number of clicks. And God forbid you call three times if under your last name it says call twice. Of course, they will open it for you, but they will be very unhappy. So, you enter the apartment, and the first thing you see is a long corridor with a large number of electricity meters on the walls, a common telephone and wallpaper written on next to it, bicycles, sleds, a duty schedule and cleaning the floors . We go further and go into the kitchen, the space of which is divided by tables, stoves, cabinets and other kitchen utensils. The kitchen is the central hub of a communal apartment. Here, global problems of everyday life are solved, primus stoves hum and kerosene stoves smoke. To protect against thieving cats, irons are placed on pots or lids are tightly tied.

However, after fierce discussions and the resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks adopted on May 16, 1930, which condemned the leftists for restructuring life, ordinary apartment buildings nevertheless became the main type of urban development. In conditions of an acute shortage of financial and other resources, they were built, saving on everything; in particular, low ceilings and cramped kitchens had already become fashionable. Such houses were occupied, as a rule, according to the communal principle: 1 family, 1 room. Separate apartments in the 1920s and 30s. had no more than a quarter of urban families. buildings with cramped and uncomfortable apartments. After criticism of such development projects at the 17th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) in 1934, the situation improved slightly: spacious apartments with high ceilings began to be built, embodying the working class’s dream of a wonderful life under socialism.

However, in practice, the lack of housing forced the city authorities to move several families into new apartments, turning them back into communal apartments. Thus, the utopian projects for creating a new way of life and communal houses, which received official registration in 1919 in the 2nd Program of the RCP (b), in practice were embodied in the same communal apartments.

Nomenklatura houses represented a special category of housing. They had a good layout with halls and two to four large apartments per floor. Many apartments included offices and children's rooms, libraries and rooms for servants, spacious kitchens, separate bathrooms, initially large rooms - from 15 to 25, and in some places even up to 30 m², utility rooms in some houses (Verkhnyaya Maslovka, 1, d.3) - workshop for sculptors and artists.
The tradition of several families occupying one apartment continued during the war years and the first post-war decade. Only in the second half of the 1950s. In connection with the increase in the scale of housing, a qualitatively new approach to the distribution of living space has emerged. At a number of Ural, Siberian and Far Eastern enterprises, new residents began to be provided primarily with separate apartments. In September 1959 in Novosibirsk, 38.8% of workers and employees living in state houses already had them. The remaining 61.2% of workers and employees were housed in communal apartments, each of which housed an average of 3 families with 8 people. There were 4.9 square meters per resident. m of living space.

Large housing construction programs carried out in the 1960s and 70s led to improved living conditions for large sections of the urban population. A great social achievement was not only the mass relocation of citizens from dilapidated and poorly maintained housing, but also the resettlement of families living in communal apartments. In the early 1980s. About 80% of the residents of the Ural, Siberian and Far Eastern cities had separate apartments in comfortable brick and panel houses. During the period of “perestroika,” the goal was to provide each family with a separate apartment by 2000, which was rather a slogan than a real prospect. According to the decree of the CPSU Central Committee “On the development of housing construction in the USSR,” a course was set for family-by-family settlement of comfortable apartments, which was supported by such ideological and scientific points that stated that the communal apartment was not a project of the Soviet government, but was a forced measure to save money during industrialization.
An appropriate production base and infrastructure was created: house-building plants and concrete factories. This made it possible to introduce millions of square meters of housing annually. The first house-building plants were created in the Glavleningradstroy system, and in 1962 they were organized in Moscow and other cities. In particular, during the 1970s in Leningrad, 942 thousand people received living space, with 809 thousand moving into new houses and 133 thousand receiving space in old houses. However, when moving into new apartments, the “shareholder” principle was often applied (one neighbor for each family). By the middle, the number of communal apartments in the central districts of Leningrad amounted to 40% of their total number. In addition, until the mid-1980s, there was a system of service (departmental) space, which made it difficult to resettle communal apartments.

With the beginning of mass housing construction, architecture finally lost its former uniqueness. Standard boxes were erected everywhere, mostly five and nine storeys high. White brick or concrete panels were used as building materials.
At the end of the last century, a new coup d'etat took place. Socialism gave way to a market economy, which radically changed the attitude and status of apartment buildings; now the treasured square meters have become private property.
At the moment, the rules in the real estate market are determined by demand, mortgage lending policies and the policies of development companies.

New technologies and materials make it possible to build higher-rise buildings, although in essence they remain the same faceless boxes in which, like an anthill, most of modern urban society lives. I can’t say that this trend is bad; mass development and cost reduction, of course, leads to the simplification of this or that object or process. But when an old mansion is demolished in the city to erect another faceless apartment tower, it becomes somehow sad.

Project "House number 1" television company TNT began on July 1 and ended on November 1, 2003. The program format was purchased from the English television company Zeal.

The project featured 90 prime-time episodes and 14 special events on every weekend.

According to the terms of the project, 12 married couples from all regions of Russia built a house together, but only one of them received the keys. From the fifth week, couples left the construction site one by one by decision of the general “family” council, and the audience chose the winners from the two remaining couples.

Requirements for participating couples: newlyweds who have already submitted an application to the registry office and are preparing for the wedding within a month, or a husband and wife who do not have their own home. The personalities of the spouses and the scope of their activities are very diverse: from a housewife to a business woman, from a military man to an accountant; as well as everyone who agrees to take a 3-month vacation and receive a super prize - a house in Moscow, built with their own hands and according to their own design.

The couples were helped in the construction by real professionals - architects, interior designers, foremen, builders, landscape designers.

According to the TNS Gallup TV Index, provided by the TNT press service, the six-month audience of Dom-2 in 2008 was about 15 million people throughout Russia. “They are mostly women (65% of all viewers of Dom-2).

The program attracts the attention of people of all ages, but “Dom-2” is more interesting to young people aged 16 to 34 years old with secondary and higher education.”

Show rules:

1. Every Wednesday, participants choose a pair.
2. Every Thursday there is a vote during which the participants decide which of the single players should leave the show.
3. A new player takes the place of the one who dropped out: a boy takes the place of the girl, a girl takes the place of the boy.
4. Every week the right to choose passes to a different gender.
5. Three couples in love reach the final, and during the live broadcast of the final show, viewers decide by SMS voting who will get the House.

Former participants of the show more than once became heroes of crime chronicles. Alexey Avdeev was detained in August 2005 right on the set. He was identified by a TV viewer from Smolensk, from whom he, working as a realtor, stole 2 thousand dollars. Avdeev was sentenced by the court to four years in a maximum security colony for fraud.

In April 2006, Kirill Komarovsky was detained in Moscow on suspicion of fraud. After spending a week on the project, he got a job as an assistant to a realtor in a Moscow company. And already on the second day of work he disappeared, having received a deposit for the apartment.

Former participant in the reality show “Dom-2” Vyacheslav Popov was sentenced to 6.5 years in a maximum security colony. A student at Syktyvkar State University was caught red-handed by drug control officers in July 2006 while selling a batch of hashish.

Two former participants of the show died. Oksana Aplekaeva was found strangled on the Moscow-Riga highway in September 2008. And a year earlier, in June 2007, Kristina Kalinina died. She was treated poorly by the show's cast because she abandoned her family for fame. She left the project based on the results of the vote. She died as a result of kidney and heart failure, according to some sources, as a result of stress after leaving the reality show.

The reality show "Dom-2" often becomes the object of public criticism.

In May 2005, deputies of the Moscow City Duma Commission on Health and Public Health, headed by Lyudmila Stebenkova, prepared an appeal to the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation Vladimir Ustinov, in which they demanded to close the television project and bring the host of this program, Ksenia Sobchak, to criminal liability for pimping. According to the appeal, the program “generally and systematically exploits the interest in sex: it repeatedly showed scenes of petting and acts of masturbation.”

At the beginning of June 2005, Ksenia Sobchak went to court demanding protection of her honor and dignity. In July, the Presnensky District Court of Moscow issued a resolution to terminate the proceedings on the claim of the TV presenter against deputies of the Moscow City Duma. The court ruled that the deputies cared about the morality of the electorate and had every right to write such an appeal.

The show caused sharp criticism from the Public Council on Morals on TV, which includes authoritative people from among writers, artists, politicians, and religious figures. In December 2008, members of the Council came to the conclusion that it was necessary to close the television project “Dom-2” or fine the TNT television channel a large sum for broadcasting obscene phrases and erotic scenes.

There are claims against the organizers of the television project and Rosprirodnadzor. In the summer of 2004, Rosprirodnadzor inspectors identified a number of gross violations of environmental legislation committed by the organizers of the Dom-2 program. In particular, the discharge of untreated sewage and household waste into the Istra River, illegal cutting of trees and clogging of the stream bed were carried out.