It's a Russian clothes dryer--aka a low-tech drying rack. American-style dryers don't exist in Russia (well, maybe someone somewhere has one, but I've never seen a dryer in a Russian household). So, people hang their clothes on a rack to dry. In the warmer months, this rack goes out on the balcony, but in the winter, all your wet clothes will just freeze if you put them on the balcony, so that whole drying rack has to fit somewhere in your tiny Soviet apartment. Fortunately, my apartment is huge by Russian standards, so the drying rack fits nicely in the hallway during the winter. Also, in the winter, the air was good and dry, so clothes dried overnight.

Well, now that it's warm and humid, clothes don't dry so well. I hung my shirts and shorts out to dry after washing them a few days ago, and they were still dampish even today. I'm a patient guy, so I can wait a little bit for my clothes to dry, but there is another problem with that long dry time. What happens when a bunch of damp clothes hang on a shady balcony for a few days? Let's just say that I used a wide selection from my vocabulary of English and Russian curse words when I realized that the shirt I wanted to wear today smelled like a musty basement. If the USPS makes a flat-rate box big enough for a Maytag dryer, I would gladly pay the shipping....