Why is part of the wiring in Soviet apartments connected to the neighbor's dashboard (and meter)?

A frequent situation in the post-Soviet space: to carry out any electrical work, we turn off the circuit breakers in one apartment, but a miracle does not happen - the light in one room does not go out. Or the sockets in one of the rooms don't stop working.

When such things happen from time to time, this can be attributed to the oversight of electricians, or the cunning of neighbors. However, when in practice you encounter such a situation 5-6 and subsequent times, you understand that everything is not so simple.

Just take a look at how and where the wiring is laid in this apartment (Khrushchev).

Or another example - neighbor wiring goes through the customer's apartment. And also by gender:

Why it happens?

I have three versions of why this happens all the time.

1) your apartment is a former communal apartment. Accordingly, the number of metering devices together with automatic machines is exactly the same as there were owners. Even if now the apartment is 100% owned by one owner (family), this does not mean that it could not have been communal before.

2) haste and incompetence of electricians. Just remember how fast the panels were being built - the country was experiencing the consequences of the demographic explosion that happened after the war, and the country needed housing. Lots of housing. Cheap housing. And the reduction in price is achieved not only due to thin walls, but also due to unskilled labor.

3) neighbors cunning - it's no secret that many houses from the 70s and 80s were cooperative: people built their own homes (for this they were even freed from work for 1-2 days a week). This approach creates an opportunity for fraud, because you know in advance which apartment will be yours.