Sovetskaya Stenka (Советская стенка – “Soviet wall”) was, and in many places remains, the emotional and ideological load-bearing wall of every Soviet and post-Soviet home. A heavy wooden monument to conformity, it displayed untouched porcelain, unread censored books, and reflected a system built on surveillance, silence, and control. The varnished surfaces and mirrored vitrines didn’t just hold objects—they mirrored a totalitarian dream: an image of the “correct” citizen, obedient and still.

 But what Truth were kept behind the idealized all-Soviet closet doors?

This dollhouse - a 1:18 scale model of a typical Soviet apartment block - is not a nostalgic reconstruction. It is an excavation of what still festers beneath the polished veneer. Unlike the European dollhouse, which celebrates individuality and wealth, this structure reflects a collective interior shaped by ideology and fear, by loss and survival. It is a home for those who no longer have one.

Today, the parasites emerge - Khrush, the powderpost beetles, boring through memory and material. They are not just insects but symbols of contemporary colonization, of an empire that never died, only shifted shape. The Soviet wall is still standing - not only in furniture and architecture, but in language, military aggression, and state propaganda.

This work addresses the resurgence of neo-imperialism, especially in the context of Russia’s ongoing war in Ukraine and the continuing colonial violence across post-Soviet spaces. War, displacement, and cultural erasure are not distant history - they are lived realities. Sovetskaya Stenka is not just a relic - it is a living symbol of imposed identity and lost autonomy.