The article is devoted to the ideological reasons for the creation of projects and the construction of communal houses in the 1920s in a Soviet country. The article describes how the predecessors of scientific communism – Campanella, Thomas More, Fourier and others – imagined the city-commune. The article analyzes the architectural and planning ideas of the first years of Soviet power, the architects' rationale for the advantages of collective organization of settlement and life, and explores attempts to create new types of housing and public institutions, taking into account the specific historical conditions and tasks facing the country.