r» u , ,
.rTé: . ;
«an... . ‘
.333. 2 {Li ...u . ‘ , ,. .15... ‘
r $1.11.... 1..
. Iv .33. .
.. 2. V...
1. l—Ilm,‘ , .
a i. ‘ . s .. .. . V . , .
in? ‘ . . .r .. 2.“... 5:3
. , 33.2 .1....J....u.J5"W
, $512?
7..

L1)! ‘
, . 1

Lair. . 2a
5... .: its...
3.
.1?
.;
11L

if...
.1 a 9.. t.“ :9“
1 . ‘ 2.5.2... I
.....HL.3 .nz.

1...»... ”duh-9... .
#2.: < .2. . . . , .&,.m
o. 7 , . A . V ‘ ‘ ‘1‘ ,1 O.
‘ ‘ , awn $4.19“? .u
V ‘ . >7. :. . .u
. .1

it...
31 ‘17:! a:
flat). Iv.

353.4.”

:22». ... . . , . .y . «is...
fit, .5: . . . . ‘ r2:
.. to a... ... ‘ . , , . ‘ 0r...
..A1.IAI. I.. . . ‘ . , V V .\ fi .
4... i: ‘ , bin

«L...- .n.‘
H]: .5:- 4.

. S,
3-1
{(3.

3.

Ir: 1-... :l .1.
£1,3(ol...> .2
3):. at...
$a£3=xtv§l : ‘ .oxlaqull“
:t-3\. tv}\u....)x...1
V .Ii..1§ ¢ 1 a
L .4. t: I!) .
.fl\(3il.Jfi 3
:savxlx I .
.x 3.51-3.13: V155.
.1 1:155:13 I???
t. 2.732.}: . ..

Lani...» ‘3‘
)II: {$51.}...
.5; r: L. i!!!

. $1 ‘
v ‘ VI A

o.!:.x-xo:11;,.
‘Iif 1.4:}? a

 

 

6;. . . v I . A ,
2.. I vii , . ‘ ‘ .3 . fin .
‘ ‘ , . , . Va”; 315.5»... Vin:

. . ¥ I.... v.1.

 

 

I Pa“:

MIC CISHGAN STA

I II IIIIII ILIIII

 

 

 

 

 

 

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

01016 5649

This is to certify that the

thesis entitled

ACCOMODATING THE MASSES: HOUSING POLICY

AND HABITATION UNDER KHRUSHCHEV

presented by
Charles George Urbany
has been accepted towards fulfillment

of the requirements for
MA

degree in History

    

M or professor

Date ////7Iy

04639 MS U is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution

 

 

 

 

LIBRARY
Michigan State
Unlverslty

 

 

 

PLACE II RETURN BOXto mow-01b mum your record.

TOAVOID FINESMumonorbdondutOduo.

DATE DUE DATE DUE DATE DUE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MSU loAn mm mm Opponmlty Inflation
W1

 

ACCOMMODATING THE MASSES: HOUSING POLICY AND
HABITATION UNDER KHRUSHCHEV

BY
Charles George Urbany, Jr.

AN ABSTRACT OF A THESIS
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Department of History
1994

Dr. Lewis Siegelbaum

ABSTRACT

ACCOMMODATING THE MASSES: HOUSING POLICY AND
HABITATION UNDER KHRUSHCHEV

BY
Charles George Urbany, Jr.

Research to date during the Khrushchev period has
focused on many aspects of Soviet life, but housing has been
somewhat ignored. The study of housing has traditionally
centered much attention on the physical aspects of one’s
residence and has overlooked the broader social issues that
surround it. 'Ihis investigation will examine the relationship
of housing to its broader urban.environment, in an exploration
of the internal dynamics of urban.living during the Khrushchev
period.

Previous historiography has discussed the impact of the
Soviet housing construction program and has pinpointed certain
dimensions of housing which reflect a hypertrophic and
atomized state, but has generally underplayed the degree of
inventiveness and creativity exercised by residents. An
examination of newspapers, films, architectural journals, and
novels from the late 1950s and early 19603, will illustrate
that residents had some flexibility in improving the quality

of their lives.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION
Chapter
I. The Rise of the Khrushcheby

II. State Housing

III. Cooperative Housing

IV. Private Housing

V. Housing and its Social Dimensions
CONCLUSION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

iii

Page

20
53
64
71
93

97

Introduction

Almost any visitor to a Soviet city during the Khrushchev
period was immediately struck by this scene—steel mesh
awnings extended over the sidewalks, to protect passersby from
falling debris from the sides and tops of houses. The
dilapidated conditions under which people lived and the
explosion of new but substandard construction were images that
prevailed then unlike any time in the past. Under Stalin,
smoke stacks and factories lined the city skyline, as the
regime worked to quickly build industries, promote its cities,
and become an industrial power. No definitive housing policy
existed at that time and housing was put on a back burner
until it became a crisis.

Under Khrushchev, housing concerns took center stage, and
the Stalinist images associated with industrialization were
replaced by cranes, concrete, cement and scaffolding. Yet the
state, in its haste to build enough units, rushed in a frenzy
to piece together an assemblage of buildings attended by
shortcuts and careless work. The shoddy results became the
homes of urban residents, and the neighborhoods that left
visitors leaving with shaking heads.

To Western eyes, Soviet housing seemed drab, oppressive

and crowded. It is easy to understand why Soviet urban

2
residents were viewed.as hapless pawns of the state, unable to
better their living conditions and therefore their lives. IBut
this was not the case. As much as residents endured their
living conditions, they searched for ways to improve them.
They hoped.

One newly arrived migrant described his first impression,
as he passed heaps of brick and steaming tar, piled alongside
the streets of Moscow every hundred yards. "Tall cranes,
scaffolding and concrete are everywhere," he said. "As I
watched the cranes in motion, I began to understand why men
and women feel that life will get better."1

Research to date during this period has focused on other
aspects of Soviet life, while housing has been somewhat
overlooked. Yet housing has implications that go beyond the
mere bricks and mortar that offer shelter. It reflects and
reinforces social relationships and contributes to the
structuring of patterns of interaction. Social historians
inspired to rewrite history from.the "bottcm1up", have focused
their attention on the everyday lives of average citizens.
Since housing comprises such a fundamental and major dimension
of everyday life, we begin to see its value. This study will
examine the relationship of housing with its social
environment, in an exploration of the internal dynamics of
urban living in the Soviet Union during the Khrushchev period.

The traditional tendency to focus simply on the physical

 

1Edward Sears, "Housing in the USSR," New World Review,
vol.29, Feb. 1961, pp. 13.

3

aspects of one’s residence or the field of housing policy
limits an examination of the broader issues that surround it.
Within its walls, housing is the site of complex processes in
society. It offers a window into life at the time, the
relationship between employers and workers, the willingness of
the state to recognize family needs, and the role of women in
society and the home.

The comments of one white-collar worker and father of
four serves as one such example. He asked:

What’s all this talk about a housing crisis? Today’s man

is outside of the home all day. First, he must go to

work. After work, there's always a meeting, or

entertainment, then a short stroll in the streets, and

it's late and time for bed. Housing crisis? It doesn’t

really affect me. I'm never home anyway.2
This study will begin with an investigation of the statistical
measurements quantifying the extent of housing shortage in
terms of issues such as overcrowding, poor sanitation and the
like.3 But the primary goal is to investigate the link
between housing and its social environment.4

As historians, sociologists, economists, urban theorists

and general observers discuss the impact of the Soviet housing

 

2H. Kent Geiger, The Family in Soviet Russia (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1968), p. 210.

3See for example Timothy Sosnovy, "Housing in the
Workers’ State: Undoing the Sins of Neglect," Problems of
Communism, vol.6, Nov; 1956, pp. 31-39, Donald.Barry, "Housing
in the USSR: Cities and Towns," Problems of Qommunisnn vol.18,
May 1969, pp. 1-10, and John Alfred Dimaio, Soviet Urban

Housing: Problems and Policies. (New York: Praeger Press,
1974).

‘Jim.Kemeny, Housing;and Social Theory (London: Routledge
Press, 1992), pp. 1-16.

4

construction.program, they have pinpointed certain dimensions
of housing which reflect the image of a hypertrophic and
atomized state but they' have underplayed the degree of
inventiveness and creativity exercised by residents. Urban
dwellers engaged in a variety of strategies designed to
ameliorate their living arrangements and, therefore, were not
passive recipients of the changes around them.

Scholarship concerned with Soviet housing is rather
limited and has centered on earlier periods. Traditionally,
the primary focus has been the numerous housing and town
planning programs designed by architectural planners during
the experimental years of 1918-1933. The lack of scholarly
attention to housing during the Khrushchev period is
particularly surprising. The program of the 19503 and early
1960s drastically changed the urban landscape and was arguably
the most ambitious governmental housing program in human
history. The period from 1956 to 1969 produced over 150
percent more units of housing than all housing constructed
from the time of the revolution.5 Just the five year period
from 1956-1960, witnessed the construction of more units of
housing than in the entire period from 1918 to 1946. The"
upsurge in housing construction represented a major triumph of
the Khrushchev period.

However, hidden. behind these impressive statistics,

 

5Timothy Sosnovy, "The Soviet Housing Situation Today,"
Soviet Studies, 11, no.1, July 1959, pp. 13-14 and Kommunist,
March 24, 1961, pp. 1-3.

5
numerous problems plagued the housing industry and affected
the quality of life for many Soviet urban residents.
Obviously, any massive housing construction correlates with
urban growth and it was during this period that the process of
urbanization.grew at an unprecedented rate. .Any discussion of
housing conditions in the Soviet Union during the Khrushchev
period and the remedies designed to improve the crisis,
demands a sensitivity to the effects of this mass
urbanization. There is general agreement that the pre-
Khrushchev impetus to this growth was the dual program of
enforced collectivization of agriculture and enforced
industrialization,- millions of peasants either fled from their
farms to escape the former program or were pushed into the
labor force demanded by the latter. As a result, the urban
population more than doubled between 1926 and 1939, rising
from.26.3 million to 55.9 millirnrf Postwar migration.and new
territorial acquisitions further raised this figure to an
estimated 87 million by April 1956.7 Thus, it is important
to keep in mind that a prime factor in the Soviet housing
equation involves the numerous difficulties surrounding this
exploding urban growth. Since this paper is concerned with the
dynamics of urbanization and its relationship with housing,

the focus will center on housing conditions in urban areas,

 

6T. Sosnovy, The Housing Problem in the Soviet Union,
Research Program on the USSR, New York, 1954, p. 102.

7T. Sosnovy, "Housing in the Workers’ State: Undoing the
Sins of Neglect," Problems of Communism, vol.6, Nov. 1956, p.
31. -

6
and, therefore, the daily lives and experiences of urban
inhabitants in all their variety. It will also be sensitive
to regional variations and examine aspects of rural-urban
interaction.

The effects of urban growth extended far beyond an
increase in. population. and the drastic physical changes
associated with it. Unprecedented social changes accompanying
the process of urbanization were extremely significant. As
the "agrarian nexus"8 began to fade, Soviet society began to
change as well. Residents gradually became more educated, and
in turn, a new "class" of upwardly mobile professionals
crystallized. Social interaction and mobility associated with
urbanization, combined with increased levels of education,
created a more demanding societyu It was precisely during the
Khrushchev period that these demands began to develop and to
accelerate. The manifestations of the pressures "from below"
can be directly attributed to this newly emerging dynamic and
demanding society. Despite the image of an unbending and
monolithic state typically associated with the Soviet system,
citizens had some flexibility to control the way they lived.

The case study here leads us to a broader issue and a
subject of an ongoing debate in recent historiography. Much
of the debate among recent Soviet scholars these days centers
on the validity or usefulness of the totalitarian model. The

argument presented here combats the stereotypical image of a

 

aSee Moshe Lewin, The Gorbachev Phenomenon (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1991).

 

7
rigid and totalitarian state confronting and repressing the
Soviet population” 'The totalitarian model may help to explain
the "rigidities" of the communist system, but its extended use
tends to distort and blur the intricacies of everyday life in
the Soviet Union. The tendency in the past literature to
portray Soviet society as a whole as malleable putty in the
hands of the state is in need of revision. As the immense
social changes which gained momentum during the Khrushchev
period accelerated, Soviet citizens increasingly demanded,

albeit cautiously, improved accommodations.

I. The Rise of the Khrushcheby

"Housing units are growing in the Soviet Union like
mushrooms after a spring rain."9 This front page headline in
Pravda seems to describe accurately the speed with which
housing units were constructed during the early 1960s, but
this was not indicative of earlier periods in Soviet history.
Housing, like all essential needs, had to compete against
other officially more favored interests in the Soviet Union.
Particularly during the Stalin years, the shortage of housing
grew more acute even though some advances were recorded in the
fight to provide shelter for all Soviet citizens.10 For
years, the top priority given to industrialization and the
consequent rapid increase in the urban population combined to
turn the housing shortage into an epidemic crisis. The
collectivization campaigns of the 1930s which forced millions
of peasant families off the land into already substandard

urban housing fueled the problem. In addition, the

 

9Pravda, January 10, 1964.

10See William Richardson, "Architecture, Urban Planning
and Housing During the First Five Year Plan," Urban Studies,
vol.26, June 1989, pp. 150-168. John Hazard, Soviet Housing
Lag (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1939). pp. 130-141.
D.L. Broner, Kurs Zhilishchnogo Khoziaistva (Moscow: Izd-vo
Ministerestva Kommunal’nogo Khoziaistva RSFR, 1948, pp. 73—92.

and Maurice Frank Parkins, City Planning in Soviet Russia
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press,1953), pp. 40-53.

8

9

devastation of World War II, destroyed all housing in vast
expanses of the Soviet heartland, compounding an already
appalling situation. By the end of the war, six million
buildings were reported destroyed, depriving thirty-five
million persons of shelter. By 1950, the per capita average
dwelling space dipped to its all time low of 3.98 square
meters per person.11

During the 19503, the communist party finally
acknowledged the urgency of the housing crisis and in its
attempt to solve it, embarked on a series of sweeping
programs. Solving the housing "crisis" became a major goal of
the Khrushchev regime. The Twentieth Party Congress in 1956
spoke of the urgent need to improve the country’s housing
situation and, as a result, adopted an extensive program to
expand housing construction "with the view of eliminating the
country’s housing shortage within the next ten years."12 In
1957 Nikita Khrushchev, then leader of the Soviet state,
declared that the "acute shortage of housing is the most
important obstacle for the Soviet Union to overcome."13 The
party youth newspaper conducted a poll of Soviet citizens in

1957, asking them to discuss the problems affecting their

 

11Roy A. Grancher, "Housing Industry in the USSR," U.S.

Delegation. Report, Economic Commission. for' Europe, Third

Building Industry Seminar and Russian Study Tour, Jan. 1971,
prepared for the Office of International Affairs, HUD,

Washington, D.C. NTIS Number PB 199418, p. 15.

12S. Khotchinskii, "Puti Realizatsii Stroitel’stva,"
Arkhitektura SSSR, 1956, no.5, pp. 1-4.

“Izyestia, November 7, 1957, p. 3.

10
quality of life. Sixty-five percent of those polled named
housing as their chief concern.“ These passages indicate if
there was one subject on which the Soviet leaders and the
populace were in.full agreement, it was the seriousness of the
housing problem.

Prior to 1957 it was difficult even to discern the
existence of a housing policy in the Soviet Union. But with
the monumental programs of 1957, the state for the first time
in its history of central planning began to fulfill its
promises. ‘Until the launching of the monumental 1957 program,
it was difficult even to discern the existence of a housing
policy in the Soviet Union. Truly it was the beginning of a
"New Day" in Soviet housing.

According to reports at the twenty-third Congress, about
one-half of the country's population moved into new apartments
or improved its housing by 1961. American housing experts
have«generally supported.these claims and have calculated that
for the years 1956-1958 the USSR produced twice the number of
dwelling units produced in the United States.15 In 1959,
Great Britain built 5.4 apartments per one thousand
inhabitants; France built 7.2; and the United States

constructed 7.9. The USSR reported a record 14.5 units per

 

1‘Komsomolskaia Pravda, October 7, 1960.

15Allan A. Bates, "Low Cost Housing in the USSR," in
Industrialized Housing, (Washington: Government Printing
Office,1969), p. 1-21.

11

thousand.“‘ Investment in housing during the fifth (1951-
1955) Five Year Plan was, in ruble terms, almost double that
of the preceding planning period, and it more than doubled in
the next period as well (1956-1960), when it reached 23.5 per
cent of total capital investment.17 In terms of living space,
200 million square meters were built during the period 1946-
1950, 241 million square meters in 1951-1955 and an amazing
475 million square meters in 1956—1960.18 Thus, it can be
easily argued that, in statistical terms, the housing
construction program was an astounding success.

Hidden behind this impressive array of statistics,
however, loomed serious problems which were intensified by the
pressures of rapid industrialization and urbanization. One of
the most visible problems was the quality of urban dwellings.
The negative testimony of Western observers and foreigners on
the quality of construction are numerous. The construction
industry, forced to acquiesce to overzealous Party demands,
made the drive to reduce expenditures and improve efficiency
its central concern. As a result, it abandoned concern for

design and quality under pressure from Communist party leaders

 

16S. Kucherenko, "On the State of Urban Development in the
USSR and Measures for Improving It," report delivered at the
June 1960 Conference on City Planning and Construction,
Pravda, June 8, 1960 CDSP, no.23, p. 14.

 

17Gregory D. Andrusz, Housing and Urban Development in the
USSR (London: Macmillan Press, 1984), p. 19.

1"Leon M. Herman, "Urbanization and New Housing
Construction in the Soviet Union." American Journal of

Economics and Sociology, vol.30, April 1971, p. 205.

 

12
to build housing as quickly as possible. The enormous
pressure to meet production quotas and schedules meant the
range of options in housing was also kept to a bare minimum.
It was argued a handful of options would facilitate
standardization and thereby advance industrialized
construction techniques and increase economic efficiency. The
thinking and behavior of the construction organizations
amounted to a clamorous policy whose theme was "anything that
cost more than the minimum was bad and anything beside the
bare essentials was superfluous."19

This meant improvements in quality were slow as they took
a back seat to the demands to fulfill a plan defined in terms
of square meters. Each year construction organizations
engaged in an end of the year frenzy to rush assemblage of
buildings attended by shortcuts and careless work. The same
impulse to produce a good yearly record forced local soviets
to pressure state and public inspection agencies to accept
faulty or unfinished buildings for occupancy.

While there is no doubt that the quality and durability
of the dwellings constructed posed many problems for Soviet
citizens, the words of one Soviet housing official adequately
described the realities of urban life during this time period.

He exclaimed, "When you are trying desperately to clothe

 

19V. Berezin, "Beauty and Expediency," Pravda Vostokas,
April 7, 1960, p. 3 (CDSP, vol.12, no.10: pp. 29—30.

 

13

people, you don’t worry about sewing all the buttons on!"20
This individual seemed to recognize that any kind of housing,
whatever its condition, was better than the utter lack of
housing that had previously existed. Despite problems of
quality, Soviet housing alleviated many of the lamentable
shortages that prevailed at the time of Stalin’s death. One
can not dispute the fact that increasing numbers of Soviet
citizens had come to live in their own apartments.

An examination of the "missing buttons" of the housing
program will illuminate what everyday life was like during
this period and set the overall framework for the argument
presented here. One of the essential criteria of any housing
construction initiative is to determine the amount of living
space allotted. to each. urban resident within the state
constructed prefabricated structures. Opinions vary whether
the Soviet government failed or succeeded in this respect.
According to D. L. Broner, a Soviet economist, urban living
space in the Soviet Union amounted to 6.8 square meters per
person at the end of 1964.21 .An American expert on Soviet
housing calculated slightly lower estimates of 6.31 square
meters for 1964 and 6.42 square meters by the end of 1965.

These figures represented significant improvement over the

 

20Ada Louise Huxtable, "Building Soviet Society: Housing
and Planning," in The Soviet Union: The Fifty Years, ed. by
Harrison E. Salisbury, (New York: Harcourt Brace and World,
1967), p. 158.

21D.L. Broner, Zhilishchnyi vopros i statistika (The
Housing Question and Statistics) Moscow, Statistics Publishing

House, 1966, p. 8.

14
1952 average of 4.67 square meters.22 But many investigators
criticize these results as inadequate. They argue that the
regime did succeed in reversing the decline in living space,
but only brought it back the level which existed in 1932.
Many investigators, particularly western observers, were quick
to point out that the Soviet Union.provided only slightly more
than one-half of the space "considered minimally healthful"
for its urban inhabitants and dismissed the program as a
failure. As one observer commented: "It is worth noting that
the present living-space standard leaves the urban citizen
substantially worse off than he was over forty years ago under
the tsars. Why? Because the sanitary' nornl has not lbeen
met."23 While the Soviet housing situation in the late
19508 and early 1960s fully deserves criticism, toldeclare the
whole program a failure solely on its failure to achieve a
certain minimum standard of living space per inhabitant is
very harsh. Western observers’ perceptions were obviously
value-laden and, consequently, they tended to exaggerate the
negative aspects. They often evaluated living conditions in
terms of privacy and focused on what they perceived as the

moral problem of excessive housing densities. One observer,

 

”TH Sosnovy, Housing Conditions and Urban Development in
the USSR," New Directions in the Soviet Economy, Part II-B,
Washington, DC, US Government Printing Office, 1966, p.544;
and "The Soviet Housing Situation Today," Soviet Studies,
no.1, Vol.XI (Sept. 1959), p. 4.

23Alexander Balinky, "Non-Housing Objectives of Soviet
Housing Policy," Problems of Communism, vol.10, August 1961,
p. 19.

 

15

for example, was quick to point out that by the end of the
Khrushchev period an average of two and one third persons
occupied a room in Soviet urban communities, as compared to
1.4 persons per room achieved in a number of Western
countries.24 This, he declared, was "appalling" and. he
reasoned that since the average space per inhabitant in the
Soviet Union fell far below the "sanitary housing norm" of
nine square meters, the housing construction program was a
failure.25

There are many problems with this line of reasoning. In
the first place, evaluating the success of the housing program
in square meters is not particularly useful because of the
continuing flood of citizens from countryside to town and its
tremendous impact on the amount of per capita living space.
Between 1940 and 1962 the proportion of the Soviet population
living in cities rose from about one third to more than one
half. During the 1960s this proportion continued to rise at
the rate of one percent per year.26 Thus, the progress made
was often obscured and overlooked because of the enormous
impact of urbanization during this period” IBut real progress,
though slow, was clearly evident” The housing space available

per inhabitant during the period.1957-1967, increased from 5.2

 

24T. Sosnovy, "Housing Conditions and Urban Development
in the USSR," p. 545.

25Ibid., p. 546.
26See Narodnoe khoziaistvo v SSR v 1963 godu (The Economy

in the USSR in 1963), Moscow, Statistics Publishing House,
1965, p. 8.

16
square meters to 7.18 square meters an increase of thirty-
seven percent. .Although the space available at the end of the
period was modest, the overall increase was indeed quite
impressive.

Secondly, to Western eyes, Soviet housing seemed drab,
oppressive, and crowded. Yet the same structures could well
create entirely the opposite impression in the minds of recent
migrants from the countryside in the early 19508. The
traditional peasant household had only one room, which was
shared by the entire family. Reports indicate the crowded
urban apartments were not viewed. by these residents as
critically as by the foreign observer. In addition, many
"native" urban residents preferred much less space in a
separate apartment to a larger room in a communal
apartment.27 These examples stress the fact that the culture
under investigation may have had different levels or standards
for defining or measuring a housing crisis.

Certainly life was not easy in these crowded apartments.
Yet, the population as a whole retained a sense of hope and
patience that living conditions would improve. Following the
deprivations of the Stalinist era, many tended to view their
situation as a temporary inconvenience. Perhaps one of the
legacies of the Stalin period was a sense of pride and
participation, shared by many, that weathered through years of

hard times. A renewed sense of hope manifested itself through

 

”N; Narinyani, "A Dispute over the Layout for One-Family
Apartments," Izvestia, March 3, 1962.

17

the latter half of the 19505. As one woman exclaimed, "Of
course it’s better now! Look at us. Andrei is a worker, not
a peasant. That’s better. Besides we also have a room in
Moscow with electricity and running water."28 As the effects
of urbanization accelerated, many came to view the urban way
of life (with its "modern" connotations) superior to that of
the rural.

Despite all the shortcomings, there were visible signs of
progress which had enormous cultural ramifications for many
Soviet citizens. Wooden shacks were often replaced with
buildings made of brick, stone, and concrete. Flat surfaced
roads replaced the old rough cobble stone throughways. The
multi-storied apartment complexes which practically grew
overnight during’ the Khrushchev' period. represented. clear
evidence of "modernization" as concrete replaced wood in the
major urban centers. The combination of these new images in
addition to the serious efforts by the state to eradicate the
housing crisis clearly illustrates why the Khrushchev era is
a definitive historical period for scholarly investigation.
While the smokestacks of Magnitogorsk were perceived as the
symbols of progress during the Stalinist period, it would
appear that the crane, cement and scaffolding replaced these
images during the Khrushchev period.

All of these examples indicate the varying perceptions of

 

28Jerome Davis, "Russians Face to Face: A Report on
Housing in the USSR." New World Review, vol. 32, Jan. 1964, p
37.

 

18

the way individuals may define a "housing crisis." Within the
Soviet Union itself, the perceptions began to change as the
process of rapid industrialization and urbanization
accelerated throughout the Khrushchev period. By the late
1950s, the living conditions of many Soviet citizens had
improved and increasing numbers of families had come to live
in their own apartments. This in itself was a major success.
However, these perceptions of success, were already beginning
to change by the early 1960s. The housing initiative was
interpreted quite differently by the newly emerging generation
of Soviet citizens. The Khrushchevian apartments, which
appeared so wondrous to a generation that endured the
privations of the Stalin era, no longer satisfied a younger,
more educated and urbanized generation. Urbanization, and the
social changes and pressures which coincided with this
development, affected the way urban residents evaluated their
various living arrangements. The Khrushchevian apartments
proved to be no longer acceptable to the rising expectations
of bourgeoisified workers or upwardly mobile professionals.

Shifting our attention away from.the varying perceptions
of the housing program to the realities of everyday life
within the dwellings, the impact of this construction
initiative on the individual Soviet citizen is best conveyed
by examining the available options for accommodation. The
housing initiative included three basic components
respectively, in the sectors of private, cooperative, and

state-owned housing. The cooperative form was resurrected

19
during the Khrushchev period and grew steadily during the
period while private housing gradually declined. Private
housing, though officially banned in 1962, still proved to be
a viable outlet for many residents and perhaps serves as the
best example of the way some urban residents resisted the
encroachment of the state’s concrete multi-storied complexes.
State-owned housing was by far the largest sector and, since
the majority of citizens were faced with conforming to its
procedures and regulations, its role had the most impact on
the population. Thus, everyday life within the state-owned
structures will receive most of the attention in this study.
A discussion of each of these forms of housing tenure will
create a sense of what housing conditions were actually like
during the Khrushchev period and, further, set the context to
examine the ways in which Soviet citizens coped with their
environment, articulated their demands for improved
accommodation, and expressed their disappointments and

frustrations with state authorities.

 

II. State Housing

The Soviet regime under Khrushchev explored a variety
of ideas for state-owned housing placing the most energy and
hope in the development of prefabricated industrialized
techniques. The monumental decree of June 1957 on the
Development of Housing Construction.and the Seven.Year Plan of
1959-1965 called for a shift to the "progressive" methods of
construction which placed heavy emphasis on the development of
prefabricated large-panel housing and industrialized housing
techniques as an important way to solve the housing crisis.29
Khrushchev himself became the tireless proponent of the
further expansion of the industrialization of construction.

The first expansion began in Leningrad as construction
teams transformed the Soviet housing industry forever with
their successful completion of several experimental reinforced
concrete large panel houses in the city’s Shchemilovka
district during 1956-58.30 After Shchemilovka's debut,
construction specialists around the Soviet Union, with
approval from the Party, worked to perfect and advance large

panel construction systems. The impact of this form of

 

”Egayda, June 14, 1957.

3"I . Shass, "Kvartal krupnopanel ’ nykh domov v Leningrade, "
Arkhitektura SSSR, no.2, 1960, pp.10—12.

20

21

housing was substantial because, in the ten.years from 1957 to
1967, the proportion of prefabricated buildings in Moscow rose
from 7.6 to 82 percent of all new construction. By 1968 the
proportion of large panel buildings reached sixty-two percent
of all of the available housing in the largest cities of the
Soviet Union.31

The microdistrict (mikroraion) or superblock, arrived
together with the large panel construction methods in the
19505. In theory, the blocks would serve as totally
integrated neighborhoods, with all social and commercial
services available to residents within easy walking distance
of individual apartments. In actuality, the microdistricts
were not well adapted to fit specific local conditions. They
lacked adequate roads and other means of transportation and
were isolated from the wider urban environment. Although the
actual micro-districts fell far short of the images projected
by design plans and models, these superblocks became visible
features of the urban landscape.32

Despite the emergence of these new urban features, the
legacy of society’s rurality still shaped the feel and
character of the urban landscape in many ways. In certain

districts of Russian cities, it was still customary to find

 

31I. Ryaboshapko, "Builders Pool Their Experience,"
Zhilishchnoe Stroitel’stvo, no. 1, Jan. 1969, pp. 30—31. It is
a key point to stress that these statistics apply only to the
larger cities of the Soviet Union.

32S. Turgenev, "Eksperimental’naia zastroika zhilogo
kompleksa," Arkhitektura SSSR, no.1, 1958, pp. 3-14.

22

garden plots of up to one-third of an acre adjoining the
dwellings, and sometimes even livestock. Such "urban
districts", with their primitive one and two~story houses,
covered larger areas than is commonly thought (especially in
small and. medium. sized. urban areas and where erstwhile
villages have been incorporated into expanding metropolises).
Despite the tendency in recent literature to focus on the
development of the high-rise or multi-storied apartment
building in the Khrushchev period, by 1969, buildings of four
or more stories took up less than ten percent of the overall
residential area, and even in major cities such as Gorky and
Novosibirsk, the urban area occupied by single—story buildings
accounted for between 55 and 75 per cent of the total land
area.33 Overall, one-story housing amounted to as much as 61
per cent of the housing stock (in terms of living space) in
1959 and was still 45 per cent by 1967. The predominance of
low-rise housing still was the norm by the end of the
Khrushchev period. With up to 70-80 per cent of the area of
many large cities occupied by individual houses often lacking
the most basic amenities, one could argue that they remained
little more than large villages.“

The prevalence of Soviet society's rurality is evident

when we examine the fate of the microblock design when

 

33Blair A. Ruble "From Khrushcheby to Korobki," pp. 232-
270.

1“B. Svetlichny, "Nekotorye voprosy perspektivnogo
razvitiya gorodov," Voprosy ekonomiki, no.3, 1962, pp. 57-69.

 

23

transferred to the country and confronted by unmediated rural
values. Although the focus of this study is primarily
concerned with what has been traditionally defined as urban
housing, it is interesting to note the relationship of the
private plot to housing construction in the rural areas and
the ability of rural residents to preserve it. The leadership
hoped for the transformation of the Soviet village into a type
of settlement which would fulfill the Communist ideal of
applying an industrial style of working and living to
agriculture -a transformation, that is, of the peasant,
especially the collectivized peasant, into an agricultural
proletarian. The term "agrotown" was assigned to this concept
and what Khrushchev specifically had in mind was the
construction in rural areas of "well-appointed urban type
dwellings with all modern facilities," the creation of "new
settlements and economic centers," and the resettlement of
persons from " small ill-appointed villages into well—appointed
communities."35 Khrushchev hoped to bring the scattered
segments of the rural population together into settlements
with multi—storied buildings and as a result the first
"agrotown" was completed in the Ukraine in 1958.

It soon became clear, however, that the plans for
establishing such large settlements had undergone substantial

modification since their initiation in 1958-59. Scholars have

 

35Luba O. Richter, "Plans to Urbanize the Countryside
1950-1961," in Jane Degras and Alec Nove (eds.), Soviet

Planning: Essays in Honor of Naum Jasny, Oxford, Basil
Blackwell, 1964, pp. 32-45.

24
focused on lack of resources and unorganized planning as the
major causes for the failure of the development of the "urban-
type settlement centers."36 However, it would appear that
inhabitants’ resistance of this form of housing was also an
important factor. One journalist described how the majority
of rural inhabitants favored "one-story, one family houses
with garden. plots next to the houses, while other had
advocated two-story, two-family houses, likewise with
adjoining garden plots."37 She suggested that the idea of
multi-storied apartment complexes was favored by only a small
minority of the rural population.38 It must be borne in mind
here that for the great bulk of the Soviet rural population,
private agricultural production was one of the advantages of
village life which they were unwilling to forego. These
opinions were reflected in policy changes in the realm of
housing construction. For example, in Uzbekistan a large
multi-storied apartment was constructed which one architect
exclaimed, "will serve as the model for the transformation of

rural life!" One year later the same architect sadly admitted

 

36See Karl Eugen Wadekin, Rural Reconstruction and the

Agrogorod; the Development in Village Planning and Design

since the 22nd Party Congress, (Munich: Radio Liberty
Committee, 1968), pp. 13-29.

37Literaturnaia Gazeta, No.34, 1968, p. 10.

38The majority of the rural inhabitants who favored the
high rise apartments were young people. The author speculates
that young’ people were enthusiastic about the high-rise
apartments because they hoped that they would help to
facilitate the "urbanization" or "modernization" of village
life.

25

"this apartment complex never became a model because of
popular disappointment in the project." The next year the
plans were modified and one-family and two-family houses were
built with. garden. plots of eight hundred square 'meters
each.“39 The fact that the rural population was opposed to
restrictions and encumbrances on private cultivation is not
enough to suggest that this changed policy. It would.be overly
simplistic to interpret the regime’s shift toward a more
moderate line on rural construction solely on the basis of
rising popular discontent” However, as the case in Uzbekistan
illustrates, "pressure from below" seems to have been an
important factor. It is clear that the remnants of Soviet
society’s rurality combined with individual initiative helped
limit the plans of urban planners to expand the micro-block
approach in the countryside.

Rural values not only affected the layout of housing
environment in rural areas but these values were also
transposed to the urban environment. Since the vast majority
of the urban population during this period had its origins in
the countryside, they had a tremendous impact on the urban
landscape. By the end of the 1970s, over one half of the
urban residents had been born in the village.‘0 These rural
roots had a bearing on the type of accommodations many people

chose to live in. Thus, what Moshe Lewin refers to as the

 

”Selskaia_zhizn. October 9. 1967.

“Geoffrey Hosking, The Awakening of the Soviet Union
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), p. 3.

26

"ruralization" of the cities is applicable to a discussion of
housing choices and patterns and their influence on the urban
environment.‘1

The value system of the former rural environment was
transferred to the urban milieu in a variety of ways. One
point that needs to be stressed here is the potential
significance of rural background as a cultural determinant of
housing preferences. The movement from.one particular set of
social relationships (in the countryside) to another set (in
the town) did not change traditions and world outlook of
migrants or even some of the social relationships themselves.
Rural roots influenced, if not determined, where a particular
migrant group lived within the urban system. The newcomers
often arrived in a town and relied on village networks to help
them. 'Fhey tended. to live with relatives or zemlyaki
(individuals from the same region) who provided them with
assistance in finding work.“2 The long tradition of
peasants’ seasonal work, dating back for generations, meant
that peasants often knew other villagers in the city. Since
many cities and enterprises couldn’t house these new
residents, the newly arrived found housing on the outskirts of
the urban areas. The formation of these homogenous

communities clearly illustrates the ability of many residents

 

“See Moshe Lewin, The Gorbachev Phenomenon (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1991), pp. 34—39.

“A.V. Topilin, Terriotrial’noe pereraspredelenie
trugoyykh resurov v SSSR (Moscow, 1975). p. 94.

27

to have some control over their living situation.“3

Within the crowded standardized apartment complexes
themselves, a variety of strategies were exercised by
residents to cope with the daily burdens of everyday living.
Since meeting production quotas and schedules mattered most of
all, available housing largely ignored the needs of the
families that were scheduled to inhabit these new apartments.
The limited number of master or standardized housing designs
could not adequately cope with the changing nature of the
Soviet family. Family arrangements were much more diverse
than architects had imagined, and these variations affected
the demand for certain types of bath facilities, kitchen
appliances, room sizes, and balconies. For example, two
separate families, each having four members, would have very
different housing needs. One family might have had two adults
and two children or one family might consist of parents, an
adult son, and an adult daughter. The interior design of the
apartment becomes crucial in satisfying the needs of the two
different families. In the above case, the family with the
young children may have found two bedrooms to be adequate; in
the latter, more rooms were highly desired.

As the above examples suggest, the average life course of
the family presented intractable dilemmas for an immobile

housing market with an inflexible conception of how best to

 

43See David L. Hoffmann, "Moving to Moscow: Patterns of
Peasant In-Migration During the First Five-Year Plan," Slavic
Review, 50 (Winter 1991), pp. 852-854.

28

design standardized apartments. Housing designs were couched
in terms of providing an apartment for two parents and one or
two children. Although this was a stage through which many
families passed, it was only a snapshot of the entire range of
household formations. For example, the break up of communal
apartments and liberalized divorce laws fostered differences
in family composition.to*which.the construction industry could
not adequately respond.

The problem. of standard designs also affected the
cooperative movement and set up one more obstacle blocking a
more enthusiastic leap to cooperative forms of housing
construction. Cooperative members had little choice in
building designs and the size of an apartment. As an article
in Izvestia noted, as a rule almost half of the apartments in
cooperatives have three rooms. However, the majority of
inhabitants did not need three rooms. For example, of the
60,000 families in Biryuleva Borough who wished to join a
cooperative apartment house, only three thousand needed three
room apartments.“ Similarly, in the railroad borough of
Sverdlosvk, 103 persons wanted to enter the builders’
cooperative. Of them, 65 applied for one-room apartments,
thirty for two rooms and only eight for three rooms. However,
the standardized design offered twenty one room apartments,

fifty two-room and twenty three—room apartments.‘5

 

“Izyestia, Oct. 29, 1985, p. 5.

“Izyestia, Dec. 24, 1964, p. 3.

29

The gap between supply and demand was a major problem and
the failure to provide more flexible designs for the
cooperatives and state housing created numerous difficulties.
The forms of building were largely influenced by economic
needs rather than social ones. Sociologists and demographers
clamored for the diversification of apartment layouts in order
to better accommodate an ever-changing family structure.
These cries fell on deaf ears; thus, one of the major flaws of
the housing construction initiative was its failure to provide
a flexible housing market in which families could move at will
and accommodate changing family size. Housing authorities had
no means of determining consumer tastes and demands and no
incentive for accommodating shifting consumer preferences had
they been able to discern them.

Despite these problems, urban residents pursued an array
of strategies designed to accommodate changes in family
composition. Exchanging apartments was one eagerly sought out
alternative. Exchanges were prompted by such motivations as
the desire to have a larger or smaller (and cheaper)
apartment, the wish to live closer to one’s job or relatives,
the need to find ground-floor accommodations for reasons of
health, etc. Soviet sources give no indication of the volume
of apartment-swapping, but other sources suggest that it was
probably quite large. For example, bulletins containing
advertisements by persons wishing to make an exchange were
organized by local agencies and published by the state’s

housing administration offices. A typical ad read as follows:

30

One room, twenty—one square meters, with all

conveniences; hot water, seventh floor of an eight floor

building, elevator, balcony, incinerator. Kiev district,

Kutozovskii Prospekt No. 37, Apartment 233. Mr. Demidov,

(in exchange for): two rooms together with all

conveniences and larger floor space.“

The right of exchange introduced a necessary degree of
flexibility into Soviet housing not provided by the
construction industry and was a very common. method of
upgrading or shifting one’s available housing options. Uri
Trifonov deals in some detail with the realities and
difficulties of exchanging apartments in his play The Exchange
(1969).‘7 Tiifonov, in his play informs his readers how an
exchange of flats actually took place, and describes the
procedures required for it. The play begins with the main
character Victor Georgievich Dmietriv who learns that his
mother is dying from.cancern Victor’s wife Lena.proposes that
they use this information advantageously, so that after her
mother-in—law’s death they can gain her apartment and more
spacious accommodations. To do this officially is difficult,

if not impossible; so, a mixture of endless official and

unofficial steps are necessary.

 

“Biuelleten po obmenu zhiloi plgshchadi (Bulletin for the
Exchange of Housing Space); published by the housing

administration of the Moscow City Soviet of Workers’ Deputies.
no.22, May 6, 1962, p. 4, cited in Dimaio, p. 128. It is
interesting to note that the individual who placed this ad
hoped to emphasize certain features of the apartment to
increase its attractiveness. For example, an apartment on the
upper levels of the apartment tended to be quieter than other
floors and was more advantageous especially with an operating
elevator.

“Iurii Valentinovich Trifonov, The Exchange (London: HEB,
1990).

 

31

The couple’s income does not permit them to buy into the
new cooperative blocks of the early 1960s. Thus, an
improvement in the family’s living standard depends on a
variety of strategies and manipulations. Interestingly, the
characters raise no objections to these procedures based on
social or ethical reasons. They do not view these strategies
in any way as "cheating" and regard them more or less as a
necessary facet of everyday life. The overarching tone of
this play portrays life as a jagged series of schemes,
manipulations, and quarrels in an endless pursuit of self-
advantage. The relentless pursuit to improve one’s housing
conditions that this play portrays suggests the universality
of the practice.

Family and social complications arising from attempts to
improve living arrangements form the background of the play.
The difficulties of finding' or improving' housing, which
Trifanov alludes to, describes the ways in which housing
accelerated tensions within the household. This discussion
illustrates the notion that housing is not only a unit of
accommodation but also one of contestation, manipulation and
negotiation. Marriage and divorce were pursued as strategies
to "negotiate" the desired end of a better place to live. The
interviews from the Harvard Project on the Soviet Social
System clearly illustrated this practice and it is worthy to
quote this excerpt in its entirety:

The apartment situation often forced people into marriage

that is, girls married.men.with a suitable room.and vice-
versa. They could then divorce and claim a part of the

32
room they had married. It could often.be heard said that
someone had married a 20 square meter room. Then after
two weeks or a month of marriage, the person concerned
would divorce. The room would then remain in the
possession of the least scrupulous one with the
strongest nerves. He or she would proceed to organize
parties every night in his or her section of the room.
These parties would usually be very noisy, smoky, and
drink-filled” .As a final recourse, if his ex—wife had.by
that time not decided.to move out, the man would bring in
women. The ex-owner of the room would then attempt to
find another with a suitable room and the cycle would
begin all over again.“
Even in.divorce, the resident was still entitled to the rights
of the residence.49 It would. appear that some undertook
divorces of convenience in order to improve housing rights or
access to housing units and that it was a successful strategy
to improve one’s accommodations.

The lack of variety in standardized apartment houses and
the construction industry’s failure to grasp an understanding
of what was demanded by consumers created a variety of other
problems as well. Initially, many architects believed that as
few as eight standard apartments could accommodate all
possible housing needs.50 But as one architect from the Uzbek
State Design and Planning Institute lamented:

The net results of this standardized approach are
monotony, dullness, lack of color, lack of any

 

48Cited in H. Kent Geiger, The Family in Soviet Russia,
(Cambridge, Mass, 1968). p. 209.

4“‘The former spouse continued to exercise the right of
living space even if the marriage was declared invalid by the
court. See S.M. Korneev and I.M. Konkov, Pravana zhiluiu
ploshchadu. (Moscow: Zane, 1968), p. 25.

50V. Lebedev, "Pervye shagi proektirovaniia i
stroitel ' stva domov s malometrazhnymi kvartirami, "
Arkhitektura SSSR. no.3, 1957, pp.5-12.

33

individuality, and little attention to local climatic

conditions. Of the almost eight hundred standard designs

available to architects and city planners for apartment

houses, scarcely 5 percent have ever been used, and even

these have been dubbed alike as peas in a pod.51

This aesthetic problem was most pronounced when large
panel construction methods combined with the microdistrict or
super block approach to city planning resulted in a housing
environment that was visually bland and lacking in
individuation. The 1971 film Irgny of Fate deals with this
phenomenon. In the film, the narrator sardonically observes
that one of the great achievements of the recent Soviet
construction has been. to 'make folks feel at ease when
traveling to an unknown city: .After all, "travelers will feel
perfectly home anywhere since every city looks exactly alike,
with identical street names and landscapes right down to the
local movie house."52 In the majority of the country’s
cities during this period, mass media sources such as Pravda
indicate the architecture of areas of mass housing
construction was monotonous and unattractive.53

However, despite the limited opportunities to remodel or
landscape in the standardized apartments, residents did engage

in a whole range of activities to individualize the home. As

one observer noted, "All the apartments look the same on the

 

51Pravda vostoka, April 7, 1960, p. 3.

52Quoted in Blair' A. Ruble’s, "From. Khrushcheby to

korobki," in Russian Housing in the Modern Age, ed. William
Craft Brumfield and Blair A. Ruble (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1993), p. 251.

“Prayga, June 21, 1963.

34
outside, but inside the rooms themselves, despite their size,
are rather cozy. Each house I had visited furnished their
apartment in a most unique and attractive style. The use of
a 'variety of colors, tapestries and. paintings, cleverly
constructed furnishings such as bookshelves gave each
apartment its own independent character."“ One visitor was
struck by the "attractive balconies and floral arrangements in
the apartments."55 Thus, a number of actions relieved the
dullness of industrialized construction which.did not disrupt
the productivity of the work crews. One architect, for
example, in a how-to manual, suggested that colors, design
elements such as balconies, and the textures of materials
could be changed to individualize the apartments.“ These
house beautification "tips" initially raised by the
professional press weaved their way into the popular press by
the middle of the 19603.57 These efforts did not eradicate
the bland environments but they seemed to help. Residents
complained about the inadequate size of the kitchen, the
primitive plumbing units and equipment, the undersized foyer

and diminutive rooms. Yet, the measures described above

 

54Sears, p. 37.

55See David and Vera Mace, The Soviet Family (New York:
Doubleday and Company, Inc. 1963), p. 165.

56L. Lopovok, "Nekotorye voprosy estetiki krupopanel'nogo
domostroeniia," Arkhitektura SSSR, no.5, 1964, pp. 9-14.

”Prayga, November 24, 1961.

35

provided, as one woman recalled, "a sense of space."58

Such measures were often extended beyond the home to the
community. Public spaces, in spite of their monotony or
shabbiness, tended to be well kept. One foreign observer
remarked, "New York City could use the help of the thousands
of broom wielding peasant women who are a very common sight
cleaning the streets of Moscow."59 These efforts within and
outside of the home suggest that Russian apartment dwellers
gained a modicum of control over their immediate surroundings.

This evidence suggests that urban residents were not
entirely passive observers of the changes around them. Since
many Soviet citizens had some gripe about his or her housing
situation, there is an abundance of good newspaper copy for
the critics of the much berated builders and housing
administrators. One of the leading critics was the satirical
magazine Krokodil, which was famous for its exposures of
bureaucratic waste and inefficiency. In almost every issue
surveyed in the Khrushchev period there were one or more
articles railing against the lack of building materials or
ridiculing some construction. blunder: One of the best
examples of this genre is a photograph of a recently built
five story residential building in Moscow equipped with a
series of balconies which are attached to a solid concrete

wall and which have absolutely no means of access. In an

 

58m, August 30, 1961.

5"Huxtable, p. 246.

36
accompanying article, the editors ventured solutions to the
"riddle", including the possibility that "the builders had
fulfilled their plan for doors but not for balconies." “

Many cartoons in Krokodil clearly illustrated the
problems of the poor quality of dwellings that plagued the
entire nation” One: cartoon shows a newly completed apartment
building, whose window frames have been set in at the most
imaginative angles, whose walls are badly cracked, and whose
roof allows a view of the heavens. Plaster and cement have
already begun their ungraceful descent. The entire structure
has the precarious look of a building ready for demolition.
Led by a very satisfied, cigarette-puffing brigade chief, the
house construction workers happily march out of the
"completed" building. Through the same door, however, march
men of the repair organization. When the building has just
been completed, it already requires repair.

Soviet families "liberated" from communal dwellings
quickly found their abodes to be poorly planned and shabbily
constructed and numerous complaints could be heard throughout
the entire country. For example, the large prefabricated
blocks of flats made from blast furnaces and.boilers proved to
be excellent conductors of sound. During a Moscow Conference
of Architects, a certain academician describes his "quiet
life" in his new slab-block house, built with reinforced

concrete floors and ceilings.

 

“Krgkggil, No.27, October 20, 1963, p. 2.

37
I seldom get to see my neighbors but thanks to the
excellent sound-conducting properties of the partitions,
ceilings and floors, I know them all by their first
names. I know immediately when my right-hand neighbor’s
baby has a tummyache in the morning. I was imprudent
enough to get a dog. The caretaker and neighbors also
have dogs. And the moment the caretaker’s dog begin to
bark my Rex replies and they are soon joined by the
neighbor’s dog, and within two minutes the whole house
seems to be barking.61
The mass volume of letters to Izvestia, Pravda and republic
newspapers,“2 which criticized. the condition. of the
dwellings, gives us a sense of the vast array of problems
which faced urban residents.

The repair crews were not always efficient and punctual.
Residents were constantly badgered by problems over repair and
grappled with immense difficulties surrounding the
incompetencies of these repair organizations. Leafing through
the pages of Krokodil, one immediately notices that housing
repair, and the problems associated with it, became a
notoriously favorite subject. Many of the causes of needed
repairs stemmed from faulty construction and unfinished
buildings which were opened for occupancy.

These repairs presented a burden for the urban population
but many strategies were devised by residents to cope with

these and similar problems. One of the major problems of the

repair organizations was the incredibly long periods of time

 

61Semyon.Tutuchenko, Housing in the USSR (Moscow: Foreign
Languages Publishing House, 1960). P. 58-59.

62See Pravda, May 4 and 16, 1957, Feb. 12, 1957, Sept. 3,
1957, Apr, 5, 1958, Oct. 2, 1958, Oct. 12, 1960, Sept. 4,
1961, June 14, 1962 and Izvestia, March 29, 1961 and Aug. 30,
1962.

 

38

it took to complete repairs. The entire process was
complicated by the reluctance of many tenants to be
"temporarily" relocated during capital repairs, and/or by the
city's lack of relocation quarters. The reason for the
reluctance was due to the slowness in completing planned
repairs; those who moved out for an expected six months’
duration sometimes found that a year, two years, or even three
went by before they could leave their "temporary"
residences.“3 One editorial in Pravda co-authored by five
married women expresses the sense of frustration with the
repair organizations. One of these women Nadia Ivanovo, a
weaver and mother of two children, tells an all too familiar
story:

By decision of the City Soviet Executive Committee, we

had to move out of our apartment into 3 Sosnaskaya Street

because of repairs. It’s been three years and the
repairs have not been completed. We have to put up with
many hardships and discomforts in Building No. 137. This
building is a dormitory for unmarried women workers and
is not suited for families. I would much rather be in

our old apartment. It wasn’t as crowded and I had a

place to store my potatoes and vegetables.“

Many tenants reacted to the problems involved with
lengthy repairs by engaging in a variety of strategies
designed to prevent repair teams from even entering their
apartments. One group of tenants, after learning that a

repair organization was scheduled to visit their apartment

"repaired" the windows by scraping out the decayed window

 

”Izzestia. Sept- 14. 1962.

“Prayda, August 8, 1959.

39
frames, filling the holes with cork, covering the cork with
boards, spackling and painting them." This action led the
carpenter who engineered the project to ask, "Can we really
call this makeshift plan ‘repai:r".?"65 The loss of windows
seemed to be a preferred option versus gambling with the
repair organizations. The fact that tenants were forced to
adopt such extreme measures gives us a sense of the problems
surrounding the housing' program. However, despite these
problems, we cannot dismiss the ways in which residents
engaged in strategies to improve or at least mitigate the
problems surrounding their living arrangements. Residents
developed other strategies to cope with similar problems with
state-owned structures. Residents circumvented the housing
administration by asking or hiring builders who originally
built the apartments to come back in and finish their own.work
on a private basis. Plumbers, electricians, and other repair
men of the apartment housing administration were unreliable
because they often did not have access to tools and parts for
repair. Residents often hired independent contractors who
would obtain the necessary parts and perform the repair. One
plumber in Leningrad remarked "I’m not only a plumber, but I’m
also a supplier."66 A complex barter system was instituted

which proved to be one effective strategy to deal with the

 

65V. Rudnev, "Is This the Way to Repair Houses?" Pravda,
March 18, 1958, p. 4 (CDSP vol.9, no.10: 35).

66I . Loginov, "About a Worker’ 5 Honor, " Izvestia, February
21, 1963 (CDSP vol.14, no.8: p.35).

 

40
problems of housing repairx One auto mechanic in.Moscow fixed
the automobile of one builder in exchange for repairing the
plaster on the ceiling.67 Thus, the attempts to circumvent
the inefficient housing administration offices and
construction organizations and deal with these problems on an
individual basis suggest that residents had some degree of
flexibility even within the limited constraints of state-

housing.

A. "Volunteer Organizations"

Another effective strategy to overcome the difficulties
of urban life involved a broad range of organizations that
spread throughout the Soviet state. These organizations
helped to improve living conditions within the apartment
complexes and the wider communityz They included.the domkoms,
housing construction promotion brigades, and the "raid
brigades."

The revival of the domkom or the house committee of
tenants is one example. The domkom’s membership was comprised
of groups of urban residents living in the same building or
closely adjacent houses. One member was elected and
represented an average of thirty families. They were
generally concerned with the buildings and their managements,
and with the tenants and their welfare. The domkom was

reclaimed from the dustbin of history where it had been more

 

“Brayda, July 31, 1964.

41

or less been confined since the late 19303, was infused with
new life, and took an active role in the operation and
maintenance of the apartment building. Like its immediate
post-revolutionary predecessor, the domkom of the 19503 and
19603 was a cxmmuttee of tenants with the primary
responsibility of managing the building. They mobilized the
talents of the inhabitants for whatever jobs had to be done
and increased the efficient use of housing. They
circumvented the departmental housing bureaucracies and
implemented their own programs designed to raise the
resident’s responsibility for the maintenance of the apartment
building.

The Soviet press was filled with proposals to complete
the transfer of power from the city or departmental housing
offices because it was argued that the local domkoms were
substantially more efficient.68 Urban dwellers frustrated by
the bureaucratic nature of the departmental housing offices
wrote a number of letters to the editor which appeared quite
regularly in the Soviet press. One worker seemed to be
invoking images of Lenin’s famous exclamation "all power to
the soviets" when he called for "all power to the domkoms" as
one potential way to help solve the problems of urban
living.69 Between 1957 and Khrushchev's ouster in 1964, this

transfer of power, though a slow one, progressed. The

 

“lzyestia, December 19, 1964.

"_Iz_ve_s_t_i_a, December 19, 1963.

42

transfer of power from the central government agencies to
local organizations illustrates that pressure from below did
affect policy and, further, provides striking evidence of
decentralization and questions the assertion that the state
was a rigid and unbending totalitarian state. This transfer
of power, in itself, is also to some extent a testament to the
ability of the domkoms to handle the difficulties of everyday
life.

During the ‘19503 and 19603 there were no centers for
managing, planning and surveying operations in the capital
repair and modernization of housing. The domkoms helped to
fill the gaps left by the negligent department housing
offices. The domkom provided a means for residents to attempt
to overcome some of the difficulties of everyday life in the
modern day apartment complexes. One, for example, produced
small booklets 'which. contained. reference information. for
proper upkeep of the apartment. 'These booklets provided short
rules regarding the use of the plumbing system, gas apparatus,
refuse chute, advice on how to wash or polish the floors, how
to take care of wall surfaces, and so on.70 These booklets
were particularly helpful for many new arrivals from the
countryside where knowledge of city amenities were rather
limited. They also focused their attention on the building's
aesthetic appearance and therefore organized repair teams to

fix minor structural damage, paint the walls and ceilings,

 

”Praise, July 22, 1962.

43

etc. One particular domkom in the Ukraine, for example,
organized the leisure time of the residents, especially of
young children. One of the leisure activities designed for
young children involved "placing fresh flowers and colorful
drawings in the lobbies and other areas of public space in the
apartment buildings" which had a "soothing effect on the
inhabitants"."1 The domkoms helped to instruct and organize
residents in their obligation to maintain the housing fund, to
mobilize the talents of the inhabitants for whatever jobs had
to be done, and to increase the efficient use of existing
housing.

Why did these institutions disappear for almost twenty
years, and then suddenly reappear in the Khrushchev years?
Part of the answer lies in Khrushchev’s attempts to call for
the broad enlistment of the masses in the administration of
everyday affairs, including housing. The enthusiasm displayed
for the domkoms was indeed engineered and orchestrated by the
government. Political sponsorship of the top leadership was
crucial to the formation and growth of the domkoms; but, that
in itself does not explain their success. Their success must
also be partly attributed to the initiative of many urban
inhabitants. The domkom’s revival at the end of the 19503 and
its further institutionalization during the 19603 reveals a

conscious effort on the part of urban inhabitants to

 

71Jerome Davis, "Russians Face to Face: A Report on
Housing in the USSR," New World Review, vol.32, Jan.1964, pp.
37.

44

participate in managing and indeed improving their housing
conditions. The domkoms became a symbol, along with a myriad
of other social and political organizations, which encouraged
the citizen’s fullest participation in.tflma affairs of the
community. However, it is critical to point out that the
portrayals of the domkoms were symbols and represented the
ideals and values the state was attempting to foster. Thus,
a degree of skepticism is in order to question the spontaneous
nature of these organizations. The enthusiasm and success of
the domkoms and the other volunteer organizations may be
exaggerated but one can not dismiss the fact that the images
they espoused (and the intensity in which they were
propagated) represented an integral feature of every day
life.

Another example which paralleled the spirit of
volunteerism of the domkom was the formation of the housing
construction promotion brigades. These brigades were
organized by the trade union organizations in the factories in
the late 19503 and took it upon themselves tijerform.specific
functions designed to help the construction of apartment
complexes. According to the press, brigade members
volunteered their time and usually fulfilled their duties
after working hours. These workers performed specific
functions in the area of technical supervision.of construction
sites and also performed.general tasks designed.to improve the
environment surrounding the new apartment complexes. For

example, they helped to pave roads, dig ditches which were

45

used for water and drainage facilities, and even planted
shrubs in open areas.72

Another serious problem facing urban inhabitants was
serious shortcomings in the registration and allocation of
housing. One volunteer organization which dealt with these
problems was the "raid brigade" . Although their successes are
open for debate, these organizations appeared so regularly in
the press and gained such widespread recognition, that had to
have had some influence in shaping public opinion. In theory,
the raid.brigade’s membership was broad and included workers,
newspaper reporters, environmentalists, and local and public
officials within its ranks. Their main function involved
becoming acquainted with the allocation of housing to correct
obvious abuses and to examine the quality of construction
work. It is crucial to reiterate that the extent of their
power is open for question, but their activism was fairly
widespread.73 However, there were cases where blatant errors
and abuses were rectified. Complaints were filed to borough
executive committee and usually involved residents who already
had good living conditions and changed to a better apartment.
The following letter to the editor clearly illustrates the
typical complaint of the period:

Ivan Poller, head of the Chelyabinsk Machine-Building

 

”Erayga, December 13, 1956.

73See Pravda, March 7, 1957 for a discussion of the role
of the raid brigade in Azerbaidzhan, Izvestia, December 20,
1958 in the Ukraine, and Pravda, April 12, 1958 in Moscow and
Khabarovsk.

46

Trust’s woodworking combine, together with his wife and

daughter, recently moved into a large apartment in

Building 30 on Tourist Street. It’s a very large

apartment and his family doesn’t even need two of the

rooms. The enterprising Poller is growing tomatoes which
he sells on the open market in these vacant rooms. He
boastfully claims that the central heating helps his
produce grow faster. With housing space so limited, why
should he be able to grow tomatoes in the apartment“
It would appear that this letter was published as a way to
diffuse frustration and agitation. However, it is interesting
to point out that this letter consciously mirrored the anti-
private attitudes of the Khrushchev period linking the
"enterprising Poller" as a speculator who deprived others of
valuable housing space.

Throughout this essay, numerous complaints about housing
conditions have been cited from the Soviet press. Even the
most insensitive political antennae could pick up the strong
signals which coursed. throughout the entire country, as
citizens communicated their views by word of mouth, by letters
to the press, and by complaints and pleas transmitted through
the channels of the party and government hierarchies. These
expressions ofldissent.provide rather striking examples of the
ways urban residents used the instrumentalities of the state
to make their needs known. This process of communication that
could be defined as a rudimentary form of public opinion was
one available outlet for many Soviet citizens which they used

to articulate their frustrations and disappointments with

state agencies and policies.

 

7“'"Stop Squandering Housing," editorial in Trud, May 23,
1959 (CDSP vol.11, no.4: 21).

47

A closer look at the motives of the state and the
population.as a whole may help to explain the reasons for this
exchange. Obviously any effective political mechanism would
try to fix blatant problems but the dynamics at work here are
much more complex. Most Western scholars who have written
about the 19503 and 19603 agree that Khrushchev’s emphasis on
mass political participation was a Soviet form of populism.
Khrushchev attempted. to draW' the broad. masses into the
"building of communism" and.to create a tacit alliance between
himself and the masses at the expense of the bureaucrats.75
By criticizing the bureaucratic statist component of the
Soviet Union, Khrushchev hoped the citizenry would develop a
sense of identification.with the policies and.personnel of the
regime and would have greater incentive to become personally
involved in the administration of public affairs. Soviet
citizens were more than.happy to respond.and even though their
letters were manufactured, once public, they generated an
ongoing dynamic.

This was indeed the case for the housing bureaucracies,
as many complaints were lodged against them. One could argue
that the Party was able to displace attention away from its
own faults and deflect criticism on to the lower level
construction agencies and housing executive committees. By

directing the level of criticism to the ineffectiveness of

 

75George W. Breslauer, "Khrushchev Reconsidered," in the
Soviet Union Since Stalin. ed. Stephen F. Cohen et. al.
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980), pp. 50-70.

48
lower level functionaries, and ‘using' them. as convenient
scapegoats, the Party could appear to be the loyal protector
of its citizens and, consequently, escape unscathed. This
statement by one Party official is typical of this approach:
The major reason for the lag in housing construction is
a certain complacency among the economic councils and
construction organizations. The Party will make every
possible effort to fulfill the housing plan and.will keep
a watchful eye not only on the lethargic nature of these
construction organizations but also the speculators, who
for their own private gain, disrupt the tempo of
construction for working people.76
The intricacies of putting blame on the bureaucrats is
strikingly visible in one article titled "No Trifling Matter"
in the newspaper Izvestia. This article was written about
Maria Maksimovna Eliseyeva, a woman of middle age, who came
into the editorial office and laid on the table a packet of
yellowed document-orders, directives, resolutions, and appeals
to various agencies. The first document dated July 11, 1949
called on the Borough Housing Administration in Sverdlosk to
repair the water supply system of Eliseyeva’s apartment. As
of July 18, 1958, almost a decade later, the apartment was in
no better shape than it was at the time of the first document.
"Who is at fault here," the article declares as the article
describes poor Maria having to haul water on her no longer
young shoulders. The article proceeds to state the "Party
does not think this is a trifling matter" and ends with this

Statement :

Tremble in.your boots, bureaucrats! INow you will be held

 

“Prayga, June 28, 1958.

49

strictly accountable for your heartless attitude toward

man, for your indifference and formalism! Indeed, this

is no trifling matter and for nine years the authorities

had.called for repairs on‘Yeliseyeva’s apartment and.they

were ignored. Bureaucrats, you will be held accountable

for your disgraceful red tape procedures.77

Thus, one plausible explanation.is that the state allowed
the population to release and channel their frustration, as
Eliseyeva’ 3 article suggests, against the local bureaucracies.
If we take this analysis a step further, it would seem that
the upper echelons of the power structure actually encouraged
the population to point to unfairness or corruption.in housing
allocation and conditions in order to curb the power and
influence of construction agencies. The state needed
complaints as a mechanism of checks and balances to control
the local institutions/bureaucracies. Local construction
agencies resorted to a variety of stratagems designed to
exploit loopholes in order to avoid implementing the policies
of Party' agencies. For example, builders of apartment
complexes that were constructed from state funds were
obligated to provide ten per-cent of all housing space to the
borough executive committees. Frequently, these apartments,
which. were funded. by the state, suddenly emerged as a
"peoples’ construction cooperative project."78 In this way,

the construction agencies could avoid payment to executive

committees of their percentage.

 

'"Yuri Feofanov, "A.Trifling Matter?" Izvestia, September
4, 1958 (CDSP vol.10, no.33: 6-8).

"Erayda, January 10, 1962.

 

50

This power relationship between the organs of the state
and local bureaucracies may help to explain why criticisms of
housing were widespread and at times actively encouraged.
However, urban inhabitants’ criticisms of their living
situations cannot be simply attributed to the whims of the
state. Urban residents were not lackeys of the state. They
had their own agenda and interests which they hoped to solve
through letter writing campaigns. Many adopted the tone of
anti-bureaucratism in their complaints probably as the most
efficient way to gain results. The phrasing of many
editorials reflected the anti-bureaucratism espoused by the
Party. For example, Pravda tells us "if the Party knew about
the ways bureaucrats prevented the working people from good
housing I’m sure they would put a stop to it"" One writer,
expressing hiscdisillusionment with.the construction.agency in
Belgorod province, stated, "the builders in this area are more
concerned with architectural ensembles and urban cosmetics
than building housing for the working people. ILf Comrade
Khrushchev knew about what was going on, I’m.sure he would.put
a stop to it."80 The extent to which this writer believed
the Party was not responsible for housing blunders is unclear.
However, it would appear that this approach could be construed
as the most effective way to illicit a response.

The point of this discussion is to point out that many

 

”Brayda, April 10, 1962.

“Prayga, March 17, 1962

51

urban residents resorted to the press as a strategy to improve
their living conditions and influence or change policies which
affected their daily lives. As a result, residents often
provided a force of stability in the face of overwhelming
chaos. Residents, defending their own interests, would bring
to public attention unwise decisions by executive committees
and local institutions. One enraged citizen in Belgorod
pointed to the confusion of local and central authorities and
their conflicting policies. In this case, the city executive
committee authorized 140,000 rubles for the repair of two—
story apartment houses. Two weeks after these complexes were
repaired, the local construction agency leveled these
apartments in order to construct new apartments.81

Other senseless and harmful practices provoked massive
letter campaigns which disclosed serious mistakes and evoked
a stream of responses. The letter campaigns were not simply
used to vent steam and frustration. They represented a means
to change policy. In Kostroma, for example, residents
organized small rallies and petition drives to prevent the
construction of a hospital in a densely populated area.82 As
the above examples attest, narrowing the focus solely to the
state to explain the extent of criticism aimed at the housing
situation distorts the picture. Thus, it is important to

examine how the public participated in the allocation of

“_rayga, March 16, 1963.

”m, April 10, 1957.

 

52

living space and what forms that participation took.

III. Cooperative Housing

The catalyst for the renewed interest in the cooperative
movement can be directly attributed to the pressure and
initiative of urban inhabitants. A detailed examination of
cooperative housing will help to illustrate the manifestations
of public participation and initiative in improving living
conditions. A brief historical overview of this form of
housing tenure will set the stage for further elaboration” In
addition to state housing built by standardized and
prefabricated construction techniques, fresh consideration was
given to the earlier experiments in cooperative housing
construction. The enthusiasm.and euphoria of the cooperative
movement gained momentum in 1955 with the achievements of the
auto workers of the V. Molotov auto plant in Gorky. The
workers of this auto plant used their free time between shifts
and on holidays to build their own housing and succeeded in
constructing twenty apartment buildings, accommodating
approximately four hundred families, by the end of 1956.‘33
The workers employed a multitude of creative plans to
facilitate the construction projects. The auto workers'

initiative, creativity and resourcefulness aroused a

”Erayga, November 25, 1956.

53

54

nationwide response which precipitated an extensive media
campaign and placed renewed hopes in the minds of urban
inhabitants. In letters to the editor, readers heartily
hailed the auto workers’ initiative and simultaneously asked
for more details about the cooperative.84

The creative initiative of the public in housing
construction yielded fruitful results. Many interesting and
instructive methods of cooperative construction became
commonplace in both the rural and urban areas. Workers from
tractor stations, chemical plants, machine building plants,
the oil industry, and a variety of other industries followed
the lead of the Gorky workers and assembled homes with their
own hands.85 Khrushchev was quick to respond to this
excitement and ushered in a program in 1957 to officially
sponsor the cooperative as an acceptable form of housing
tenure. The July 1957 decree proclaiming the intention of
eliminating the housing shortage within ten years, and
revising the housing construction program upwards, prepared
the groundwork for re-establishing the house-building
cooperative as a tenure form. This decree stressed the
necessity of urgently restoring the cooperative rights by

changing the 1937 decree86 which prohibited the granting of

 

“Brayda, December 13, 1956.
”Erayga, December 16, 1956.

86Even before the 1957 program for expanding housing
construction, there had been a call to revive the housing
construction cooperative, which had some importance in the
19203 and 19303 but which had been eliminated by this 1937

55

loans to housing construction cooperatives. After twenty
years of virtual extinction, the house construction
cooperative, like the domkom, was suddenly given a second
chance. By the end of the 19503, the cooperative were
increasingly favored and vigorously defended by the state as
a respectable way to help solve the Soviet housing problem.87

From the viewpoint of the Soviet government, the
cooperative mode of house building had three notable
advantages. In the first place, it would help to reduce total
demand for state-subsidized housing. Secondly, it would serve
to absorb substantial amounts of purchasing power in the hands
of the high-income groups of the population” Thirdly,
cooperative housing also corresponded nicely with Khrushchev’ 3
growing concern for communist morality. The cooperative was
viewed as a feasible way to uproot the survivals of capitalism
in the minds of the people, as the nation.moved into the full
development of communism, The cooperative seemed
ideologically more orthodox than private housing, since it
expressed.the idea.of collective action rather than individual
initiativeu One of the most stubborn survivals which appeared
to hinder the widespread success of the cooperative appears to

be that of a private property psychology, most evident in the

 

decree prohibiting the granting of loans to the housing
cooperative for construction. For a discussion of this see
Pravda, Dec. 17, 1956.

87A. Ladinsky, "Develop Every Aspect of Housing
Construction," Izvestia, December 12, 1956, p. 3 (CDSP vol.8,
110.50: 17-19).

56

private homeowner."8 During this time, Soviet publicists
went to great pains to emphasize the problems and ideological
contradictions surrounding private housing. For example, in
the law on cooperatives, the authorities carefully avoided
using the word "ownership" in the language of contracts. The
cooperative shareholder was "granted" an apartment for their
"permanent use.”9 After the 1958 resolution which
reinstated cooperative housing construction to a respectable
position, the pace of actual cooperative construction was very
slow. Despite frequent reiteration by government officials of
the importance they attached to cooperatives, its annual
contribution to the housing stock fell far below expectations.
The authorities tried to stimulate this form of construction
because they eventually recognized that the 1957 decree, and
subsequent programs of housing construction cooperatives, did
little else but announce that the cooperative form was no
longer in disfavor.

Apparently an important limiting factor was a lack of
funding. In June 1962, the government offered long-term
credits to stimulate cooperative construction. The

cooperative could receive state credits for up to sixty

 

“K. Ivanov, "Are Such Houses Necessary," Izvestia, July
6, 1961 (CDSP vol.17, no.27: 33-34).

89Article 16, "Primernyi ustav zhilishchno-stoitelnogo
kooperativa" (Model Rules of a Housing-Building Cooperative),
adopted by a decree (No.1143) of the RSFSR Council of
Ministers on October 2, 1965. Published in S. Rozantsev,
Spravochnik po zhilishchnym voprosam (Handbook on Housing
Questions), Moscow Workers’ Publishing House, 1966, p. 252.

57

percent of the estimated cost of construction for a period of
ten to fifteen years.”0 This measure did seem to help the
pace of cooperative construction. For the RSFSR as a whole,
for example, in the first half of the 1963, the plan for the
construction of cooperatives was only fulfilled by about
thirty-seven percent."1 Although the 1964 plan was once
again underfilled, there was 160 percent more cooperative
housing built than in 1963.92 By 1965, cooperatively owned
housing accounted for thirteen per-cent of all new urban
apartments built, as compared with three per-cent in 1961.93
On the whole, however, by 1965, only six to seven percent of
all housing construction in the Soviet Union was of the
cooperative form.“

Many scholars have felt the cmiginal anti-materialist
goals of the cooperative program were unrealized and argue
that the cooperative form of housing was only available to
"wealthy" workers and have focused mainly on the inherent
inequalities of the cooperative movement. Russian economists
and sociologists of the 19503 and 19603 also focused on these
inequalities. For example, according to one economist writing

in 1965, the typical cooperative member, usually in somewhat

 

90Dimaio, p. 181.
91Izvestia, September 20, 1963, p. 1.

”A. Svetlichny, " Improved Housing for the Soviet People, "
Kommunist, no.6 (April 1965) pp. 41-42.

”Pudikov, p. 30.

“Dimaio, p. 185.

58

better circumstances than his average fellow citizen,
frequently improved his living conditions and moved from an
overcrowded communal apartment into a comfortable apartment in
a new building. He reasoned that it was wrong that
cooperative housing, for which the state provided credit and
material resources and services, was provided to citizens
already living in better than average conditions, simply
because they had money.95 Further, since cooperatives were
called upon to expedite the elimination of the housing
shortage, it was logical, he argued, to grant.privileges first
to those families living' in. overcrowded. and substandard
quarters with few resources.96 Recent scholarship in
evaluating the cooperative movement has echoed similar
sentiments.97

In overemphasizing the system’s inequities, there has
been a tendency to underestimate its solid achievements. One
cannot deny that inequalities persisted in the realm of
housing allocation. While it is true that the typical
cooperative member tended to be upwardly mobile professionals
including highly skilled workers. But it is problematic to

suggest that these residents were "wealthy". Although

 

95B. Svetlichny, " Improved Housing for the Soviet People, "
Kommunist, no. 6 (April 1965), p. 43.

96Ibid., p. 51.

”See Michael Alexeev, "Distribution.of Housing Subsidies
in.the‘USSR," Journal of Comparative Economic Studies, vol.21,
Fall 1990, pp. 138-157, and<3regory D. Andrusz, "The Financing
of Housing in the Soviet Union," Soviet Studies, vol.42, July
1990, pp. 556-557.

59

residents living in cooperatives were generally higher paid
than most other workers, they apparently had similar
difficulties when it came to finances. Given these apparent
financial constraints, how do we account for the fact than
many residents in the major urban centers of the Soviet Union
came to live in cooperative structures?98

The problems were overcome by many tenants who used non
financial resources to establish a cooperative. Some workers
donated their labor, and in the case of workers who had skills
as electricians, carpenters, and masons, used these
specialized skills to assist at the construction sites. The
Party leadership actively encouraged workers from the same
industry to form cooperatives and actually forbade workers of
different occupations to organize a cooperative. waever,
workers from a variety of occupations donated technical
machinery or bartered labor to assist each other. For
example, in the Dzerzhinksy borough outside of Moscow, tractor

factory workers who were engaged in the construction of their

 

”th only were there tremendous variations between
republics and oblasts in terms of the contribution made by
cooperatives to the total of housing construction, but from
the statistics available it would appear that cooperatives
were to a very considerable degree concentrated in the largest
cities; for example in 1965 Moscow and Leningrad accounted for
33.4 percent of all cooperative housing in the RSFSR; Yerevan
for 94 percent of cooperatives in Armenia. Clearly,
cooperative buildings were concentrated in the larger cities
closer to the center of national power. In addition, many
were built in the western portions of the country. Only five
were built in Azerbaidzhan an only one each in Tadzhikistan
and Turkmenistan. Thus, investigators need to be sensitive to
regional variations. See Svetlichny, op. cit, p. 11 for these
statistics.

60

cooperative apartment building exchanged tractors on a short
term basis to workers of an oil processing plant. In
exchange, the workers of the oil processing plant provided
hollow pipes which were used to construct drainage and sewage
facilities.“’ Similarly, groups of workers from different
cooperative construction sites would pool their labor
resources and assist each other. Skilled electricians would
also assist or barter their labor with other cooperative
sites, offering their expertise'in.exchange for work by others
with specialized skills such as carpentry, masonry, and so
on.

In addition, the enterprises who hired the workers often
provided the necessary support for organizing cooperative
projects. Certain factories, for example, had facilities for
the production of cinder blocks, standard parts, cabinet
fixtures, and other needed materials for housing
construction.”° Waste materials from the plants were often
used to make parts. In.Gorky, for example, auto plant workers
used excess sheet metal used for floorboards and smaller
pieces were used to construct nails and screws. One
particularly' bizarre case which. helps to illustrate the
creativity and dedication of workers and their employers

involves a plastic factory of the Izmailovo area of Moscow.

 

”Pravda, December 16, 1956. This particular citation was
taken from an editorial titled "Support Working Peoples’
Initiative in Housing Construction in Every Possible Way."

100Pravda, December 17, 1957.

61
Using the resources of the factory, workers constructed a
five-story plastic apartment house. The structural
foundations and the floors of this unusual building were made
of reinforced concrete, but the internal and external walls
were made of honeycomb plastic bonded to sheet plastic to give
it rigidity.101

Examples of the role of enterprises and the importance
attached to the construction of cooperatives pervaded the
Soviet press. One enterprise in the Ukraine, for example,
during slow times of production allowed workers to spend
blocks of time on construction sites during working hours.102
Enterprises provided necessary parts, tools, and machinery to
help workers and were also instrumental in extracting certain
resources from the state.

It is difficult to measure the impact of the strategies
of these workers in relation to their overall contribution to
the housing situation. Since much of the evidence presented
here centers on contemporary newspapers and magazines, the
enthusiasm.and success of the cooperative movement was used by
the state to glorify its positive features. Even so, the
examples presented.here reveals levels of ingenuity and energy
that suggest active cooperation and perhaps independent
initiative.

In addition to financial problems there were a myriad of

 

101Pravda, August 2, 1958.

102Pravda, April 9, 1960.

62
other obstacles that stifled the widespread growth of the
cooperative movement. The construction of cooperatives was
often delayed.because of the failure to allocate land in time.
Party and state regulations stipulated that within one month
of the receipt of applications from. cooperatives, local
governments needed to provide plots supplied with roads, water
mains, sewers, and power lines. Local authorities were slow
to assign building sites and the sites that were assigned
often required extensive preparation work. For example, in
the city of Kazan, cooperative sites were assigned in swampy
marshlands, and lacked access to roads.103 These plots often
lacked the features and improvements required.by law and were
located far from.public transportation facilities or from the
residents’ place of workg The lag in the cooperative building
program.could also be attributed, as one Soviet critic defined
it, to the "scornful attitude" of many local officials toward
this form of housing. Since construction organizations had
little to gain (because in state sponsored construction
projects the local construction agencies were rewarded with a
percentage of the new apartments constructed), they tended to
look upon the cooperative members as "third-rate
customers."1°4 In addition, a massive amount of red tape
plagued the housing cooperatives. The comment of one Soviet

bank official reflects this sense of despair: "A person

 

103Donald Barry, "Housing in the USSR: Cities and Towns,"
Problems of Communism, vol.18, May 1969, pp. 10.

104Svetlichny, p. 44.

63

entering a cooperative must present the executive committee
with so many documents that merely to list them would take
half a page."105

The combination of all of these problems dramatically
affected the success of the cooperative movement and it is
important to be sensitive to these numerous obstacles so as
not to underestimate the successes. Despite of all of these
obstacles, the resourcefulness, creativity, and ingenuity of
this relatively small proportion of urban dwellers who built
cooperatives illustrates that amidst all of the anarchy and
chaos, some made a conscious, vigorous, and relatively
entrepreneurial effort to improve their living standards. It
provides, again, another example of the ways in which
enterprises and citizens could sometimes evade the rigidities
and obstacles of the centralized economy. This is a key, and

often ignored, component in an evaluation of the cooperative

form of housing tenure.

 

‘”D. Dudikov, "Nash zhilishchno-stroitelnyi kooperativ"
(Our Hbusing-Construction Cooperative), Izvestia, Dec. 24,
1963, p. 3.

IV. Private Housing

One of the most visible manifestations of an alternative
to state planned structures is in the arena of private
housing. The persistence of this kind of accommodation,
despite countless limitations, is an indication of a level of
control and initiative residents exhibited in their attempts
to improve living arrangements. Official hostility aimed at
private housing tenure did limit the number of available
options for Soviet citizens, but that in itself was not enough
to eradicate this form of housing tenure.

A discussion of private housing is probably most
confusing because of the shift in attitude by the government
toward private construction. For a number of years after
World War II, the Soviet government exhibited a tolerant
attitude toward the practice of individual home construction.
Housing space was extremely scarce in most parts of the
country, so any additions made to the housing stock in
general, whatever the source, were publicly welcomed by Soviet
officialdomu For a time, during the 19503, the authorities in
fact sought to»encourage private building by extending credits
to the prospective home builders through the state
construction bank. Easy payment loans were first offered as

an inducement to pioneers to volunteer for service in the new

64

65

"virgin" lands of Siberia and the Kazakh Republic. By 1955,
the same privileges were extended to other regions.106 The
idea was to encourage individual incentive as one way of
solving the chronic housing'problemw Workers could cut costs
on house building by doing some of the labor in their spare
time. The strategy initially succeeded: in the six year
period of 1951-1956, twenty-seven per-cent of urban housing
space was erected by private individuals.107

By the late 19503 and early 19603, however, private
consumption began to lose favor. The leadership objected on
the grounds that individual home ownership contradicted the
principles and values of socialism.by creating a wide variety
of opportunities for "enterprising" individuals. The regime
maintained that private housing encouraged speculation and
promoted "petty bourgeois values" and aggressively pursued a
policy to limit its role in solving the housing crisis. (Given
the built-in.bias against private property which pervaded the
ranks of Soviet officialdom, Soviet citizens had. to Ibe
particularly circumspect if they' decided. to jpursue this
avenue. The Soviet press, particularly after 1962, contained
frequent references to local authorities moving zealously
against the private builder for real or alleged breaches of

the law. For example, one "enterprising" resident erected a

 

1“David Granick, The Red Executive (Garden City, New
Ekork: Doubleday and Co., 1960). PP. 114.

107IrvingLevine, Main Street USSR.(NeW York: Neermerican
Press, 1960), p. 64.

66
five room house with a kitchen. A Moscow judge this action
defined as "an attempt to reap unearned income" and duly

° The animosity felt toward this

confiscated the property.10
sector was also expressed by another author who urged his
readers, "Do not forget that the acquisition.of private homes,
with their private plots, gives rise to private property
tendencies. 'Fhese individuals strive to ‘expand.the auxiliary
economy’ and they sell produce at speculative prices."109

Many extraordinary examples of speculation and private
landlordism which were reported during the early 19603 in
Soviet publications seemed to indicate this fear was
justified. This cause for concern led to a variety of
measures aimed at reducing individual household construction.
On August 6, 1962, under the heading "On Individual and
Cooperative Housing Construction" authorities asserted that
the time had come to discontinue the allocation of land plots
for individual housing construction. These regulations made
it increasingly more difficult to obtain building materials
and decent municipal services.110 In 1963, private housing
construction.was banned.in all large cities, while credits for
cooperative housing construction were increased.111 All

these measures led to a sharp reduction in individual

 

108Andrusz, p. 103.

109A. Koryagin, "Stroitel’stvo kommunizma i zhilishchnyi
vopros," Voprosy Ekonomik, no.6, June 1962, p. 37.

11°Izvestia, August 6-8, 1962.

111Izvestia, September 20, 1963.

67

construction. Privately built housing, which reached a peak
of 27.2 million meters in 1959, declined to 20.9 million in
1962, falling thereafter to 16.2 million in 1964. The
retirement of Khrushchev in October 1964 did not seem to
affect this trend. However, it is significant to point out
that by 1966, despite a twenty percent decrease, private
construction still accounted for twenty percent of all new
housing.112

Although private housing managed to provide one
alternative for many urban and rural residents, there were
many problems. Even before the anti-private housing policy
was formulated in the early 19603, the obstacles to private
construction were burdensome and numerous. The lack of
information about the conditions governing construction, the
allocation of land, the availability of building materials,
and the possibility of credits, for example, indicates the
myriad of problems faced by those interested in private
construction.113 Private housing plots were allocated in
areas that were far from city centers and usually quite far
from. the builders’ place of employment. Since private
construction was isolated from the city, these areas lacked
adequate sewage facilities and utility service. Thus, the
cooperative movement was plagued by the same problems which

affected private housing. Residents interested in cooperative

 

1“D. Pudikov, "Private Housing' Re-evaluated,"
Ekonomicheskaia Gazeta, No. 39, November 1967, p. 29.

113Izvestia, December 17, 1957.

68
housing, however, at least had the luxury of extensive
governmental support. Predictably, the anti—private posture
of the leadership in the early 19603 only served to accelerate
the already existing difficulties.

Given these limitations, the quality of private housing
was rarely better and usually much worse than that of state—
owned or cooperative housing. Despite this, private housing
offered some advantages which the other forms of housing could
not provide. For example, inhabitants were able to determine
the number and size of various rooms in the home. As N.
Tishchenko, a worker at the Gomel factory near Moscow stated:

I don’t have much money and it was difficult to decide

whether I wanted two or four bedrooms in my house. My

wife and I decided it would be nice to have a porch so we
decided to have three rooms and cut the size of these
rooms so that we could afford it. The rooms are small

but the pleasure of sitting on the porch is worth it.“‘

It would appear that to some residents the advantages of
private housing, despite the immense difficulties in acquiring

it, made it more attractive than the more modern form of
state-housing with all of its amenities.

Private housing was generally viewed as an attractive
form of accommodation, especially for those who had recently

arrived from the countryside.115 The migrant who was

 

11“Izvestia, Feb. 7, 1958.

115Izvestia, December 12, 1962. In order to be sensitive
to regional differences it is important to point out that the
share of private housing was most often above average in.small
cities. Most cities with an extensive private housing sector
also had a low level of modern conveniences and cities closest
to the centers of state power were generally better than other
regions of the USSR during the Khrushchev period. See G.A.
Gornostayeva, "Development of Housing Infrastructure in the

69
normally not highly qualified, and as a result tended to be a
low-paid occupation, was interested not just in a roof over
his/her head but also in having a garden plot to provide the
family with food.“6 For example, the Siberian Department of
the USSR Academy of Sciences found that only thirteen percent
of a sample of newly arrived migrants from the countryside
would.be willing to give up their small private plots in order
to live in an apartment with all the conveniences.117
Similarly, surveys conducted in 1962 revealed that migrant
workers generally were reluctant towmove into urban- type four
and five floor apartment houses with tiny entries and.kitchens

and almost no auxiliary space.118

They were also more likely
to sacrifice modern amenities for larger kitchens.

The state's anti-private property programs may have
stymied the growth of private construction. but did. not
completely eradicate this form of housing tenure. An
examination of the multitude of court cases dealing with the
"unauthorized construction of private buildings" and the

implementation of new legal codes on the topic suggests that

the practice of private construction was widespread. Despite

 

Cities of the Moscow Oblast: 1950-1970," Vestnik moskovskogo
universiteta, geografiya, no.6, 1988, pp. 9-19.

116B. Svetlichnyi, "Sovetskim lyudyam-blagoustroennye
zhilishcha," Kommunist, April 1965, no.6, p. 47.

117Barbara Rosenfeld, The Soviet Home prepared for the
Soviet and East European Unit, Foreign Information Research
Division, (Washington, D.C.: USIA, November 1, 1974). P. 83.
The actual survey was conducted in 1966.

118Svetlichny, Kommunist, pp. 48-49.

70
the anti—private attitude of the regime, the number of court
cases involving disputes over ownership of private property
increased even when the anti-private positions of the
government accelerated.119 Disputes generally involved
claims concerned with determination.of property rights of co—
owners (usually involved with divorce) and co-builders.120
Private housing, despite the government’s attempts to
eradicate it, provides another example of the ways in which
urban.residents sought to improve their accommodations and, at
the same time, evade state policies. The cooperative and
private forms of housing tenure offered many advantages for
certain groups within the urban milieu. The private form
provided an outlet for migrants and the cooperative for
"elites" and skilled laborers. These forms of housing tenure
allowed a degree of flexibility which was eagerly pursued by
many urban residents and provided a conceivable alternative to
state-owned structures. As a whole, despite all the
obstacles, private and cooperative forms of housing still

managed to accommodate over twenty-five per—cent of the total

population by 1966.

 

119P.Y. Orlovksy, "Soviet Legislation (n1 Personal

Ownership of Housing," Sovetskoye gosudarstvo i pravg, no.7
July 1963, pp. 61, translated in CDSP, vol. 13, no.39, p. 4.

120See "Collection of Rulings of the Presidium and
Determinations of the Collegium.for Civil Cases of the Russian
Republic Supreme Court, 1957-1958," edited by A. T. Rubichev,
Legal Literature Publishing House, (Moscow, 1960), p. 68.

V. Housing and its Social Dimensions

Much of the focus of this work up to this point has
centered on the physical aspects of housing rather than its
social dimensions. Aside from the physical aspects of the
dwelling, however, it is worth considering how housing
affected and interacted with the broader social environment in
the areas of employment, communal interaction, and family and
gender relations. Housing allocation has often been
interpreted as a mechanism used by the state to "control" the
population. Many observers point out that housing was and is
still used as a means of social control and work discipline by
employers. Since most consumer items were hard to come by,
the enterprise could "pay" skilled workers or needed technical
people with better, highly sought after housing. For many
employers, the most prestigious aspect of their offers was
flats from their own departmental housing stock and control,
the allocation of which they controlled. Economists and
sociologists have argued that gross housing shortages and
allocations by employers meant that workers worked where they
were told, avoided conflict with their superiors, and waited
long for the benevolent promise of a dwelling to be fulfilled.
The system of housing allocation inhibited flexibility and

created numerous problems. Abysmally bad dwelling facilities,

71

72

especially in industrial centers, contributed to a high rate
of job turnover. Workers would often change jobs in the hope
of finding more tolerable living conditions. The links
between housing and labor turnover were integral features of
Soviet urban life, and according to one Soviet sociologist,
employers used housing allocation as "a lever to manipulate
power over employees and ‘enserf’ the worker."121

Allocating housing as a reward for socially "useful" work
appeared to be the general policy of much of the Soviet Union
during the Khrushchev period and provides an example of how
housing was used as a way to control workers. The city
government of Yerevan, for example, explicitly endorsed it in
a 1963 ordinance, which. provided that housing would. be
allocated only to persons with a continuous work record of at
least three years, and that anyone not engaged in socially
useful work would be denied registration or removed from the
waiting list.122 Similarly, one Party official stated, "We
consider it just to provide housing in the first instance to
those who do excellent work."123 Historians and observers

have also equated these measures as another form.of control by

 

121O.E. Bessonova, Sovetskaiamodel’zhilishchnykh

otnoshenii: sushchnost’ i.;puti perestroiki, (Nbvosibirsk:
IEIOPP, 1988). p.47.

122"On the Procedure for Registering, Allocating, and
Occupying Dwelling Space in the City of Yerevan," ordinance
adopted.December 25, 1963, at the third session of the Yerevan
City Soviet. Published in Kommunist (of Armenia), Feb. 25,
1964; translated in CDSP May 6, 1964, p. 18.

inv; Isaev, "Pravo na order" (Right to Order), l;Y§§Ll§.
June 12, 1963, p. 3.

73

employers and enterprises over their employees. However, it
would seem that workers enthusiastically supported linking the
distribution of living quarters to an estimation of the
applicant’s socially useful work“ When Khrushchev pointed to
the necessity of making the distribution of apartments
dependent on the uninterrupted length of work at the
enterprise, letters in Pravda overwhelmingly favored this
proposal.124 Obviously, there is some question as to whether
these letters accurately reflected the general consensus of
workers or were merely orchestrated by the state to propagate
workers’ enthusiasm" Workers’ enthusiasm must be viewed with
a degree of skepticism, but this form of distribution was
probably viewed positively because it seemed to be a fair and
equitable way to distribute apartments.

While it is difficult to deny that housing was and still
is used to attract particularly' valuable workers to an
enterprise, there is little or no evidence that suggests that
workers were entirely "enserfed" or "controlled" by these
mechanisms of the state and.employeru The cooperation.between
enterprises and their workers in facilitating the construction
of cooperative housing clearly illustrates how enterprises
actually "enticed" or "rewarded" skilled workers. Workers
often resisted various forms of control and, at times, even
extracted certain advantages. For example, many skilled

workers attracted by good housing moved into company flats,

 

124See Pravda, July 18, July 24, August 10, August 19,
1963; lead editorial August 29, 1963.

74

then left the enterprise after a year or two for other jobs
but remained as occupants of company housing. Workers were
certainly aware that it was virtually impossible for all but
a few Soviet enterprises to evict a tenant from the
enterprise—owned housing even after the tenant had left the
enterprise.125 In this case, then, workers were able to work
within the system and create some sort of an advantage.

Another visible manifestation of maximizing gain is
evident in the ways in which residents made use of existing
housing laws and regulations. One of the unique features of
Soviet housing law is the great protection it afforded people
who were evicted from their apartments through no fault of
their own. In sharp contrast to the practices of most other
legal systems, Soviet law made it the duty of the owner or
lessor of the building from which a tenant was evicted to
provide the tenant and those living with him/her another

126

suitable dwelling. Some of the more important enterprises
were allowed to evict workers without providing other
accommodations, but only if a worker quit his/her job on
his/her own initiative, committed a crime, or was found to

have breached "labor discipline." This last condition was

vague enough to invite abuse, but the extent to which

 

125I. Szelenyi, Urban Inegpalities under State Socialism
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 193). PP. 76-77 and I.P.

Prokopchenko Zhilishchnoe i zhilishchno-stroitel’no
zakondatel’stvo (Moscow: Stroiizdat, 1977, pp. 237-239.

126Dimaio, p. 139.

75

employers resorted to it is not clear.127 What is clear is
that this arrangement created difficulties for the industrial
enterprises which administered employee housing, a complaint
that was frequently expressed in the Soviet press. The
frequency of these complaints suggests that residents were
keenly aware of ways to improve living conditions at the
expense of a frustrated employer. Once an individual had his
or her foot in the door, as one factory worker in Moscow put
it, "Legally you can't smoke him out, no matter what kind of
gas you use."128

Moving to distant regions provided residents another way
to improve their living arrangements. Workers moving to
Kazakhstan, for example, were granted houses on credit which
inhabitants could.pay off in installments over a.period of ten
to fifteen.years. 'These houses were generally of good.quality
and each had three rooms, plus a porch, a kitchen, steam heat
and gas.“9 On the other hand, inadequate housing produced
equally predictable, if opposite, responses. In Bratsk, for
example, in 1963, nearly three-quarters of the workers who
left their jobs at the aluminum.factory gave the impossibility

of securing an apartment as the principal reason.130 Perhaps

 

127See Yuri. Kw Tolstoi, Sovetskoe zhilishchnoe ;pravo
(Soviet Housing Law), Leningrad: Leningrad University, 1967,

pp. 153-220.
128Ibid., p. 136.
129Izvestia, March 4, 1964.

13oIbid. , p.2.

76
it would be more useful to realize that the relationship
between the state/employer and the employee was not always
exploitative. An example of the symbiotic relationship
between the state and the worker was evident in the newly
settled "virgin" lands. On the one hand, the government used
housing as an incentive for residents to move to these new
areas; and workers were granted the right to acquire housing
from the enterprise in which they were employed. In the event
the enterprise did not insure the worker living space, he/she
had the right to break the labor agreement.131 All of these
examples suggest a degree of flexibility in which urban
residents could and did maneuver within rigidities of the
state system and actively sought and achieved better living
accommodations. It also illustrates how housing is not only
a unit of accommodation but also one of negotiation and

contestation as well.

A.

The movement of the majority of city dwellers from the
"communal" flats of the Stalin period into single-family
apartments affected communal and social relationships. During
the Stalin period, a family found itself in the midst of a
crowd of strangers within the communal flats. In these flats,

urban residents had to share kitchens, bathrooms, and

 

131See Tikhon D. Alekseev. Zhilishchpye l’goty grazhdan
SS R (Housing Privileges of Citizens of the USSR) Moscow:
Gosiurizdat, 1962.

77

hallways. The necessary mingling in the halls and shared
kitchens did not always bring forth a sense of conflict and
often added a dimension of cooperation. It was in the
hallways and communal kitchens that tenants heard the latest
gossip or discussed the plight of another tenant. One wife of
an American worker living in Moscow during the Stalin period
noted, "We helped each other out when one experienced hard
times or was ill."132 Against the indisputable disadvantages
of cramped quarters, this community togetherness compensated
somewhat for the difficult living conditions. One 'woman
described this experience as, "One of the most memorable parts
of my life. We lived like sisters then."133 In A. Raikin’s
film, the Last Scandal (1960) communal apartment dwellers, who
had been living together and fighting for years, sit down to
say goodbye, as they move off to separate apartments. They
recall the war, they laugh and cry, have a few more fights
(scandals) but by the end of the film, display nostalgia for
a way of life that for many was passing away.134

This sense of communalism changed to some extent during
the Khrushchev period. For example, the movement of the
majority of city dwellers into single-family apartments did

change the concept of "neighbor" in urban life. As various

 

132Andrew Smith, I was a Soviet Worker (London: Robert
Hale and Company, 1937), p. 160.

133Piatochok, (the proper citation for this film will be
added)

13“For a discussion of Raikin’s work see Faubion Bowers,
Entertainment in Russia (Edinburgh, 1960), pp. 173-176.

78

sources begin to show during this period, people rarely
recruited friends from among neighbors and quite often had
little contact at all with those who lived next door.135 One
sociologist noted in one survey that the majority of Moscow
residents, when asked about their relations with neighbors,
declared that they preferred to meet them outside their
apartments. In addition, similar social characteristics and
status in the selection of friends was a much more important
variable than proximity to the place of residence.136

Thus, the housing program of the 19503 and 19603 altered
or affected communal relations as the single-family apartment
replaced communal flats. Ninety-five percent of apartments
with an average living space from twenty to twenty-five meters
were actually occupied by individual families.137 But the
separate apartment which was designed for one family did not
necessarily mean that only one family was contained.within its
walls. In larger units, with an average living space from
forty to forty-five square meters designed to accommodate a
family of four, studies conducted by the Research Institute of
Housing showed only twenty-percent of these apartments were

actually used by individual families. Most of these larger

 

135Vladimir Shlapentokh, Public and Private Life of the
Soviet Pegple: Changing Values in Post-Stalinist Russia
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989). p. 179.

136Michael B. Frolic, "Soviet Urban Sociology,"
International Journal of Comparative Sociology, vol.12, (Dec.
1970), p. 238.

137Broner, p. 55.

79
apartments were occupied by several families on a per room
basis. In addition, as discussed earlier, rural values and

behaviors still preserved and influenced communal interaction.

B.

Gender issues should also be considered as an integral
part of any discussion of housing. Housing affects the ways
in which domestic labor takes place. Since women’s
involvement in domestic labor in the Soviet Union. was
generally greater than the West, the dynamics of gender are
crucial to our understanding of housing design and its impact
on everyday life in the urban sphere. Typically in the Soviet
Union (and in most countries) housing is assumed to be mainly
for consumption benefits. But domestic labor involves
producing such.goods and services as meals, cleaning the home,
caring for children, gardening, maintaining the house,
planning activities for shared recreation and so on.
Virtually all of these activities, however, are women’s work
and unpaid. If housing were viewed as domestic capital which
is economically productive, though its products are usually
consumed at home rather than in the market place how resources
were expended on housing might change and change dramatically.
At least one female architect during the Khrushchev period
tried to advance this perspective in a rudimentary way in the
following terms:

Besides being an element of consumption, housing also

constitutes one of the determining factors of the
development of production. That is why it is so

80

important that all workers have at their disposal

comfortable housing where they can work, rest, and raise

the younger' generation in the best conditions

possible.138
But as only one of a handful of females among a virtually all
male profession her View remained atypical. In the pages that
follow we will examine how the failure of male architects to
recognize the productive functions of the household (and
provide space for them) affected the production of domestic
goods and services and shaped the lives of women, who are
defined more profoundly by their housing environment than men
because of their much deeper emersion in domestic labor.

An examination of the division of labor and the
uncooperative attitude of men in this realm is a key starting
point to illuminate the relationship between housing and
women’s issues. A study conducted at the end of the
Khrushchev period revealed that out of an average of twelve to
thirteen hours spent at home each day, the preparation of
meals and washing dishes took the average Muscovite woman two
hours and thirty minutes. Housework, which involved cleaning
the apartment, laundering linen, and putting clothes in.order,
consumed one and a half hours of the woman’s time at home.
Caring for children took another hour per child. In all,
seven to eight hours out of every twenty-four period were

spent working, in the home, leaving the exhausted woman one

whole hour of free or study time. 'The Muscovite husband found

 

1”AH Tomsen, "Zhilishchnyi vopros: vazhania sotsial'naia
problema sovremennosti," Voprosy Filosofii, no.12, 1959, pp.
23-24.

81

himself in.a somewhat happier situation, having two hours and
forty-five minutes of free time or time to engage in studies,
plus an extra forty—five minutes sleeping time each day.139
As we shall see, gaps between town planning principles and
practice were partly responsible for the larger share of time
women spent on housework. But prevailing male attitudes
toward domestic chores and the limited availability of labor—
saving devices for the home also contributed.to the burdens on
women.

Since child care was and continues to be traditionally
associated with "women’s" work, a discussion of child rearing
will illustrate how housing affected women’s daily lives.
That housing was grossly undersupplied and overcrowded did not
create an environment conducive to high-quality child rearing.

As previously discussed, one major flaw of the housing
construction initiative was its failure to be sensitive to
changes in the composition of Soviet families over time. For
example, it was particularly difficult for Soviet families to
have more children because they could not move to accommodate
the shift in family composition. The regime hoped parents
would.not have to concern themselves with the space of minors,
as it was projected school-aged children would be sent to

boarding schools under Khrushchev’s educational reform

 

139Broner, p. 21.

82

program.“° A central feature of the reform was the
introduction of new institutions for the communal upbringing
of children. During the Five Year period from 1956 to 1961,
the total number of children six years of age or under
enrolled in these institutions rose by over two million,
compared to a gain of little over 900,000 during the previous
five year period.141 With crowded housing conditions and
high food prices (amounting to seventy percent of the family
budget), having a child cared for in an institution had some
practical advantages. The mother was free to work or study.
There was more space in the apartment and food costs were
appreciably reduced.”2 However, because of the government’s
difficulty funding the program, only four percent of Soviet
children were enrolled in institutions at their height in
1962.

Since communal facilities did not adequately provide for
the majority of children, hOW'did limited.housing space affect
birth rates? By the early 19603, a number of scholars began
to examine the configuration and dynamics of Russian family

life and the effects of housing on family composition. One

 

1“’G. Druzhinina, "Ne zabyvat’s glavnoi tseli!"
Arkhitektura SSSR, 1957, no.10, p. 30. and William R. Keech,
"Group Influence and the Political Process in the Soviet
Union." American Political Science Review, 62, 1968, pp. 840-
851.

141Urie Bronfenbrenner, "The Changing Soviet Family," in
The Nuclear Family in Crisis: The Search for an Alternative,
ed. Michael Gordon (New York: Harper and Row, 1973). p. 131.

1“Izvestia, February 28, 1960.

83
item10f particular concern.was the declining birth—rate, which
in.urban centers fell from.30.5 births per thousand in 1940 to
26.0 in 1950, and to a low point of 15.3 in 1968.“3 By
1962, only five percent of married couples in the urban areas
of the Soviet Union had more than two children.“‘ The two
factors commonly cited as responsible for this decline were
the estimated loss of fifteen million males in World War II
and the increasing number of women restricting family
size.145 Women often cited the lack of housing space as a
major reason not to have children. In addition, a variety of
studies indicate a positive correlation between lack of space
and lower birth rates. For instance, in one survey an
improvement in living space was the most frequently cited
factor which would induce women to have children.146 One
leading demographer also mentioned housing conditions as the
primary cause mentioned by women as inhibiting them from
having a second child, and the number of abortions after the
first birth was twice as high in families where living space

was below average than in families where it was above

 

143Gregory Andrusz, Housing and Urban Development in the
USSR (London: Macmillan Press, 1984), p. 137.

1“‘V’iktor Ivanovich Perevdentsev, "The Soviet Family

Today," Sociolpgy and Social Research Journal, vol.67, no.3,
(April 1984), p. 249.

14$B.T. Urlanis, Problemy dinamiki naseleniya SSSR.
(Moscow 1966), p. 254.

146I.P. Katkova, Demograficheskoe ,povedenie molodykh
semei. (Moscow, 1964), pp. 4-5.

84

average.”7
This exclusive focus on material conditions, however,
ignores other factors that almost certainly contributed to the
decline in the birth rates such as a conscious desire by
parents to provide better care and lavish more attention on
fewer children, a development typical of urbanization in a
variety of settings. The volume of economic and qualitative
children could increase, even when the actual numbers of
physical children decreased. The other side of the coin was
that as Soviet society became more urbanized, children became
more of an economic liability than an asset. Even if the
decision to reduce family size reflected crowded and
inadequate housing conditions, it is possible parents chose to
have smaller families in order to increase the quality of
child rearing. A range of variables affected child rearing
patterns but, the fact remains, that housing was grossly
undersupplied and overcrowded and this did help to create an

environment not particularly conducive to high quality child

rearing.
Of all the types of housework - including shopping,
washing, housekeeping, child care, and repair work - the

disparities between the labor of men and women were most
evident in the kitchen. By 1965, ninety-eight per-cent of
women versus only twenty-one percent of men engaged in kitchen

work. Women engaged in the work not only more often than men,

1"‘7Ibid. , p. 5 .

85

but for longer‘ periods of time. 'The duration of food
preparation and related activities for working women in major
cities was nine times greater than that for working men; ten
to eleven hours per week as opposed to one hour.“°

Since women spent so much time in the kitchen, an
examination of the structure and size of this room will
illustrate the construction industry’s lack of concern for
women’s needs. .According to one survey conducted in 1966, the
one issue that concerned women most about the layout of the
apartment was the size of the kitchen.”9 As one architect
explained, "women would be willing to exchange as much space
as possible from the bedrooms, common rooms, and bathrooms in
exchange for enlarged kitchens."150

The space allotted to the kitchen.and the auxiliary space
contained near it was a regularly debated topic among
architects, sociologists, and construction engineers. The
Institute of Housing research conducted a variety of surveys
on the most used places in the kitchen, the points most often
walked between, and how the kitchen and equipment should be
planned or arranged to shorten the number of steps around the
room. Surveys consistently revealed the desire of women to

have larger kitchens, but the end result was to keep the

 

1““‘L. Gordon and E. Klopov, Man .After Work: Social
Problems of Daily Life (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975), p.
86.

149Tutuchenko, p. 108.

150Ibid., p. 109.

86
kitchens as small as possible and the elimination of auxiliary
spaces.

In fact, the kitchen itself was often considered
"auxiliary" space. Why this was the case and why auxiliary
space was reduced is an intriguing question. Part of the
answer lies in the attitudes of construction specialists.
Engineers concluded.early in the development of industrialized
construction.techniques that design.of auxiliary space was too
burdensome and.wasteful a taskg Entry ways and corridors were
kept to a minimum so as not to complicate the prefabricated
design and block construction methods engineers so adored.
The ‘majority of architectural professionals were males.
Although women represented a significant contingent of workers
at housing construction sites, they represented a small
percentage (roughly five percent) of professional architects

and designers . 151

The lack of concern for lessening the
burdens in women’s lives is evident considering men
predominantly designed buildings and cities. When one female
architect proposed that part of the living room be "cut off"
to accommodate other spacial considerations such as a larger
kitchen, the response by male architects was not favorable:
Some propose reducing the size of the living room to
increase the size of the kitchen and auxiliary space. Is
it possible they are unaware that people do not relax,

sleep and work in foyers, corridors and other auxiliary
rooms? The construction of this dead space requires

151See Dimaio, p. 174 and Pravda. Jan. 3. 1962-

87

building materials, and therefore costs money.152
Auxiliary space ‘which. would. have helped. women in their
domestic duties was viewed as "dead" space, and the male
centered view espoused here clearly rejected the supposition
that housing is a unit of production.

The desire to keep kitchens as small as possible and to
eradicate the possibility of extended eating areas within the
kitchen area was reinforced by rental policy. Rent averaged
about four to five per—cent of the family’s income but was
dependent on a variety of factors: income, number of
dependents, condition.and locale of the building, the presence
or' absence of 'municipal services and. amenities, special
privileges, and, of course the size of the living space. Rent
was calculated on average at three kopecks per square meter.
Interestingly, the area associated with the woman’s sphere,
the kitchen, was considered "auxiliary" space and was not
counted in the calculation of rent unless the kitchen was
larger than four and a half square meters.153 Any
"superfluous" kitchen space over the maximum standard of 4.5
square meters was assessed at nine kopecks, or three times the
rate per square meter of standard space.154

The abandonment of auxiliary space during the Khrushchev

 

152Izvestia, March 15, 1962. Forty-two architects and
engineers (all male) signed this article.

153Ibid., p. 94.

15“Konstantin Zhukov, Housing Construction in the USSR
(Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1974). p. 7.

 

 

 

88

period contributed to serious concerns among urban residents,
particularly women. According to one economist, apartment
dwellers surveyed vehemently opposed the removal of auxiliary
spaces. Ninety-four percent of women did not favor the plan
of direct exit from the kitchen to another room. The
construction specialists argued that auxiliary spaces between
the kitchen and other rooms were not needed because these
rooms were intended to be used as dining rooms. Considering
that only twelve per-cent of the general rooms were in fact
used as dining rooms, and the majority of these "dining" rooms
were actually used as bedrooms, it became clear why tenants
rejected the kind of planning which reduced auxiliary
spaces.155

However, this in itself may not be the sole explanation
of why women so overwhelmingly rejected the elimination of
auxiliary space. Given the strong rural roots of many of
these women, where the kitchen was so strongly defined as
female space, perhaps one could argue that auxiliary spaces
facilitated a clear separation of rooms which may have given
women some privacy and a sense of space they wanted to
preserve. The architects who designed the building, it would
seem, tried to elucidate that female space was not for privacy
but rather for work.

The kitchen, as an entity, is an interesting place to

focus on because it sheds light on broader issues of gender

 

155Broner, p. 25.

89

and reveals the interdependence between the role of women and
housing in general. The layout of the kitchen and apartment
as a whole tells us much about how women are expected to
organize their lives.156 The evidence suggests that smaller
kitchens whether designed to or not, served to perpetuate the
subjugation. of women. by" helping ‘maintain them. in their
assigned domestic duties. Take, for example, this statement
by an architect in.Moscow: "the kitchen is the one room in the
house which does not need to be enlarged. It is one of the
few rooms which does not need to change in size even if family
size has increased."157 The implication here seems to be
that the kitchen was designed to be used by one person - the
wife and 'mother. .Although this may not have been an
explicitly stated or even intended goal, this example
illustrates hOW'the policies of the state and the construction
industry reinforced the role of women as homemakers and
mothers.

If the layout of the apartment helped to further
subjugate women in the realm of domestic labor, subjugation
must be understood against evidence of many Soviet women’s
attitudes towards housework. Women were burdened with work

both outside and inside the home, a circumstance customarily

 

156See Jos Boys, Women and the Man Made Environment
(London: Pluto Press, 1984), pp. 55-81 and Sophie Watson,

Accommodating Inegpality: Gender and Housing (London: Allen
and Unwin, 1988). PP. 138-147.

157V'.P. Skripko, I.B. Martkovich, P.G. Solov'ev
Zhilishchnoe zakondatet’ stvo SSSR i RSFSR (Moscow: Stroiizdat,
1965), p. 217.

90

called the "double shift." Still, many women consciously
valued their role of "housewife". For example, in 1964, three
hundred working women surveyed at the Marat Candy Factory in
Moscow were asked whether men should spend more time on
household tasks. Only one expressed the opinion that the
"home is not a man’s affair" while the rest answered the
question affirmatively.158 Yet, a closer examination of the
survey reveals the importance placed in running the household
and the importance women attached to their reputation as good
housewives. In the survey the opinion was expressed that "a
good housewife will always find the time, energy and means to
keep the house neat" and that a "good housewife does not need
special aid."”3 Similarly, in a survey conducted in
Taganrog, the question.was phrased: If you had more free time,
how would.you use it? .Almost two-thirds of the women.surveyed
felt a lack of time for domestic affairs. They mentioned an
intention to use this supplementary time for housework much
more often than any other desire.“°

Thus, we are faced with a double-edged sword. On the one
hand, the housing industry did not ease the burdens for women
in the household and the design of the living space actually

helped to reinforce the notion that domestic labor ‘was

 

1“G»Au Slesarev "Women in Industry and in the Family," in
Social Problems of Labor and Production: A Soviet and Polish
Comparative Study (Warsaw, 1969). p. 432.

1”Ibid., p. 434.

160Gordon and Klopov, p. 95.

91
primarily "women’s" work. The picture is complicated
considering the conscious desire of many women to excel in
this realm. Soviet women’s concern with prestige in the
private sphere provides a confusing element to the discussion.
Although many probably viewed their domestic responsibilities
as a necessary component of everyday life, it complicates our
assessment of how to interpret the ways housing reinforced
women’s roles in the household.

The relationship of housing and gender dimension
contained within it should not be confined only to the
parameters of the dwelling, but to the broader urban
landscape. The practice of locating the existing specialized
retail outlets on the ground floor of apartment blocks meant
that within any single neighborhood complex, there was a
rather dispersed pattern of shop locations. Instead of being
able to purchase most items in either a single large retail
outlet, or'a cluster of shops, several journeys were required.
The same general criticisms may also be directed at the
provision of other areas of access such.as day care facilities
and kindergartens.161

Just as language contains and perpetuates certain ideas
about women, so do buildings and the layout of urban
communities, but in.a less direct wayu .Attention.to discourse
could perhaps illuminate the power/knowledge relations

embodied in the planning of housing which so forcefully

 

161James Bater, The Soviet City: Ideal and Reality
(London: Edward and Arnold Publishers, 1980). pp. 143-146.

92
limited women’s lives. Foucault’s contention that no
relations of power exist without resistance suggests the
possibility of women’s opposition to the forms of control that
they experienced within the Soviet urban system.162 The
ways in which women resisted the construction industry’s
intention to limit the amount of time spent in the kitchen
except for work purposes is one example. The kitchen was more
than just a place for meal preparation but also the site of
conversation and familial interaction and women eagerly sought
to preserve these functions.163 Housing and issues
involving women have been extensively reviewed in the
literature, but mainly as separate and distinct subjects.
Stereotyped sex roles, reinforced by the design of housing,
resulted in women carrying the major burden of domestic work,
while invariably working "full time" outside the home as well.
The consequences of this were manifested in many ways, not the
least of which was the limited amount of discretionary free
time available to women. This survey has stressed the
interdependence between the role of women and housing policies
and has illuminated how sexist assumptions about women’s roles
and family life were built into the design of dwellings

throughout the Soviet urban sphere.

 

162M. Foucault, The History of Sexuality: An Introduction.
vol.1, (New York: Vintage Books, 1980).

1“David L. Broner, Sovremennye problemy zhilishchnogo
khoziaistva, (Moscow: Gosizdat, vysshaia shkola, 1961) , p. 21.

Conclusion

Historians have seized on the importance of housing
issues and have ignored the wider social structural ones in
which housing is embedded. A prevailing theme throughout this
discussion has been to consciously reintegrate housing into
the broader social context. A shortcoming in the literature
on housing studies is the nearly universal narrowing of the
focus to the dwelling as a separate or distinct unit and the
insufficient emphasis on its relationship with the broader
environment” This discussion of housing during the Khrushchev
period. has tried to illuminate the relationship Ibetween
residency and the urban community, its local setting, its
spatial relationship tolother'dwellings, the street, the local
area, friends and kin, recreational activities, and the wider
web of dependencies that determined urban life styles and
well-being in the Soviet Union during this period.

Housing influences the manner in which individuals react
to the various relationships that constitute their everyday
lives. An alternative theoretical approach to examine these
relationships has been presented here. Housing has
traditionally been defined as a unit of consumption. The
theoretical position presented here, by contrast, views

housing as "productive", directly related to the production of

93

 

 

 

 

94
domestic sector goods and services. Defining housing as a
unit of production offers an alternative approach to examine
the ways in which housing and gender issues are intertwined.
For example, if housing is grossly under supplied and
overcrowded, living conditions may not be conducive to high
quality child rearing.

Soviet. urban. residents during' the KhrushcheV' period
exercised a degree of creativity and ingenuity in order to
cope with their living arrangements. The coping strategies
devised by urban inhabitants discussed in this study encompass
a multitude of activities. Spontaneously generated
organizations such as the domkoms, raid brigades, the house
construction promotion brigades, petition drives, and the
numerous editorials which saturated the press provided.a vast
array of outlets for residents. The private and cooperative
forms of housing tenure accommodated twenty-five percent of
the population and provided two eagerly sought out
alternatives which helped many avoid the daily burdens of
state-owned housing. Urban residents also used their
traditional networks of kinship, rural background, and the
instrumentalities of, and contradictions within, the state to
vent their frustrations, articulate their needs, and sometimes
even change state policies.

A major underlying current responsible for the
manifestations of these changes can be attributed to the
emerging social changes that rapidly accelerated during the

Khrushchev period. As society became more industrialized and

95
urbanized, the demands for improved accommodation intensified
and were articulated more forcefully. Ironically, the
suggestion that Soviet society' was too "modern" or too
"dynamic" has not at all been entertained.as a way to evaluate
the success of the housing initiative.

The "modern" connotations associated with Soviet urban
life may be slightly misleadingu .As the discussion.of private
housing clearly illustrates, the legacy of society’s rurality
still had a substantial impact on the feel and character of
the urban environment. The persistence of private plots and
the existence of livestock.in "urban" areas are clear examples
of the persistence of rural influences. Similarly, the
existence of homogenous migrant communities on the outskirts
of urban centers suggests the persistence of rural values and
the effects of those values on housing choice and the urban
environment. It would appear that the lines that separate or
demarcate the "rural" and "urban" environments are not very
clear. The persistence of vast stretches of "rural" enclaves
on the outskirts of "urban" areas inclines us to rethink the
impact of social change associated with urbanization. Perhaps
the term itself needs to be redefined or renegotiated.

The combination of all of the strategies discussed in
this study suggests urban inhabitants were not always passive
victims ‘within. the so-called. "monolithic" and. "behemoth"
apartment complexes as they are all too often.portrayed in the
literature. This study has tried to dismantle the standard

interpretation which is reflected in the testament of one

96

observer:
Soviet citizens live like sheep in small, crowded and
private apartments in dreary, mass housing projects where
miles and miles of identical buildings have been
constructed with industrialized building systems. The

individual units are cramped and extremely inconvenient
and uncomfortable.“‘

The ways in which Soviet citizens improved and.demanded.better
living accommodations illustrate that the image of a repressed
and cowed population shivering from the power and control of

the state needs to be altered.

 

16“A. Kopp, "Soviet .Architecture since the Twentieth
Congress of the CPSU," paper delivered at the Congress of
Soviet and East European Studies, Jan. 1973, pp. 12-13.

B IBL IOGRAPHY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alekseev, Tikhon D. Zhilishchnye l’goty grazhdan SSSR.
Moscow: Gosiurizdat, 1962.

Alexeev, Michael. "Distribution of Housing Subsidies in the

USSR." Jornal of Comparative Economic Studies. vol.21,
Fall 1990, pp. 138-157.

"The Effect of Housing Allocation on Social
Inequality: A Soviet Perspective." Journal of
Comparative Economics, vol.12, June 1988, pp. 228-236.

Andrusz, D. Gregory. "The Financing of Housing in the Soviet
Union." Soviet Studies, vol.42, July 1990, pp. 555-570.

Housing and Urban Development: Studies in Soviet
History and Sociepy. London: Macmillan Press, 1984.

Balinky, Alexander. "Non-Housing Objectives of Soviet
Housing Policy." Problems of Communism, vol.10, Aug.
1961, pp. 17-23.

Ball, Michael. Housing and Social Change in Europe and the
USA. New York: Routledge Press, 1988.

Barry, Donald. "Housing in the USSR: Cities and Towns." and
Karl Eugen Wadekin. "Housing in the Countryside."
Problems of Communism, vol.18, May 1969, pp. 1-20.

Bater, James. The Soviet City: Idea and Reality. London:
Edward Arnold Publishers, 1980.

Bates, Allan A. "Low Cost Housing in the USSR," in
Industrialized Housing Washington: Government Printing
Office, 1969, pp. 1-21.

Baum, Andrew, and Stuart Valins. Architecture and Social
Behavior: Psychological Studies of Social Density. New
York: Lawrence Erlbaum Publishers, 1977.

Boys, Jos. Makinq Space: Women and the Man Made Environment.
London: Pluto Press, 1984.

97

98

Breslauer, George W. "Khrushchev Reconsidered." in The
Soviet Union since Stalin. ed. Stephen F. Cohen et. al.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980, pp. 50-70.

Broner, D.L. Kurs zhilishchnggo khoziaistva. Moscow: Izd-vo
Ministerestva Khoziaistva RSFR, 1948.

Zhilishchnyi vopros i statistika. Moscow:
Statistic Publishing House, 1966.

Bronfenbrenner, Urie. "The Changing Soviet Family." in Ipp
Nuclear Family in Crisis: The Search for gn
Alternative. ed. Michael Gordon, New York: Harper and
Row, 1973, pp. 118-138.

Brumfield, William and Blair A. Ruble, ed. Russian Housing
in the Modern Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1993.

Clayton, Elizabeth and Thomas Richardson. "Soviet Control of

City Size." Journal of Economic Develgpment and
Cultural Change, vol. 38, Oct. 1989, pp. 155-165.

Davis, Jerome. "Russians Face to Face: A Report on Housing
in the USSR." New World Review, vol.32, Jan. 1964, pp.
34-39.

DiMaio, Alfred John. Soviet Urban Housing: Problems and
Policies. New York: Praeger Press, 1974.

Diubek, L. "O kvartirakh blizhaischego budushchego,"
Arkhitektura SSSR, 1960, no.10, pp. 54-59.

Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality: An Introduction.
vol. 1, New York: Vintage Books, 1980.

Geiger, Kent. The Family in Soviet Russia. Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1968.

Gordon, Michael. ed. The Nuclear Family in Crisis: The
Search for an Alternative. New York: Harper and Row

Publishers, 1973.

Gordon, L. and E. Klopov. Man After Work: Social Problems of

Daily Life and Leisure Time. Moscow: Progress
Publishers, 1975.

Gornostayeva, G. "The Developmet of the Housing
Infrastructure in the Cities of the Moscow Oblast."
Soviet Geography, vol.30, Apr. 1989, p. 271-283.

99

Grancher, Roy A. "Housing Industry in the USSR," in the U.S.

Delegation Report, Economic Commission for Europe,

Third Building Industpy Seminar and Russian Study Tour,
Jan. 1971, prepared for the Office of International

Affairs, HUD, Washington, D.C. NTIS, Number PB 199418,
pp. 13-39.

Granick, David. The Red Executive. Garden City, New York:
Doubleday and Company, 1960.

Hayden, Dolores. Redesigning the American Dream: The Future

of Housing, Work, and Family Life. New York: W.W.
Norton and Company, 1984.

Hazard. John. Soviet Housing Law. New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1939.

Herman, Leon M. "Urbanization and New Housing Construction
in the Soviet Union." American Journal of Economics and
Sociology, vol. 30, no. 2, Apr. 1971, pp. 203-220.

Hoffmann, David L. "Moving to Moscow: Patterns of Peasant
In—Migration During the First Five Year Plan." Slavic
Review, vol.50, Winter 1991, pp. 313-331.

Hosking, Geoffrey. The Awakening of the Soviet Union.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990.

Huxtable, Ada Louise. "Building Soviet Society: Housing and
Planning." in The Soviet Union: The Fifty Years, ed. by
Harrison E. Salisbury. New York: Harcourt Brace and
World, 1967, pp. 143-187.

Keech, William R. "Group Influence and the Political Process
in the Soviet Union." American Political Science
Review, vol.62, 1968, pp. 840-851.

Kemeny, Jim. Housing and Social Theopy. London: Routledge
Press, 1992.

Klock, Frank. "Housing Construction behind the Iron Curtain:
Construction Methods and Living Conditions." Journal of

Property Management, vol.26, Dec. 1960, pp. 71-76.

Kolotilkin, B. "The Effectiveness of Housing: Construction,
Finance, Costs, and Provision of Services." Problems of
Economics, vol.22, Nov.1979, pp. 37-51.

"Housing Rent; Cost Accounting and Social
Justice." Problems of Economics, vol.34, June 1991, pp.
83-95.

100

." Kvartirnaia Plata: Khozraschet Sotsial’naia
Spraveglivost." Voprosy Ekpnomiki, vol.8, 1990, pp. 89-
96.

"Perspectivy ispol’zovaniia piatietazhnykh
zdanii," Arkhitektura SSSR, no.8, 1979, pp. 8-23.

Khotchinskii, S. "Puti realizatsii stroitel’stvo,"
Arkhitektura §SSR, 1956, no. 5, pp. 1-12.

Kopp, A. "Soviet Architecture since the Twentieth Congress
of the CPSU," paper delivered at the Congress of Soviet
and East European Studies, Jan. 1973, pp. 12-13.

Koryagin, A. "Stroitel’stvo kommunizma i zhilishchnyi
vopros," Voprosy Ekonomik, no.6, June 1962, pp. 32-48.

Lebedev, V. "Pervye shagi proektirovaniia i stroitel’stva
domov s malometrazhnymi kvartirami," Arkitektura SSSR,
no. 5, 1964, pp. 5-12.

Levine, Irving. Main Street USSR. New York: New American
Press, 1960.

Lewin, Moshe. The Gorbachev Phenomenon. Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1991.

Lewin, Susan and Cedric Pugh. "Housing and Gender Policies
in the Soviet Union." Critical Social Policy, vol.10,
Autumn 1990, pp. 71-78.

Lopovok, L. "Nekotorye voprosy estetiki krupnopanel’nogo
domostroeniia," Arkhitektura SSSR, no. 5, 1964, pp. 9—
19.

Mace, David. The Soviet Family. New York: Doubleday and
Company, Inc., 1963.

Maegd-Soep, Carolina. Trifonov and the Drama of the Russian
Intelligentsia. Belgium: String Communications Press,
1990.

Mamukov, Y. "Soviet Housing Construction in the

Sixties."Bulletin of the Institgte for the Study of the
USSR, vol.17, no. 12, Dec. 1970, p. 5-19.

Mateju, Petr. "Social Structure, Spatial Structure and
Problems of Urban Research." International Journal of

Urban and Regional Research. 3 (August 1979), pp. 181-
202.

 

101

Millar, James, ed. Politics. Work. and Daily Life in the
USSR: A Survey of FormpruSoviet Citizens. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press. 1987.

Narinyani N. "A Dispute Over the Layouts for One Family
Apartments." Current Digest of the Soviet Press,
(translated from Izvestia, March 3, 15, 27, 1960)
vol.12, Apr. 27, 1960 pp. 25—28.

Nechemias, Carol. "The Impact of Soviet Housing Policy on
Housing Conditions in Soviet Cities." Urban Studies.
vol. 18, Fall 1981, pp. 1-8.

Novak, Joseph. The Future is urs Comra e: Conversations
with the Russians. New York: Doubleday and Company,
1959.

Orlovksy, P. "On the Right of Personal Ownership of
Housing." Current Digest of the Soviet Press,
(translated from Sovetskoye Gosudarstvoi Pravo, July
1961,) vol. 13, Oct. 25, 1961, pp. 3-6.

Parkins, Maurice Frank. Qity Plunning in govigp Russia.

Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1953.

Partridge, Colin. Yuri Trifonov’s the Mpsggw Study.
Lewiston: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990.

Perevdentsev, Viktor Ivanovich. "The Soviet Family Today,"

Sociology and Social Research Journal, vol.67, no.3,
April 1984, pp. 241-258.

Pudikov, D. "Private Housing Re-evaluated," Ekonomicheskaia
Gazeta, no.39, November 1967, pp. 22-32.

Prentice, Richard and Michael Ryan, ed. Social Trends in the
Soviet Union from 1950. New York: Saint Martin’s Press,
1987.

Prokopchenko, I.P. Zhilishchnoe i zholishchno-stroitel’noe
zakonodatel’stvo. Moscow: Stroiizdat, 1977.

Pudikov, D. "Private Housing Re-evaluated," Ekonomicheskaia
Gazeta, no.39, Nov. 1967, pp. 23-39.

Pugh, Cedric. "A New Approach to Housing Theory: Sex, Gender
and the Domestic Economy." Housing Studies, vol.5 no.2
pp. 112-129.

Richardson, William. "Architecture, Urban Planning and
Housing During the First Five Year Plan," grban
Studies, vol.26, June 1989, pp. 150-168.

 

102

Richter, Luba 0. "Plans to Urbanize the Countryside: 1950-
1961." in Soviet Planning: Essays in Honor of Naum
Jasny, Ed. Jane Degras and Alec Nove. Oxford: Basil
Blackwell, 1964, pp. 32-45.

Roberts, Marion. Living in a Man—Made World: Gender

Assumptions in Modern Housing Design. New York:
Routledge Press, 1990.

Rosenfeld, Barbara. The Soviet Home. prepared for the Soviet
and East European Unit, Foreign Information Research
Division Office of Research, USIA, Washington, D.C.:
November 1974.

Rubichev, A.T. "Collection of Rulings of the Presidium and
Determinations of the Collegium for Civil Cases of the
Russian Supreme Court, 1957-1958," ed.by A.T. Rubichev,
Moscow: Legal Literature Publishing House, 1960, pp.
53-76.

Ruble, Blair A. "From Khrushcheby to Korobki," in Russian
Housing in the Modern Age, ed. William Craft Brumfield
and Blair A. Ruble, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1993.

Rudden, Bernard. "Soviet Housing Law." International and

Comparative Law Quarterly. vol.12, Apr. 1963, pp. 591-
630.

Safronov, Uri. Organizatsiia Zhilishchnogo Khoziaistva.
Moskva: Stroiizdat, 1972.

Salisbury, Harrison, ed. The Soviet Union: The Fifty Years.
New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 1968.

Saunders, Peter and Peter Williams. "The Constitution of the
Home: Towards a Research Agenda," Housing Studies,
April 3, 1988, pp. 81-93.

Sears, Edward. "Housing in the USSR." New World Review,
vol.29, Feb. 1961, pp. 10-16.

Shass, I. "Kvartal krupnopanel’nykh domov v Leningrade,"
Arkhitektura SSSR, no.2, 1960, pp. 8-20.

Shkaratan, Ovsey. "The Social Structure of Soviet Cities"
International Social Science Journal, 42 (August 1990),
pp. 367-377.

Shlapentokh, Vladimir. Public and Private Life of the Soviet
People: Changing Values in Post-Stalin Russia. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1989.

103

Sillince, J. ed. Housing Policies in Eastern Europe and the
Soviet Union. New York: Routledge, 1992.

Slesarev, G.A. "Women in Industry and in the Family," in

Social Problems of Lapor and Production: A Soviet-

Polish Comparative Study. Moscow: 1969.

Smith, Andrew. I was a Soviet Worker. London: Robert Hale
and Company, 1937.

Sosnovy, Timothy. "Housing in the Workers’ State: Undoing
the Sins of Neglect." Problems of Communism, vol.6,
Nov. 1956, pp. 31-39.

. The Housing Problem in the §oviet Union. New York:
Research Program on the USSR, 1954.

"Housing Conditions and Urban Development in the

USSR," in New Directiong in phe Soviet Economy. Part
II-B, Washington: US Government Printing Office, 1966.

. "The Soviet Housing Situation Today." Soviet
Studies, vol.1l, July 1959, p. 1-21.

Stites, Richard. Soviet Popular Culture. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Struyk, Raymond. Implementing Housing Allowances in Russia:

Rationalizing the Rental Sector. Washington, D.C.: The
Urban Institute Press, 1993.

Svetlichny, B. "Improved Housing for the Soviet People."

Current Digest of the Soviet Press, vol.17, June 23,
1965, pp. 10-14.

. "Nekotorye voprosy perspektivnogo razvitiya
gorodov," Voprgsy ekgnomiki, no.3, 1962, pp. 57-69.

"Sovetskim lyudyam-blagoustroennye zhilishcha,"
Kommunist, April 1965, no.6, pp. 45-54.

Szelenyi, I. Urban Inequalities under State Socialism.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983.

Tolstoi, Uri. Sovetskoe Zhilishchnoe Sakonodatel Stvo.

Leningrad: Izd-vo Leningradskogo Universiteta im.
Zhdanova, 1974.

Topilin, A. V. Territrial'noe pereraspredelenie trudoyykh
resurov v SSSR. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975.

Trifonov, Iurii. The Exchange. London: HEB, 1990.

 

104

Trufanov, Ivan. Problems of Soviet Urban Life. Newtonville:
Oriental Research Partners, 1977.

Turgenev, S. "Eksperimental’naia zastroika zhilogo
kompleksa," Arkhitektura SSSR, no. 1, 1958, pp. 3-14.

Tutuchenko, Semyon. Housing in the USSR: Notes of an
Architect. Moscow: Foreign Language Publishing House,
1960.

Underhill, Jack. "Soviet New Towns, Planning and National

Urban Policy: Shaping the Face of Soviet Cities." Town
Planning Review, vol.61, July 1990, pp. 263-285.

Urlanis, B.T. Problemy dinamiki naseleniya SSSR. Moscow,
1966.

Vinogradov, K. "Housing Construction Prospects and Housing

Census Figures." Voprosy Ekonomiki, no.10, October
1960, Pp.70-79.

Wadekin, Karl Eugen. Rural Reconstruction and the Agrogorod;

the Development in Village Planning and Design Since
the 22nd Party Congress. Munich: Radio Liberty

Committee, 1968.

Watson, Sophie. Accommodating Inequality: Gender and
Housing. London: Allen and Unwin, 1988.

Wolk. S. "Problems in Soviet Housing Construction." Bulletin

of the Institute for the Study of the USSR, vol.6, Jan.
1959, pp. 31-37.

Zhukov, Konstantin. Housing Construction in the USSR.
Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1974.

Journals and Newspapers
Izvestia
Krokodil
Literaturnaia Gazeta
Komsomolskaia Pravda
Pravda
Pravda Vostoka
Selskaia Zhizn

Trud

 

105

Voprosy Filosofii
FILMS

The Soviet Citizen and His gommunity, Moscow, 1968.
Piatochok

 

"l!!!!!!l!!!!!!!“