Long seen as a particularly unpleasant sentry of Soviet authority, the floor lady is always stationed near the elevators at the entrance to every corridor.
From an American perspective, these levels are a ceiling for the Soviets but a floor for the United States.
Some of the story will be old news to those who have followed the periodic disclosures of submarine espionage since 1975, when The Los Angeles Times uncovered Project Jennifer, the secret operation to raise a sunken Soviet submarine from the floor of the Pacific in 1968.
The Skripals lived in an apartment in a 17-floor Soviet-era residential tower constructed out of prefabricated concrete blocks in the Krylatskoye district, a few stops from the end of the metro line.
In the 1990s many of the housing shortages characteristic of the Soviet period disappeared, and the floor space of homes per person steadily increased, largely the result of a construction boom for private homes.
Throughout the Cold War, U.S. Navy recording devices on the ocean floor listened for Soviet submarines.
Koolhaas paused outside a former office with yellowed Soviet-era wallpaper; on the floor was an abandoned pile of fluorescent lights.
Down an avenue named after Genghis Khan, up to the third floor of a Soviet-era government ministry and down a creaking wooden hallway, its carpet frayed and faded with the dust and the sun of the steppes, one office door has a freshly minted sign: Maritime Administration.
We were founded in the 14th floor of a Soviet-era building in Havana in 2014.
On the top floor of a Soviet-built apartment building at the edge of Kabul lives General Aminullah Anarkhil.
