4 ideas
Sutulin lives in a Moscow communal-flat room of about eight square meters. A stranger gives him a free sample tube of 'Quadraturin,' an ointment for enlarging rooms. He paints it on the walls and his room swells overnight, then keeps swelling into a dark, featureless expanse in which he is finally lost, crying out in space he can no longer cross.
Space is valuable only while it stays proportionate to a life that can fill, furnish and cross it. When the room grows past the reach of the person and his things, the added space stops being room and turns into emptiness that isolates and swallows him. Getting more of what you lack can destroy the value it had while it was scarce.
Living space is rationed per head and a re-measuring commission can move new tenants into any surplus, so Sutulin must hide his windfall rather than enjoy it. Under a system that confiscates surplus, abundance becomes a liability to conceal, and the concealment isolates its owner.
Then deduce the consequences with strict logic. Because every consequence plays out inside ordinary daily life, the story exposes the hidden logic of that daily life, such as housing scarcity and bureaucracy.