I haven't been to Russia in a couple of years, but most people I knew there were spending a lot of money at the local versions of Home Depot to do "Yevroremonty" (European-style) renovations. In the two to four-room apartments, they would knock out the wall between the toilet and bathtub, lay tile, and put in modern bathtubs and stools. Even bidets.
It's ironic you should mention the renovations, but that is exactly what we did when we purchased our apartment in Volzhsky 3 years ago. There was a problem, which came up after the fact. It some cases the structure of the building has been affected, and the owner has to correct the problem. We had to submit plans, which was a hassle, and pay a small fine. I was not able to find the pictures I have of the changes we made, without digging through hundreds of pictures in a drawer, but I did find one which will show the quality of the tile work.
What a cutie ;-)
Here's my bathtub in Kyiv, last spring ('06):
It was a nice place, but being a 'panel'niy dom' (made of pre-fab sections) it was noisy. If someone three stairwells over was doing renovations, the whole building didn't sleep.
And from Karaganda (KZ), last fall ('05):
It was nice and quiet, but only after 2 AM when the cafe across the street closed. Still not quite Euro, but clean and serviceable, when the hot water would make it to the top floor ;-)
What really was awesome was the Soviet-era washing machine. You had to manually add the water, or use a hose into the washing compartment, then remove them and put them in a coffee-can sized centrifuge to dry. I got better results, however, just washing things in the bathtub.
