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Section 2

[1] Semyonova Tian‑Shanskaia, O. P. (1993). Village life in late Tsarist Russia (D. L. Ransel, Ed.; D. L. Ransel & M. Levine, Trans.). Indiana University Press. “This chapter begins with a description of peasant living quarters, but Semyonova quickly gets caught up in telling about the stifling atmosphere of houses heated by “black stoves.” (Such chimneyless homes, called in Russian “smokey houses” [kurnye izby], were quite common in central and especially northern Russia until the end of the nineteenth century.) Note that the principal fuel in this instance was straw, because Semyonova's village was in the lightly forested Black Earth region. Here the roofs were often thatched, and chimneyless stoves may have been a necessity because burning straw could drift up the flue and land on the thatched roof.” (p. 116)

[2] Semyonova Tian‑Shanskaia, O. P. (1993). Village life in late Tsarist Russia (D. L. Ransel, Ed.; D. L. Ransel & M. Levine, Trans.). Indiana University Press. “In the discussion of fire protection that follows, Semyonova tells of the willow trees that furnished a protective barrier against the raging fires that all too regularly consumed Russian villages and towns. The willows had dual and discrepant uses: when alive and green, they formed a screen against flying embers, and (as we read in the court cases cited by Semyonova in chapter 10) when cut and dried out, they served as ignitable fuel.” (p. 116)

[3] Semyonova Tian‑Shanskaia, O. P. (1993). Village life in late Tsarist Russia (D. L. Ransel, Ed.; D. L. Ransel & M. Levine, Trans.). Indiana University Press. “When Semyonova turns to the division of family property at the time of the separation of some members, her discussion can be better understood if one recalls that the large Russian peasant family was composed of a mother and father and their grown sons, together with the wives and children of the sons. Two, three, or more nuclear families might reside in a single household, and personal conflict or lack of space could and did regularly require the separation of one or more of the nuclear units.” (p. 117-118)

[4] Semyonova Tian‑Shanskaia, O. P. (1993). Village life in late Tsarist Russia (D. L. Ransel, Ed.; D. L. Ransel & M. Levine, Trans.). Indiana University Press. “HOUSES HAVE equal sides that measure from fourteen to twenty-one feet. There are two windows. The entryway (sentsa) is usually built with thin, low-quality logs. Just opposite the door from the main room into the entryway is another door leading into the yard. If an entryway is wide enough, it is used for storing horse collars and women’s trunks. To the left of the door leading into the house is a bench known as a konnik (also ikonnik or okonnik).” (p. 118)

[5] Semyonova Tian‑Shanskaia, O. P. (1993). Village life in late Tsarist Russia (D. L. Ransel, Ed.; D. L. Ransel & M. Levine, Trans.). Indiana University Press. “In the far right-hand corner there is a whitewashed brick stove with a sleeping shelf (/ezhanka) running along its top. Stoves with chimneys are called “white,” while chimneyless stoves are referred to as “black.” When a “black” stove is being lighted, the door from the main room into the entryway is left open so that the smoke up to the level of the door is drawn out, but above that level it forms a blue and white blanket through which nothing can be seen. The top of the door is no higher than a rather short person, so that one has to stoop to enter the house (the ceiling itself is only 5’10” high). A good-sized man finds it difficult to stand up when the stove is being fired, because his eyes will be in the caustic cloud of smoke. Even when seated on a bench, one feels the acrid smoke in the eyes. I myself cannot stay more than ten minutes inside a house while the stove is being fired, but peasants get used to it. Some old people do not even climb down from the top of the stove when it is being lighted; they lie there right in the thick smoke—but they probably have their eyes closed. When the fuel has burned up, the stove door is closed and, as the peasants avow, “it’s warm as toast in here.” Peasants believe “black” stoves are much warmer than the “white” ones. I do not know if this is true, but I can say that the smoke continues to irritate one’s eyes long after the stove door has been shut.” (p. 119)

[6] Semyonova Tian‑Shanskaia, O. P. (1993). Village life in late Tsarist Russia (D. L. Ransel, Ed.; D. L. Ransel & M. Levine, Trans.). Indiana University Press. “Peasants use straw for fuel. Rye straw is the best for this purpose; the straw of oats and millet is of much poorer quality. Peasants bring straw in at night to sleep on, and then in the morning they feed this straw into the stove. The use of fresh straw each day provides reasonably hygienic bedding for the peasants. But this is so only in years of abundant harvest. In a bad year, whatever little straw they have is given to the livestock; sometimes even straw roofs have to be pulled down to save the animals from starvation. The shortage of straw forces peasants to use their clothes for bedding and to heat the house with dried manure or weeds such as burdock, thistle, and nettles. Accordingly, illnesses increase in such a year. The lack of fresh bedding is one cause.  The poor fuel likewise does much damage to the eyes. ” (p.119-120)

[7] Semyonova Tian‑Shanskaia, O. P. (1993). Village life in late Tsarist Russia (D. L. Ransel, Ed.; D. L. Ransel & M. Levine, Trans.). Indiana University Press. “The smoke, which was produced by burning dried manure and weeds found on the roadside and in ravines, was so acrid that the victims (mostly old people and children) developed cataracts. All of them were admitted to the regional hospital in town, but three of them never got their eyesight back.” (p. 120)

[8] Semyonova Tian‑Shanskaia, O. P. (1993). Village life in late Tsarist Russia (D. L. Ransel, Ed.; D. L. Ransel & M. Levine, Trans.). Indiana University Press. “Manure, in addition to being used in lean years as fuel for home heating, is mixed with clay and made into building blocks for clay-walled houses. [For these reasons, among others,] poor peasants fertilize their land very little, spreading no more than twenty cartloads of manure.” (p. 120)

[9] Semyonova Tian‑Shanskaia, O. P. (1993). Village life in late Tsarist Russia (D. L. Ransel, Ed.; D. L. Ransel & M. Levine, Trans.). Indiana University Press. “The floor is made of either hard-packed earth or wooden planks (rough or finished). If of planks, these are supported by joists and run across the house parallel to the entrance-door wall. In a floor made of boards, there is usually an opening through which a ladder leads into a pit dug out under the house where potatoes are stored.” (p. 120-121)

[10] Semyonova Tian‑Shanskaia, O. P. (1993). Village life in late Tsarist Russia (D. L. Ransel, Ed.; D. L. Ransel & M. Levine, Trans.). Indiana University Press. “In the past, wooden houses were made chiefly of oak, but nowadays Numerous masonry houses are also found, accounting for more than half the homes in a few villages. ” (p. 121)

[11] Semyonova Tian‑Shanskaia, O. P. (1993). Village life in late Tsarist Russia (D. L. Ransel, Ed.; D. L. Ransel & M. Levine, Trans.). Indiana University Press. “Lastly the house is whitewashed inside and out. The yard, which is also square and measures between twenty-three and fifty-eight feet on a side, is enclosed with a wattle fence and covered with a straw awning. The corners of the yard are boarded up to form pens for livestock. There can be from one to four pens. Plows, carts, harrows, and sleighs are stored under the awning.” (p. 121)

[12] Semyonova Tian‑Shanskaia, O. P. (1993). Village life in late Tsarist Russia (D. L. Ransel, Ed.; D. L. Ransel & M. Levine, Trans.). Indiana University Press. “If a house has only one “shell” (srub), which is most often the case, then the owner also has a shed or small cabin for storing grain, flour, clothing, footwear, his wife’s trunks, and other household items.” (p. 121)

[13] Semyonova Tian‑Shanskaia, O. P. (1993). Village life in late Tsarist Russia (D. L. Ransel, Ed.; D. L. Ransel & M. Levine, Trans.). Indiana University Press. “Vegetable patches and threshing barns are located behind the yards. A village constable enforces an ordinance requiring that threshing barns be at least two hundred feet away from the houses and, again, surrounded by willows. Like the houses, threshing barns are covered with thatched roofs; the roof framing, however, is supported by studs rather than by rafters as in a house.” (p. 122-123)

[14] Semyonova Tian‑Shanskaia, O. P. (1993). Village life in late Tsarist Russia (D. L. Ransel, Ed.; D. L. Ransel & M. Levine, Trans.). Indiana University Press. “I know of cases in which several members of a family perished when they could not get out of a burning house. A lot of livestock is lost in these fires as well. Wattle yards with thatched awnings light up like gunpowder, especially in dry weather, leaving only embers from the animals inside. I myself have seen sheep and pigs, suffocated by smoke, popping inside a burning yard and turning into a charred, shapeless mass. I will never forget one such night when a fire was raging through the peasants’ homes and yards, wiping out innocent animals, and in front of a house that had just started to burn lay the emaciated body of a small girl, illuminated by the fire.” (p. 123)

[15] Semyonova Tian‑Shanskaia, O. P. (1993). Village life in late Tsarist Russia (D. L. Ransel, Ed.; D. L. Ransel & M. Levine, Trans.). Indiana University Press. “It was only in the 1870s that bricks began to replace logs in the construction of peasant homes.” (p. 131)

[16] Morton, H. W. (1984). Housing in the Soviet Union. Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science, 35(3), 69–80. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1174118. “Nevertheless, the Soviet leaders, who view housing as a social good, proudly point to the following achievements: For the past 20 years at least 2 million units have been built annually in the USSR-more than in any other country in the world.; It is hard to imagine how long people would have to wait for good new housing if a powerful building industry had not been created. Housing is built mainly at the expense of the government and is allocated free to people on the waiting list without any key money or down payment.; In 1928 the lowest rent tariff in the world was fixed in the USSR; it has not been raised since. In Moscow the average sum that a family pays for its dwelling plus communal services does not exceed 3 percent of its monthly budget. The rent itself covers only a third of the state expenditure on the maintenance and upkeep of housing; the rest is subsidized from public funds.; Eleven million Soviet citizens move into new dwellings or improve their housing standards yearly. Housing can, of course, be built for profit, but in the USSR it is built to meet the people's needs. Homes are therefore not an object of commerce.... Housing is not treated as a commodity. In assessing Soviet housing accomplishments, however, much depends on whether the USSR is viewed as an industrialized or a developing nation. For a developing nation, these housing accomplishments have been admirable; for a developed nation, Soviet housing accommodations are still among the poorest of any industrialized society.” (p. 70)

[17] Sorokina, A. (2022, February 18). How the USSR built the ‘ideal’ communal cities . Gateway to Russia. https://www.gw2ru.com/history/54201-socialist-communal-cities-architecture. “From the mid-1930s, Soviet specialists were already busy planning socialist cities. New neighborhoods were planned with wide buildings and streets. Homes also grew vertically: 7 and 9 story buildings with oriel windows (bay windows), loggias (recessed balconies) and sculptures in Stalin’s ‘Empire’ style. After the Great Patriotic War (known as WWII throughout the rest of the world), the need arose to restore destroyed homes and Soviet architects turned to no-frills panel construction, a style of construction using prefabricated concrete slabs, aiming to provide every family with a separate apartment.”

[18] Pille Metspalu & Daniel B. Hess (2018) Revisiting the role of architects in planning large-scale housing in the USSR: the birth of socialist residential districts in Tallinn, Estonia, 1957–1979, Planning Perspectives, 33:3, 335-361, DOI: 10.1080/02665433.2017.1348974. “The first apartment houses built using pre-fabricated panel walls, established in the early 1960s, took advantage of industrial production to orchestrate residential building more cheaply. This was followed by improved standard designs, introduced in the Soviet Union in the mid-1970s and used widely by the 1980s. Each housing unit included modern conveniences– kitchens, washrooms and toilets, central heating, large windows– that were available to only a limited degree in the pre-Second World War housing. As the design process matured and mechanisms within it advanced during subsequent iterations, the height of residential buildings increased and the size of individual dwelling units expanded.”

[19] Sorokina, A. (2022, February 18). How the USSR built the ‘ideal’ communal cities . Gateway to Russia. https://www.gw2ru.com/history/54201-socialist-communal-cities-architecture. “The first socialist cities were built according to the designs of foreign specialists. Between 1930 and 1933, Soviet leadership invited a group of 17 German and Austrian architects and urban planners. Heading the group was Ernst May, an ideologist of mass standardized residential building design. He was the head architect in Frankfurt am Main, where functional residential neighborhoods were built, including homes and social spaces.”

[20] Sorokina, A. (2022, February 18). How the USSR built the ‘ideal’ communal cities . Gateway to Russia. https://www.gw2ru.com/history/54201-socialist-communal-cities-architecture. ”The main thing that distinguished socialist cities from other districts was the careful planning of new settlements. Life in socialist cities was intended to be communal: residents should work and relax together. Everyday issues like laundry and cooking were intended to be handled by outsourced community services.”

[21] Sorokina, A. (2022, February 18). How the USSR built the ‘ideal’ communal cities . Gateway to Russia. https://www.gw2ru.com/history/54201-socialist-communal-cities-architecture. “Perhaps, to a modern person, these kinds of homes wouldn’t seem the most attractive; however, for its time, they were considered a true innovation. Though, the apartments and bedrooms themselves within the communal units were very modest, they were equipped with all the modern comforts which, during that time, were inaccessible to the majority of people. This included, for example, a bathroom. In Novokuznetsk, an industrial city in southern Siberia, “Frankfurt kitchens”' were installed in the apartments in the design of Austrian architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, who also belonged to the ‘May Brigade’. These ergonomic kitchen designs, which made a real revolution around the world, substantially simplified cooking. Yet, places for family time in the apartments weren’t provided: free time needed to be spent within the community.”

[22] Pille Metspalu & Daniel B. Hess (2018) Revisiting the role of architects in planning large-scale housing in the USSR: the birth of socialist residential districts in Tallinn, Estonia, 1957–1979, Planning Perspectives, 33:3, 335-361, DOI: 10.1080/02665433.2017.1348974. “State socialism provided unique opportunities to experiment with new models of city planning. Centrally planned systems– and government ownership of all land and industry– permitted a grand-scale approach to urbanization and a mechanism for promoting rational use of human and industrial assets, improving life quality, and reducing costs. Through central planning, state socialist governments sought to re-order society and plan new urban territory during rapid urbanization, industrialization, employment-driven migration, and military consolidation. Much power resided in central government decision-making. With land in state ownership, the development process occurred under central authority, and a powerful single-party system had great control over land development decisions to promote the expansion of industrial strength and military might.” (p. 335-336)

[23] Pille Metspalu & Daniel B. Hess (2018) Revisiting the role of architects in planning large-scale housing in the USSR: the birth of socialist residential districts in Tallinn, Estonia, 1957–1979, Planning Perspectives, 33:3, 335-361, DOI: 10.1080/02665433.2017.1348974. “Vast housing estates– residential complexes dominated by high-rise block apartment buildings–were established between the 1960s and the 1990s to respond to crushing demand for urban housing due to employment-based migration triggered by expansions of industry and military that were critical to the ideology of the Soviet regime. They were critical components of modern planned cities for housing socialist lives in industrial-utopian centres. Architects charged with planning new housing estates had great power to shape cities, demonstrating that city planning was the centrepiece of central economic planning.”

[24] Pille Metspalu & Daniel B. Hess (2018) Revisiting the role of architects in planning large-scale housing in the USSR: the birth of socialist residential districts in Tallinn, Estonia, 1957–1979, Planning Perspectives, 33:3, 335-361, DOI: 10.1080/02665433.2017.1348974. “What resulted were distinctive modernist spaces that, although they contained standard Soviet residential buildings at their core (this could not be helped), were otherwise state-of-the-art. Apartments in new housing estates provided coveted conveniences (for example, modern kitchens, comfortable toilets and washrooms, central heating) that were superiour to amenities offered in the contemporaneous pre-Second World War housing and were thus quite prestigious. Individual apartments in new Estonian housing estates had grown larger during the Soviet years, and, by the late Soviet years, Estonians enjoyed the highest living space per capita at 11.7 m2 in the Soviet Union (the USSR average was 9.4 m^2).”

[25] Central Intelligence Agency. (1961). PROSPECTS FOR CONSTRUCTION OF HOUSING IN THE USSR 1961–65 (CIA/RR ER 61-27). U.S. Government. “The Seven Year Plan (1959-65) calls for construction of 15 million urban dwelling units with a total floorspace of 650 million to 660 million sq m.  Of these amounts, 10 million apartments with a total floorspace of 424 million sq m are to be built by state organizations,…Expenditures under the state plan are to amount to 323 billion rubles.” (p. 8)

[26] Bakanov S. A., Khlyzov V. E. ‘All-Union Housing Census of the USSR in 1960: Organization and Results’, Modern History of Russia, vol. 13, no. 2, 2023, pp. 482–499. https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu24.2023.215 (In Russian). “Благоустроенность жилья Уровень благоустройства жилья заметно отличался в городской и сельской местности. Так, в сельской местности в обобществленном фонде водопроводом было обеспечено только 4,5% жилой площади, канализацией — 3,5%, центральным отоплением и теплофикацией — 4,5%, горячим водоснабжением — 0,2%, газом — 0,6%51. В городской местности благоустроенность жилья была существенно выше, но здесь ее уровень отличался в зависимости от принадлежности домов к обобществленному или необобществленному фонду. Так, в обобществленном фонде из 339,1 млн м2 жилой площади 190 млн м2, или 56%, было оборудовано водопроводом, 177,9 млн м2 (52,4%) — канали-зацией, 147,9 млн м2 (43,6%) — центральным отоплением и теплофикацией, 98,2 млн м2 (28,9%) — газом, 102,2 млн м2 (30,1%) — ванной или душем. В то время как в фонде, находящемся в личной собственности, преобладали тенденции, более характерные для сельской местности. Здесь водопроводом было оборудовано только 4,2% жилья, канализацией — 1,3%, центральным отоплением — 2,1%, газом — 2%, ванной или душем — 0,9%.” (p. 490)

[“The level of housing amenities differed significantly in urban and rural areas. Thus, in rural areas, only 4.5% of the living space in the socialized housing stock was provided with running water, 3.5% with sewerage, 4.5% with central heating and district heating, 0.2% with hot water, and 0.6% with gas51. In urban areas, the level of housing amenities was significantly higher, but here its level varied depending on whether the houses belonged to a socialized or non-socialized housing stock. Thus, in the socialized housing stock, out of 339.1 million m2 of living space, 190 million m2, or 56%, was equipped with running water, 177.9 million m2 (52.4%) with sewerage, 147.9 million m2 (43.6%) with central heating and district heating, 98.2 million m2 (28.9%) with gas, 102.2 million m2 (30.1%) — a bath or shower. While in the privately owned stock, trends more typical of rural areas prevailed. Here, only 4.2% of housing was equipped with running water, 1.3% with sewerage, 2.1% with central heating, 2% with gas, and 0.9% with a bath or shower.”]

[27] Bakanov S. A., Khlyzov V. E. ‘All-Union Housing Census of the USSR in 1960: Organization and Results’, Modern History of Russia, vol. 13, no. 2, 2023, pp. 482–499. https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu24.2023.215 (In Russian). “Уровень благоустройства был выше в городском жилищном фонде, при-надлежащем местным Советам. Водопроводом здесь было охвачено 57% жилья, канализацией —54%, газом — 47%. В то время как фонд, принад-лежавший республиканским ведомствам, демонстрировал двукратное от-ставание от общесоюзных значений по всем видам благоустройства: водо-провод — 25%, канализация — 23%, центральное отопление — 19%, горячее водоснабжение — 4%, газ — 10%.” (p. 490)
[“The level of public amenities was higher in the city housing stock belonging to local Soviets. Here, 57% of housing was covered by running water, 54% by sewerage, and 47% by gas. At the same time, the stock belonging to republican departments demonstrated a twofold lag behind the all-Union figures for all types of public amenities: running water — 25%, sewerage — 23%, central heating — 19%, hot water supply — 4%, gas — 10%.”]

[28] Bakanov S. A., Khlyzov V. E. ‘All-Union Housing Census of the USSR in 1960: Organization and Results’, Modern History of Russia, vol. 13, no. 2, 2023, pp. 482–499. https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu24.2023.215 (In Russian). “По республикам СССР ситуация с благоустройством жилья также заметно отличалась. В табл. 3 приведены расчетные данные, объединившие значения по благоустройству как обобществленного, так и необобществленного городского жилищного фонда. Из этих данных видно, что разница в уровне оснащенности отдельными видами благоустройства между республиками могла достигать нескольких раз. Наибольший уровень оснащенности водопроводом, канализацией и ванными комнатами (ванна/душ) был достигнут в республиках Прибалтики. По оборудованию домов газом с большим отрывом лидировала Азербайджанская ССР. Центральным отоплением были лучше оснащены города РСФСР. В то время как республики Средней Азии отставали от лидеров в пять-девять раз по всем видам благоустройства, а по оснащенности газом разрыв между лидером (Азербайджанская ССР) и аутсайдером (Казахская ССР) достигал рекордных пятидесяти раз. Вместе с тем следует заметить, что даже в самых благополучных республиках Прибалтики существовала значительная разница между уровнем благоустройства в крупных и относительно небольших городах. Например, в Шяуляе (Литовская ССР) доля личного жилищного фонда, оснащенного водопроводом, составляла 3%, канализацией — 2,9%. В то время как в Клайпеде (также Литовская ССР) показатели благоустроенности личного жилищного фонда водопроводом достигали 40%, а канализацией — 23%.” (p. 491-492)
[“The situation with housing improvements also differed significantly among the republics of the USSR. Table 3 presents the calculated data that combined the values ​​for the improvement of both socialized and non-socialized urban housing stock. These data show that the difference in the level of equipment with individual types of amenities between the republics could reach several times. The highest level of equipment with running water, sewerage, and bathrooms (bath/shower) was achieved in the Baltic republics. The Azerbaijan SSR was by far the leader in equipping houses with gas. The cities of the RSFSR were better equipped with central heating. At the same time, the republics of Central Asia lagged behind the leaders by five to nine times in all types of amenities, and in gas equipment, the gap between the leader (Azerbaijan SSR) and the outsider (Kazakh SSR) reached a record fifty times. At the same time, it should be noted that even in In the most prosperous Baltic republics, there was a significant difference between the level of amenities in large and relatively small cities. For example, in Šiauliai (Lithuanian SSR), the share of private housing stock equipped with running water was 3%, and with sewerage - 2.9%. While in Klaipeda (also Lithuanian SSR), the indicators of amenities of private housing stock with running water reached 40%, and with sewerage - 23%.]

[29] Sorokina, A. (2022, February 18). How the USSR built the ‘ideal’ communal cities . Gateway to Russia. https://www.gw2ru.com/history/54201-socialist-communal-cities-architecture. “New districts, which were dubbed, “socialist cities”, were expected to provide housing to millions of people in the shortest amount of time and simultaneously meet the ideological objectives of the time. People accustomed to private property, now received housing and social services from the government.”

Section 3

[30] Sorokina, A. (2022, February 18). How the USSR built the ‘ideal’ communal cities . Gateway to Russia. https://www.gw2ru.com/history/54201-socialist-communal-cities-architecture. “Perhaps, to a modern person, these kinds of homes wouldn’t seem the most attractive; however, for its time, they were considered a true innovation. Though, the apartments and bedrooms themselves within the communal units were very modest, they were equipped with all the modern comforts which, during that time, were inaccessible to the majority of people. This included, for example, a bathroom. In Novokuznetsk, an industrial city in southern Siberia, “Frankfurt kitchens”' were installed in the apartments in the design of Austrian architect Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky, who also belonged to the ‘May Brigade’. These ergonomic kitchen designs, which made a real revolution around the world, substantially simplified cooking. Yet, places for family time in the apartments weren’t provided: free time needed to be spent within the community.”

[31] Morton, H. W. (1984). Housing in the Soviet Union. Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science, 35(3), 69–80. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1174118. “Nevertheless, the Soviet leaders, who view housing as a social good, proudly point to the following achievements: For the past 20 years at least 2 million units have been built annually in the USSR-more than in any other country in the world.; It is hard to imagine how long people would have to wait for good new housing if a powerful building industry had not been created. Housing is built mainly at the expense of the government and is allocated free to people on the waiting list without any key money or down payment.; In 1928 the lowest rent tariff in the world was fixed in the USSR; it has not been raised since. In Moscow the average sum that a family pays for its dwelling plus communal services does not exceed 3 percent of its monthly budget. The rent itself covers only a third of the state expenditure on the maintenance and upkeep of housing; the rest is subsidized from public funds.; Eleven million Soviet citizens move into new dwellings or improve their housing standards yearly. Housing can, of course, be built for profit, but in the USSR it is built to meet the people's needs. Homes are therefore not an object of commerce.... Housing is not treated as a commodity. In assessing Soviet housing accomplishments, however, much depends on whether the USSR is viewed as an industrialized or a developing nation. For a developing nation, these housing accomplishments have been admirable; for a developed nation, Soviet housing accommodations are still among the poorest of any industrialized society.” (p. 70)

[32] Sorokina, A. (2022, February 18). How the USSR built the ‘ideal’ communal cities . Gateway to Russia. https://www.gw2ru.com/history/54201-socialist-communal-cities-architecture. “New districts, which were dubbed, “socialist cities”, were expected to provide housing to millions of people in the shortest amount of time and simultaneously meet the ideological objectives of the time. People accustomed to private property, now received housing and social services from the government. Moreover, all the necessities were roughly identical, from furniture to entertainment.”

[33] Supreme Soviet of the USSR. (1977). Constitution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Brezhnev Constitution). Retrieved from https://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/government/constitution/1977/constitution-ussr-1977.pdf. “Article 44. Citizens of the USSR have the right to housing. This right is ensured by the development and upkeep of state and socially-owned housing; by assistance for co-operative and individual house building;

by fair distribution, under public control, of the housing that becomes available through fulfilment of the programme of building well-appointed dwellings, and by low rents and low charges for utility services. Citizens of the USSR shall take good care of the housing allocated to them.”

[34] Sorokina, A. (2022, February 18). How the USSR built the ‘ideal’ communal cities . Gateway to Russia. https://www.gw2ru.com/history/54201-socialist-communal-cities-architecture. “Socialist cities were to include low-rise residential neighborhoods, an administrative center, essential stores, canteens , laundry facilities, as well as big and small green spaces for strolling and visual separation of the factory from the residential community. As a rule, the German architects positioned the ends of houses towards the street to reduce exterior noise and the amount of dust on windows. The streets led to the city center. This type of building was called a housing row.”

[35] White, P. D. (1979). Planning of urban transport systems in the Soviet Union: A policy analysis. Transportation Research Part A: General, 13(4), 231–240. https://doi.org/10.1016/0191-2607(79)90049-9. “Moscow is justly famed for its impressive, lavishly designed and efficient Metro, probably the most important transport development in the Soviet Union this century and a monument to Stalin's vision of the true communist city. The Moscow Metro epitomises the Soviet concern, throughout this century, with the planning and development of integrated public passenger transport systems in all the major cities of the USSR (Berry 1977). Indeed, these cities do have extremely dense public transport networks, characterised by a high level of integration between the various modes of travel.” (p. 231)

[36] White, P. D. (1979). Planning of urban transport systems in the Soviet Union: A policy analysis. Transportation Research Part A: General, 13(4), 231–240. https://doi.org/10.1016/0191-2607(79)90049-9. “The highest priority has consistently been accorded to public passenger transport, its dominance being confirmed by the most recent available travel statistics which show that, in 1974, some fifty billion passengers were transported by this mode, amounting to over 90% of total passengers carried by public and private transport.” (p. 231)

[37] Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. (2025). The state of the nation’s housing 2025. Harvard Graduate School of Design & Harvard Kennedy School. “In 2025, households and housing markets face an ever-more challenging environment. High home prices and elevated interest rates reduced homebuying to its lowest level since the mid-1990s. Increases in both insurance premiums and property taxes have heightened financial stress on homeowners and landlords. And, despite an abundance of new apartments, high rents have left more people than ever cost burdened, and have contributed to a sharp rise in homelessness. Meanwhile, unprecedented destruction from wildfires has further highlighted the growing threat to the housing stock from climate-related disasters. At the same time, federal housing support is lessening, creating uncertainty regarding the availability of crucial assistance programs. The looming possibility of an economic downturn is exacerbating the nation’s already-enormous housing challenges.” (p. 1)

[38] Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. (2025). The state of the nation’s housing 2025. Harvard Graduate School of Design & Harvard Kennedy School. “In the for-sale market, home prices grew again over the previous year across most of the country. As of early 2025, prices are up 60 percent nationwide since 2019 and still rising at a rate of 3.9 percent year over year, according to the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller US National Home Price Index (Figure 1). Prices increased in all four regions and in 88 of the top 100 largest metro areas. Consequently, the US median existing single-family home price hit a new high of $412,500 in 2024, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR). This is a shocking five times the median household income and significantly above the price-to-income ratio of 3 that has traditionally been considered affordable.” (p. 1)

[39] Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. (2025). The state of the nation’s housing 2025. Harvard Graduate School of Design & Harvard Kennedy School. “Contending with the same high costs and affordability pressures as existing home sellers, many builders responded by producing homes that were smaller or had fewer amenities. The median size of a new single-family home declined for the third consecutive year in 2024, to 2,150 square feet. As a result of these competitive adjustments, new construction constituted the largest share of all home sales since 2005 (16 percent). Additionally, the median sales price of new single-family homes fell for the second straight year to $420,300, just $7,800 above that of existing single-family homes in 2024. Many builders also cut prices or offered mortgage rate buydowns to facilitate sales. Going forward, however, these sorts of adjustments and incentives could be overshadowed by increase in interest rates or construction costs.” (p. 2)

[40] Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. (2025). The state of the nation’s housing 2025. Harvard Graduate School of Design & Harvard Kennedy School. “Home price appreciation combined with elevated interest rates to drive up homebuyers’ mortgage payments, pricing less affluent households out of the for-sale market. With the interest rate on the 30-year mortgage only dipping from 6.8 percent on average in 2023 to 6.7 percent in 2024, monthly mortgage payments on the median-priced home rose by $90 to $2,570, assuming the loan terms typical for a first-time homebuyer (30-year fixed rate, 3.5 percent down payment, and 3 percent closing costs). This record-breaking mortgage payment is about 40 percent higher than in 1990, after adjusting for inflation (Figure 2). Applying the standard lender affordability ratio of 31 percent debt to income, a buyer would need an annual income of at least $126,700 to afford such a payment. As of 2023, only 6 million of the nation’s nearly 46 million renters can meet this benchmark, according to the American Community Survey (ACS). While home prices vary by market, a buyer still needs to earn at least $100,000 in more than half (53 percent) of all metro areas to afford the median-priced home, up from 11 percent in 2021. Access to homeownership is further restricted by the large sums needed for a downpayment, which have grown in step with rising home prices. Inability to afford a down payment was the primary reason households continued to rent, according to a 2024 report by the Federal Reserve. Last year, a buyer would need to possess $26,800 in cash to cover both the closing costs and a 3.5 percent down payment on the median-priced home, or $95,000 in cash for closing costs and a 20 percent down payment. It is perhaps, then, not surprising that first-time homebuyers were older and more affluent in 2024. Nevertheless, they increasingly relied on friends and family for help covering the down payment, according to NAR’s 2025 survey of homebuyers and sellers.” (p. 3)

[41] Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. (2025). The state of the nation’s housing 2025. Harvard Graduate School of Design & Harvard Kennedy School. “As fewer households have been able to become homeowners, the renter population has grown, especially over the past two years. After increasing by an average of 171,000 per year between 2019 and 2022, the number of renter households jumped by 408,000 in 2023 and then another 848,000 in 2024, according to the Census Bureau’s Housing Vacancy Survey.” (p. 4)

[42] Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. (2025). The state of the nation’s housing 2025. Harvard Graduate School of Design & Harvard Kennedy School. “While new construction has grown the rental supply overall, it has failed to increase the stock of low-rent units, which has dwindled over time. Between 2013 and 2023, the number of units renting for less than $1,000 per month after adjusting for inflation fell by more than 30 percent, from 24.8 million to 17.2 million. Instead, new construction focused primarily on higher-rent units, which helped to nearly triple the stock that rents for $2,000 or more, from 3.6 million to 9.1 million during the same period.” (p. 5)

[43] Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. (2025). The state of the nation’s housing 2025. Harvard Graduate School of Design & Harvard Kennedy School. “For the third consecutive year, the number of cost-burdened renters reached another record high in 2023 at 22.6 million renters (50 percent). This includes more than 12.1 million (27 percent) who are severely burdened, spending more than half of their income on housing and utilities. As rental unaffordability has worsened, burdens have become more pervasive across the country. Between 2019 and 2023, the share of renters with cost burdens increased in 43 of 50 states and in 89 of the nation’s 100 largest metro areas. More than half of all renters were burdened in 13 states and in 50 of the 100 largest metro areas. While households with lower incomes constitute the bulk of burdened renters, the strain is creeping up the income ladder. Fully 83 percent of renters earning under $30,000 were cost burdened in the most recent data, including an astounding 67 percent with severe burdens. But burden rates were also over 70 percent for renters earning $30,000 to $44,999, an increase of 15.0 percentage points since 2001. During the same period, burden rates doubled to more than 45 percent for renters earning $45,000 to $74,999. As housing costs have grown, many households have less money available to cover other necessities. In 2023, renters with incomes below $30,000 had a median of just $250 per month left over after paying for housing. Many are forced to make difficult spending trade-offs between crucial needs, including healthcare, food, and retirement savings, according to the 2023 Consumer Expenditure Survey.” (p. 6)

[44] de Sousa, T., & Henry, M. (2024). The 2024 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report to Congress: Part 1: Point‑in‑time estimates of homelessness. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Planning Development. “The number of people experiencing homelessness on a single night in 2024 was the highest ever recorded. A total of 771,480 people – or about 23 of every 10,000 people in the United States – experienced homelessness in an emergency shelter, safe haven, transitional housing program, or in unsheltered locations across the country. Several factors likely contributed to this historically high number. Our worsening national affordable housing crisis, rising inflation, stagnating wages among middle- and lower-income households, and the persisting effects of systemic racism have stretched homelessness services systems to their limits. Additional public health crises, natural disasters that displaced people from their homes, rising numbers of people immigrating to the U.S., and the end to homelessness prevention programs put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic, including the end of the expanded child tax credit, have exacerbated this already stressed system.” (p. v)

[45] de Sousa, T., & Henry, M. (2024). The 2024 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report to Congress: Part 1: Point‑in‑time estimates of homelessness. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Planning Development. “Nearly all populations reached record levels. Homelessness among people in families with children, individuals, individuals with chronic patterns of homelessness, people staying i unsheltered locations, people staying in sheltered locations, and unaccompanied youth all reached the highest recorded numbers in 2024.” (p. v)

[46] de Sousa, T., & Henry, M. (2024). The 2024 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report to Congress: Part 1: Point‑in‑time estimates of homelessness. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Planning Development. “People in families with children had the largest single year increase in homelessness. Between 2023 and 2024, 39 percent more people in families with children experienced homelessness. Overall, the number of people experiencing homelessness increased by 18 percent.” (p. v)

[47] de Sousa, T., & Henry, M. (2024). The 2024 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report to Congress: Part 1: Point‑in‑time estimates of homelessness. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Planning Development. “Nearly 150,000 children experienced homelessness on a single night in 2024, reflecting a 33 percent increase (or 32,618 more children) over 2023. Between 2023 and 2024, children (under the age of 18) were the age group that experienced the largest increase in homelessness.” (p. v)

[48] de Sousa, T., & Henry, M. (2024). The 2024 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report to Congress: Part 1: Point‑in‑time estimates of homelessness. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Planning Development. “People who identify as Black, African American, or African continue to be overrepresented among the population experiencing homelessness. People who identify as Black made up just 12 percent of the total U.S. population and 21 percent of the U.S. population living in poverty but were 32 percent of all people experiencing homelessness. However, the share of people experiencing homelessness who identify as Black (of any ethnicity) decreased from 37 percent of all people experiencing homelessness in 2023.” (p. v)

[49] Sasse, L., & Berz, H. T. (2025, April). Housing crisis in the European Union (Fact Sheets on the European Union). European Parliament. https://www.europarl.europa.eu/factsheets/en. “The housing crisis is a growing problem in Europe. In fact, 10% of EU households are spending over 40% of their income on housing. While housing policy is primarily a national competence, the EU’s role in internal market, social, cohesion and environmental policy underpins EU action in this sector. The European Pillar of Social Rights and the Renovation Wave strategy sanctioned more EU action to specifically tackle homelessness and ensure affordable and decent housing and living conditions.” (p. 1)

[50] Eurostat. (2025, March 25). Living conditions in Europe - housing [Statistics Explained]. European Commission. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statisticsexplained/. “In 2023, 16% of people in the EU lived in overcrowded households. The highest rates were in Latvia (40.9%), Romania (40.0%), and Bulgaria (34.9%), while the lowest were in Cyprus (2.2%), Malta (2.4%), and the Netherlands (3.8%).” (p. 1)

[51] Eurostat. (2025, March 25). Living conditions in Europe - housing [Statistics Explained]. European Commission. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statisticsexplained/. “In 2023, 8.8% of people in the EU lived in households spending 40% or more of their disposable income on housing. This percentage varied considerably across the EU countries (see Map 2 ). Greece recorded the highest housing cost overburden rate at 28.5%. Other countries with rates above 9.5% included Sweden (10.9%), Bulgaria (11.1%), Luxembourg (11.5%), Germany (13.0%) and Denmark (15.4%). By contrast, the lowest housing cost overburden rates—below 4%—were observed in Cyprus (2.6%) and Slovenia (3.7%).” (p. 5)

[52] Shinn, M., & Khadduri, J. (2020). How Finland ended homelessness. Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research, 22 (2), 76–80. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Development and Research. “In June 2019, The Guardian ran a piece entitled “‘It’s a miracle’: Helsinki’s radical solution to homelessness,” noting that Finland was the only European country where levels of homelessness were falling. Indeed, Finland has largely ended homelessness as the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) defines it. Because Finland uses a broader definition of homelessness, including living temporarily with family or friends, the Finns have not yet met their own goals. Even by this broad measure, Finland more than halved homelessness as observed in annual point-in-time counts, from more than 18,000 people in 1987 to less than 5,000 in 2019” (p. 75)

[53] Shinn, M., & Khadduri, J. (2020). How Finland ended homelessness. Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research, 22 (2), 76–80. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Development and Research. “The Finnish government first set a goal of eliminating homelessness in 1987 and instituted an annual survey analogous to a U.S. Point-in-Time count to monitor progress (Pleace, 2017). In 1987, 17,110 single people and 1,370 families were recorded as experiencing homelessness. At the time, Finland, like other Nordic countries, largely used a “staircase” approach to homeless services, in which service users move from one level of accommodation to the next by meeting treatment goals. Using the staircase approach, Finland more than halved homelessness by 1994, but then progress slowed, as shown in exhibit 1. In particular, between 2004 and 2008, the number of single homeless individuals hovered between 7,400 and 7,960. Finland’s annual homeless reports attributed the stalled progress to a group of people with high support needs who were experiencing long-term homelessness, analogous to chronic homelessness in the United States.” (p. 75)

[54] Shinn, M., & Khadduri, J. (2020). How Finland ended homelessness. Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research, 22 (2), 76–80. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Development and Research. “A group of Finnish experts who analyzed the problem and issued a report called “Name on the Door” argued that eliminating long-term homelessness “requires adopting the Housing First principle where a person does not have to first change their life around in order to earn the basic right to housing. Instead, housing is the prerequisite that allows other problems to be solved”. “In the Housing First model, a dwelling is not a reward that a homeless person receives once their life is back on track. Instead, a dwelling is the foundation on which the rest of life is put back together”. Residents echo this perspective: “An apartment means security—now I have a home to return to. I feel important again now that I am responsible for my own life. I am someone again, I am me. I feel that I have to take care of my own business now”” (p. 76)

[55] Shinn, M., & Khadduri, J. (2020). How Finland ended homelessness. Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research, 22 (2), 76–80. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Development and Research. “The Finnish National Program to reduce long-term homelessness, adopted in 2008 and renewed in 2012, built on this housing first principle. A person who is homeless goes directly into a rental apartment, either an independent apartment or a unit in a supported housing development, and has the opportunity to choose services and supports. Staff in supported housing developments treat clients as equals and strive to build community” (p. 77)

[56] Shinn, M., & Khadduri, J. (2020). How Finland ended homelessness. Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research, 22 (2), 76–80. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Development and Research. ““Tenants in Finnish congregate programs live in buildings with other service recipients and engage in some communal activities, but they still have their own apartments and their own leases. Clients have a choice of programs: some ask for a commitment to sobriety; others do not. Programs focusing on younger people have some shared apartments. Instead of receiving housing subsidies linked to the rent of the apartment, tenants pay the entire rent, using a variety of income sources provided by the government. These include housing, child, disability, unemployment, student, and pension allowances, depending on the person’s circumstances. If those sources of income do not suffice, social assistance (akin to welfare in the United States) fills the gap.”

Section 4

[57] Sorokina, A. (2022, February 18). How the USSR built the ‘ideal’ communal cities . Gateway to Russia. https://www.gw2ru.com/history/54201-socialist-communal-cities-architecture. “In many cities in those districts, the predominant living situation was not in homes with separate rooms, but in residences and communal homes, which best lived up to the utopian ideas about communal life. According to then-Soviet norms, one person was entitled to just 9 m2 (about 97 ft2) of housing.”

[58] Sorokina, A. (2022, February 18). How the USSR built the ‘ideal’ communal cities . Gateway to Russia. https://www.gw2ru.com/history/54201-socialist-communal-cities-architecture. “From the mid-1930s, Soviet specialists were already busy planning socialist cities. New neighborhoods were planned with wide buildings and streets. Homes also grew vertically: 7 and 9 story buildings with oriel windows (bay windows), loggias (recessed balconies) and sculptures in Stalin’s ‘Empire’ style. After the Great Patriotic War (known as WWII throughout the rest of the world), the need arose to restore destroyed homes and Soviet architects turned to no-frills panel construction, a style of construction using prefabricated concrete slabs, aiming to provide every family with a separate apartment.”

[59] Central Intelligence Agency. (1961). PROSPECTS FOR CONSTRUCTION OF HOUSING IN THE USSR 1961–65 (CIA/RR ER 61-27). U.S. Government. “Throughout this report, all ruble values are expressed in constant 1955 rubles (pre‑1961 exchange rate). In 1955, the ruble‑to‑dollar ratio for housing construction was approximately 7 : 1. The data imply a very high rate of withdrawal from the existing stock of housing—an effect that must be weighed against the need to raze large amounts of obsolete dwellings during 1961–65. The report’s figures for urban living space in the USSR can be compared with estimates for other countries. † In 1960, the average U.S. urban resident had about 28 m² of living space. In 1956, the average Briton enjoyed between 20 and 22.5 m²; in the same year West Germans averaged roughly 15 m²; and Czechoslovaks about 11 m² per person. Because these estimates draw on incomplete data expressed in varying units of measure, any direct comparison must remain quite broad.” (p. 8)

[60] Sorokina, A. (2022, February 18). How the USSR built the ‘ideal’ communal cities . Gateway to Russia. https://www.gw2ru.com/history/54201-socialist-communal-cities-architecture. “In the 1930s, when the Soviet Union expanded its industrialization program and began constructing factories throughout the whole country, a flow of people poured into the cities from villages and the countryside. There wasn’t enough space in the old districts and people arriving to larger construction sites were forced to live in tents underground dwellings, as well as makeshift homes. It was essential to build not only homes, but critical infrastructure.”

[61] Morton, H. W. (1984). Housing in the Soviet Union. Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science, 35(3), 69–80. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/1174118. “The German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 made an already intolerable housing situation even worse. The war caused widespread property destruction in the European part of the USSR. According to Soviet figures, 1,710 cities, towns, and urban settlements were fully or partially destroyed, as were many thousands of villages. More than 25 million people were left homeless. Leningrad, Kiev, Minsk, Smolensk, Stalingrad, and other cities and towns had to be almost completely rebuilt from heaps of broken brick and rubble.” (p. 71)

[62] Jim Crow legislation. (n.d.). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved July 6, 2025, from https://www.britannica.com/place/United-States/Jim-Crow-legislationref77807. “In 1862 Congress authorized the construction of two railroads that together would provide the first railroad link between the Mississippi valley and the Pacific coast. One was the Union Pacific, to run westward from Council Bluffs, Iowa; the other was the Central Pacific, to run eastward from Sacramento, California. To encourage the rapid completion of those roads, Congress provided generous subsidies in the form of land grants and loans. Construction was slower than Congress had anticipated, but the two lines met, with elaborate ceremonies, on May 10, 1869, at Promontory, Utah.”

[63] Jim Crow legislation. (n.d.). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved July 6, 2025, from https://www.britannica.com/place/United-States/Jim-Crow-legislationref77807. .“The construction of the railroads from the Midwest to the Pacific coast was the railroad builders’ most spectacular achievement in the quarter century after the Civil War. No less important, in terms of the national economy, was the development in the same period of an adequate rail network in the Southern states and the building of other railroads that connected virtually every important community west of the Mississippi with Chicago. The West developed simultaneously with the building of the Western railroads, and in no part of the nation was the importance of railroads more generally recognized. The railroad gave vitality to the regions it served, but, by withholding service, it could doom a community to stagnation. The railroads appeared to be ruthless in exploiting their powerful position: they fixed prices to suit their convenience; they discriminated among their customers; they attempted to gain a monopoly of transportation wherever possible; and they interfered in state and local politics to elect favorites to office, to block unfriendly legislation, and even to influence the decisions of the courts.”

[64] Gopnik, A., & Link, A. S. (2025, July 1). Industrialization of the U.S. economy. In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved July 6, 2025, from https://www.britannica.com/place/United-States/Industrialization-of-the-U-S-economy. “In the ensuing 20 years the volume of industrial production, the number of workers employed in industry, and the number of manufacturing plants all more than doubled. A more accurate index to the scope of this industrial advance may be found in the aggregate annual value of all manufactured goods, which increased from about $5,400,000,000 in 1879 to perhaps $13,000,000,000 in 1899. The expansion of the iron and steel industry, always a key factor in any industrial economy, was even more impressive: from 1880 to 1900 the annual production of steel in the United States went from about 1,400,000 to more than 11,000,000 tons. Before the end of the century, the United States surpassed Great Britain in the production of iron and steel and was providing more than one-quarter of the world’s supply of pig iron.”

[65] Gopnik, A., & Link, A. S. (2025, July 1). Industrialization of the U.S. economy. In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved July 6, 2025, from https://www.britannica.com/place/United-States/Industrialization-of-the-U-S-economy“The period was notable also for the wide geographic distribution of industry. The Eastern Seaboard from Massachusetts to Pennsylvania continued to be the most heavily industrialized section of the United States, but there was a substantial development of manufacturing in the states adjacent to the Great Lakes and in certain sections of the South.”

[66] Gopnik, A., & Link, A. S. (2025, July 1). Industrialization of the U.S. economy. In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved July 6, 2025, from https://www.britannica.com/place/United-States/Industrialization-of-the-U-S-economy“The industrial invasion of the South was spearheaded by textiles. Cotton mills became the symbol of the New South, and mills and mill towns sprang up in the Piedmont region from Virginia to Georgia and into Alabama. By 1900 almost one-quarter of all the cotton spindles in the United States were in the South, and Southern mills were expanding their operations more rapidly than were their well-established competitors in New England. The development of lumbering in the South was even more impressive, though less publicized; by the end of the century the South led the nation in lumber production, contributing almost one-third of the annual supply.”

Figures

[F1]Semyonova Tian‑Shanskaia, O. P. (1993). Village life in late Tsarist Russia (D. L. Ransel, Ed.; D. L. Ransel & M. Levine, Trans.). Indiana University Press. “This picture of a brick masonry home was taken by the author, Olga Semyonova, presumably in the village of Muraevnia. Noted the covered yard to the left and the trees screening the house, which are included in her written description. From Rossiia, Polnoe geograficheskoe opisanie, vol.2,p. 179” (p. 122)

[F2]Semyonova Tian‑Shanskaia, O. P. (1993). Village life in late Tsarist Russia (D. L. Ransel, Ed.; D. L. Ransel & M. Levine, Trans.). Indiana University Press. “A farmyard in the nearby Black Earth province of Tambov. Photo by S. I. Gerasimova from Rossiia, Polnoe geograficheskoe opisanie, vol. 2, p.177.” (p. 128)

[F3] Таблица 3 (p. 491) [Table 3]

[F4] Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. (2025). The state of the nation’s housing 2025. Harvard Graduate School of Design & Harvard Kennedy School. “Figure 1.” (p. 1)

[F5] Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. (2025). The state of the nation’s housing 2025. Harvard Graduate School of Design & Harvard Kennedy School. “Figure 5”

[F6] Shinn, M., & Khadduri, J. (2020). How Finland ended homelessness. Cityscape: A Journal of Policy Development and Research, 22 (2), 76–80. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Development and Research.“ “Exhibit 1” (p. 76)

EXTRA INFO SECTION 2

[67] Fisher, J. C. (1962). Planning the City of Socialist Man. Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 28 (4), 251–265. https://doi.org/10.1080/01944366208979451. “Eighty percent of Nowa Huta’s inhabitants are of rural origin They have come directly from backward peasant villages to highly urban conditions. They did not know how to use modern technical and sanitary installations.” (p. 256)

[68] Hatherley, O. (2015, June). Housing in the Eastern Bloc. The Architectural Review. https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/housing-in-the-eastern-bloc. “All this may sound faintly absurd, but it did end an enormous housing crisis inherited from war and underdevelopment. While some countries, such as Czechoslovakia or Germany were already reasonably well-off, much of the Bloc lived in slums or age-old rural poverty in 1945, and by 1990 most of it was decently housed, with clean, sound and virtually free housing. For all the obvious failures of the system in consumer goods, this was a hugely impressive achievement. By the 1980s, panel-building was even becoming eclectic.”

[69] Andrianova, A. (2015). Architecture of Soviet housing and main Soviet urban planning concepts [Research report]. ResearchGate. https://doi.org/10.13140/1962.1.51417-5586. “Soviet Housing At 1920–1930 After The Communist Revolution In 1917 Was Developed Under The Idea Of Transformation From Individual Housing To Collective Housing. Collective Housing Meant That Soviet People Should Spend Most Of The Time Outside Their Home And Need Only The Minimum Individual Space For Sleeping (Sleeping Cabines 5–6 M² Each). Other Processes Such As Eating, Work, Study, Physical Education, Cultural Life Etc. Should Take Place In Spacious Common Public Spaces. Children Should Be Raised And Educated Outside Of The Home In Special School Blocks Or City Districts. It Gave Freedom To Women To Contribute More To The Society. This Concept Was Implemented In A Number Of Projects Of House-Communa (Dom-Comuna) And Dwelling Combine (Zhiloy Combinat) In Constructivism Style. In Practice, This Idea Was Not Fully Accepted By People, And Now Existing Houses-Communas Are Used As Student Dormitories.”

[70] Andrianova, A. (2015). Architecture of Soviet housing and main Soviet urban planning concepts [Research report]. ResearchGate. https://doi.org/10.13140/1962.1.51417-5586. ““Stalinkas” Are Mostly Residential Blocks, Built From The 1930s Until 1950s In The Era Of Ussr Leader Joseph Stalin. The Exterior Design Of These Buildings Is Known As The Stalin Empire Style. “Stalinka” Residential Buildings Are Divided Roughly Into Two Different Categories – Those Made Of Red Or White Brick And Those Of Cinder Blocks. The Brick “Stalinkas” Tend To Have More Beautiful Facades, Larger Apartments And Better Insulation. The Smaller “Stalinkas” Were Erected For Soviet Workers, And The Bigger Ones Were Constructed For The Communist Party Elite. This Shows The Real Segregation In Soviet Society. Before The Fall Of The Soviet Union, The Stalinkas Were Considered The Most Prestigious Real Estate In The Country – Military Leaders, Famous Scientists, Professors, Artists, Actors And Actresses, Directors And Leaders Of The Communist Party Were The Original Inhabitants Of These Buildings.”

[71] Andrianova, A. (2015). Architecture of Soviet housing and main Soviet urban planning concepts [Research report]. ResearchGate. https://doi.org/10.13140/1962.1.51417-5586. “Khrushchyovka” (Russian: Хрущёвка) Is A Type Of Low-Cost, Concrete-Paneled Or Brick Three- To Five-Storied Apartment Building Which Was Developed In The Ussr During The Early 1960s Until 1970s, During The Time Its Namesake Nikita Khrushchev Directed The Soviet Government. The “Khrushchovka” Was Industrialised And Prefabricated Building, The Elements (Or Panels) Made At Concrete Plants And Trucked To The Site As Needed. Elevators Were Considered Too Costly And Time Consuming To Build, And According To Soviet Health/Safety Standards, Five Stories Was The Maximum Height Of A Building Without An Elevator. Thus, Almost All “Khrushyovkas” Have Five Stories. “Khrushchyovkas” Featured Combined Bathrooms (Bath, Toilet, Sinc). Kitchens Were Small, Usually 6 Square Meters. Typical Apartments Have The Total Area Of 30 M2 (1-Room), 44 M2 (2-Room) And 60 M2 (3-Room). These Apartments Were Planned For The Small Families, But In Reality It Is Not Unusual For Three Generations Of People To Live Together In Two-Room Apartments.”

[72] Movilla Vega, D. (2020). Housing and revolution: From the dom-kommuna to the transitional type of experimental house (1926–30). Architectural Histories, 8 (1), Article 2. https://doi.org/10.5334/ah.264. “Lacking both the economic and technical means for new construction in the immediate aftermath of World War I and the revolution in 1918, workers and their families were initially re-housed in existing dwellings that, until then, had been single-family bourgeois homes. However, this measure of turning private into communal apartments — a result of the nationalisation of land and the abolition of property — could at best provide a temporary fix to work- ers’ precarious living conditions in cities like Moscow or Saint Petersburg, where industrial enterprises were typi- cally concentrated.” (p. 1)

[73] Movilla Vega, D. (2020). Housing and revolution: From the dom-kommuna to the transitional type of experimental house (1926–30). Architectural Histories, 8 (1), Article 2. https://doi.org/10.5334/ah.264. “During the first half of the 1920s, Soviet planners and architects began to develop new habitat models. The earliest of these models featured low-density single-family homes built close to the new factories and industrial enterprises. An example of this type of settlement is the Sokol cooperative on the industrial outskirts of Moscow, designed by Nikolay Markovnikov in 1923. As the decade went on, the more economical solution of multi-family blocks proliferated and soon became the norm for newly built workers’ housing. Aleksandr Gegello, Aleksandr Nikol’skiy and Grigoriy Simonov’s three- and four-storey buildings on Traktorskaya Ulitsa in Leningrad, built between 1925 and 1927, are prime examples of this second approach.” (p. 1)

[74] Movilla Vega, D. (2020). Housing and revolution: From the dom-kommuna to the transitional type of experimental house (1926–30). Architectural Histories, 8 (1), Article 2. https://doi.org/10.5334/ah.264. “the Comradely Competition alerted the planning and construction authorities of the USSR to the need to explore further possibilities for housing. As a result, in 1928, the Standardisation Department at Stroykom RSFSR, an official section for the development of typified and standardised housing, was created. Among the tasks of this institution were not only the development of new dwelling types and standards, but also the technical training of construction workers, to increase their skills in dealing with new building materials and techniques. From its earliest beginnings, the Stroykom expressed the need to align the purely economic aspects of the new dwellings with the guidelines set out by the government as part of the First Five Year Plan. Under government control, and following the stipulations to cut public spending for construction, the department needed to address four major objectives. The first was to meet the demand for workers’ housing in large cities, while using the country’s economic resources as efficiently as possible. This meant developing designs for new housing types that would reduce construction costs to the absolute minimum. The second objective was to improve the quality of the apartments by establishing a catalogue of basic standards of equipment for all new apartments. The third was to reduce the usable floor area of small apartments, based on the estimation that three-quarters of the population in a big city needed either one- or at most two-room apartments. The idea was to match the type of dwelling to the number of inhabitants as closely as possible, to avoid the practice of allocating several families to a single apartment. The final objective was the creation of a new residential type called the transitional type: a residential building in which small individual units were complemented by shared service areas. Conceived as an intermediate step en route to more socialised living in communal houses, the transitional type was to respond to the new situation of women working outside the home, children attending kindergartens, and the rapid growth of culture, physical education and leisure. Ginzburg coordinated and supervised the work of the Standardisation Department at Stroykom, overseeing the work of other architects such as Pasternak, Vladimirov, Grigoriy Sum-Shik and Mikhail Barshch. The fact that three of these five members had already participated in the 1926 Comradely Competition ensured continuity for the OSA’s work on the dom-kommuna. This also meant that the Stroykom’s work on standardisation, the industrialisation of building processes and the mass production of housing originated in the design of collective dwellings. Within a period of just a few months, the OSA produced and promptly disseminated several standardised cell models

(Figure 4). The aim was for these models to become standard dwelling types ready for mass production across the country in a short timeframe.” (p. 5)

[75] Movilla Vega, D. (2020). Housing and revolution: From the dom-kommuna to the transitional type of experimental house (1926–30). Architectural Histories, 8 (1), Article 2. https://doi.org/10.5334/ah.264. “The OSA’s scientific methodology was completely novel to Soviet architectural practice and was considered exceptional even in the West. Yet surprisingly, this rational method of analysis also revealed that the existing typology of converted pre-revolutionary bourgeois homes arranged around a vertical stairwell proved more efficient in relative economic terms than the minimum apartment models built during the 1920s, as a comparison between total building volumes and apartment surface area of both housing types confirmed. Because living areas had already been pared down to the bare essence in designs for minimum dwellings, the only way to further reduce the floor area was to streamline service spaces such as kitchens, bathrooms and entrance halls. To this end, Ginzburg’s team adopted the analytical methods of time and motion studies, championed by American household reformer Christine Frederick, to rationalise domestic labour, which Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky had also employed in her design of the Frankfurt Kitchen in 1926. This allowed Ginzburg and his colleagues to develop the so-called type A residential units (Figure 5), saving space by a further 10% compared to previous models.Subsequently, adjustments to the volume of apartments were made by dropping the height of auxiliary areas, a strategy that had already been explored in several of the proposals for the Comradely Competition. For example, the design by Vorotyntseva and Polyak experimented with interlocking auxiliary and inhabitable rooms, which became a precedent for the dwelling known as type B, achieving savings of another 10% over type A.”(p. 6)

[76] Movilla Vega, D. (2020). Housing and revolution: From the dom-kommuna to the transitional type of experimental house (1926–30). Architectural Histories, 8 (1), Article 2. https://doi.org/10.5334/ah.264. “Each spatial configuration was evaluated in terms of its economic efficiency’, as the inhabitable surface area differed between various types (Figure 6). Economic efficiency was identified with a k coefficient, the result of dividing the built volume of the dwelling by its usable area. The lower the coefficient, the more economically efficient the corresponding housing type. Surprisingly, this study revealed that layout A was the most advantageous for dwellings larger than 50 square metres. However, based on studies of the housing demand, this ‘family unit’ was only suitable for 40% of the population. To provide single-occupancy apartments for the remaining 60%, the only solution was to design a single-room dwelling no more expensive in relative terms than a two- or three-room dwelling. Layouts C and E did meet the strict requirements in terms of economy and demand (Figure 7), but it was the wide range of layout F variants that best fulfilled them (Figure 8). Here, space was reduced along the side of the dwelling where bedroom and bathroom were located. In turn, the height gained in the lower and the upper dwellings was combined, with the resulting intermediate-level corridor providing access to the dwellings through internal stairs. This granted natural ventilation and lighting on both façades of the dwellings while establishing the corridor as a bright outdoor gallery. The overall coefficients obtained were equivalent to those of dwellings of 54 square metres, while the average height of the inhabitable areas was also greater than in conventional models.” (p. 7)

[77] Movilla Vega, D. (2020). Housing and revolution: From the dom-kommuna to the transitional type of experimental house (1926–30). Architectural Histories, 8 (1), Article 2. https://doi.org/10.5334/ah.264. “In the initial project, only F and K types (Figure 10) were employed, with very specific variations to the units at the short end of the building (Figure 11). Type F cells— small households composed of individuals or childless couples — were in some way connected to the community economy and helped to facilitate the residents’ transition towards a fully socialised life. Type K cells were for families whose members were financially dependent on each other but who mostly wished to remain independent from the community. Type K, which had an outdoor gallery onto two floors, was actually a variant of layout D as defined by the Standardisation Department. Furthermore, it shared elements with Ginzburg’s proposal for the Comradely Competition. Thanks to the nearly 5-metre-high two-storey living room, which operated as a reservoir for air, the height of the bedrooms could be kept to just 2.30 metres (Figure 12). Similarly, the 3.60-metre-high inhabitable rooms in type F made it possible to incorporate 2.30 metres in the portion of the dwelling that was lower in height, allowing room for small gas cookers to heat food previously prepared in communal kitchens. However, type K was designed to promote a more gradual separation according to individuals’ financial status, incorporating kitchens where food could be cooked and not just reheated. Nevertheless, their small size, just our square metres, shows that their function may have been rather more symbolic. The upper part of the building, initially intended for installations and services such as a community room and solarium, in the final version included five dwellings of different sizes (Figure 13). A penthouse, designed by Milyutin for his own use, was notably similar to type K. The four other type C dwellings, with rooms between 9 and 15 square metres, saved on space thanks to the use of folding beds and shared showers and sinks. The design, in which areas with sanitary fittings were set out in a row, was not unlike that illustrated by Milyutin in his model for the socialist city, or that of the floor plan of type E as defined in the dom-kommuna designed by Barshch and Vladimirov.” (p. 9-10)

[78] Строительство Москвы [Construction of Moscow]. (1928, January). Ежемесячный журнал Московского совета рабочих, крестьянских и красноармейских депутатов [Monthly Journal of the Moscow Soviet of Workers, Peasants, and Red Army Deputies], 5th year of publication. “В настоящее время можно подвести некоторые итоги московского жилищного строительства, учесть результаты, чтобы впредь не повторять прошлых ошибок, смелее пойти по пути дальнейшего улучшения и развития жилищного дела. Из ошибок прошлого прежде всего следует обратить внимание на допущение местами на окраинах Москвы застройки значительных участков отдельными домиками небольшого размера (типа коттеджей). Эта расточительность в использовании земельных участков усиливается еще дороговизной обслуживания таких участков коммунальным благоустройством, водопроводом, канализацией, электричеством, газом, а также трамваем, автобусом и т. д. Правда, в последние годы такие застройки в пределах Камер-Коллежского вала не имели уже места, по необходимо предусмотреть рост Москвы и застройки такого рода не допускать и в большем радиусе, в пределах Окружной железной дороги. Затем в отдельных районах следует сосредоточивать строительство домов в одном месте, вдоль путей сообщения, с тем, чтобы при таких групповых застройках оставались большие площади вглубь участков, допускающие возможность в дальнейшем целесообразного их использования под застройку.” (p. 1-2) [At present, some results of Moscow housing construction can be summarized, results accounted for, so as not to repeat past mistakes in the future and to move more boldly along the path of further improvement and development of housing. Among past mistakes, first of all, attention should be paid to the permission in some places on the outskirts of Moscow of development of significant plots with small individual houses (cottage type). This wastefulness in land use is further exacerbated by the high cost of servicing such plots with utilities, water supply, sewage, electricity, gas, as well as trams, buses, etc. True, in recent years, such developments within the Kamer-Kollezhsky Val have not occurred, but it is necessary to foresee the growth of Moscow and not allow such developments even in a larger radius, within the Circular Railway. Then, in individual districts, construction of houses should be concentrated in one place, along communication routes, so that with such group developments, large areas remain deeper into the plots, allowing for their appropriate future use for development.]

[79] Строительство Москвы [Construction of Moscow]. (1928, January). Ежемесячный журнал Московского совета рабочих, крестьянских и красноармейских депутатов [Monthly Journal of the Moscow Soviet of Workers, Peasants, and Red Army Deputies], 5th year of publication. “В пределах города жилищное строительство Моссовета ведется большими группами, целыми кварталами многоэтажных (4 — 6 этажей) домов, что дает возможность наилучшего использования благоустроенных участков. Увеличение эффекта использования земельных участков дальнейшим увеличением этажности должно проводиться весьма осторожно, так как этим ухудшаются санитарные условия.” (p. 2) [Within the city, housing construction by the Moscow Soviet is carried out in large groups, entire blocks of multi-story (4-6 floors) houses, which allows for the best use of improved plots. Increasing land use efficiency by further increasing the number of floors must be done very carefully, as this worsens sanitary conditions.]

[80] Строительство Москвы [Construction of Moscow]. (1928, January). Ежемесячный журнал Московского совета рабочих, крестьянских и красноармейских депутатов [Monthly Journal of the Moscow Soviet of Workers, Peasants, and Red Army Deputies], 5th year of publication. “Все вышеперечисленные моменты нового жилищного строительства за последний год, установленные специальной комиссией, говорят о том, что в деле жилищного строительства, в отношении техники его, мы двигаемся еще недостаточно быстро. Все же на территории Москвы и губернии имеется ряд достижений, которые до сих пор еще не учтены другими городами Союза. Необходимо, чтобы каждая победа в улучшении жилищного строительства широко была распространена по всему Союзу. Опыты в жилищном строительстве являются делом весьма сложным, так как требуют значительных затрат и длительного наблюдения. Поэтому обмен взаимным опытом в деле жилищного строительства является особо необходимым для успешного изживания жилищного кризиса.” (p. 3) [lf the above-mentioned aspects of new housing construction over the past year, established by a special commission, indicate that in housing construction, regarding its technology, we are still moving insufficiently fast. Nevertheless, in Moscow and the province, there are a number of achievements that have still not been accounted for by other cities of the Union. It is necessary that every victory in improving housing construction be widely disseminated throughout the Union. Experiments in housing construction are a very complex matter, as they require significant costs and long-term observation. Therefore, the exchange of mutual experience in housing construction is especially necessary for the successful overcoming of the housing crisis.]

[81] Строительство Москвы [Construction of Moscow]. (1928, January). Ежемесячный журнал Московского совета рабочих, крестьянских и красноармейских депутатов [Monthly Journal of the Moscow Soviet of Workers, Peasants, and Red Army Deputies], 5th year of publication. “В 1927 году строило 145 кооперативов, в 1928 году участвует в строительстве 91 кооператив. Это является результатом укрупнения существующей сети по г. Москве. Строительство будет выполняться, главным образом, стройконторами. Из 24.560.000 руб., хоз. способом будет выполняться на 5 — 6 миллионов рублей. На 80 — 85% дома будут оборудованы ваннами. Намечена к постройке сеть яслей, прачечных, детских садов. В Замоскворечьи приступлено к постройке дома-коммуны в 40.000куб. метров (4.200 куб. саж.) с детским садом, яслями, клубом и др. В доме будут частью квартиры для одиночек. В уездах на 40 — 45% намечено кирпичное строительство. Все строительство по уездам и по г. Москве, за исключением 2 случаев, будет производиться по стандартному типу. Но городу Москве рабочими кооперативами будет выстроено до 91.000 кв. метров (20.000 кв. саж.), по уездам же — 43.769 кв. метров (9.615 кв. саж.) жилой площади, всего примерно на 29.000 человек.” (p. 5) [In 1927, 145 cooperatives built; in 1928, 91 cooperatives participate in construction. This is the result of consolidating the existing network in Moscow. Construction will be carried out mainly by construction offices. Out of 24,560,000 rubles, 5-6 million rubles will be executed by economic means. 80-85% of houses will be equipped with baths. A network of nurseries, laundries, and kindergartens is planned for construction. In Zamoskvorechye, construction of a commune house of 40,000 cubic meters (4,200 cubic sazhens) with a kindergarten, nursery, club, etc., has begun. Part of the house will have apartments for single people. In counties, 40-45% brick construction is planned. All construction in counties and Moscow, with two exceptions, will be carried out according to standard types. In Moscow, workers' cooperatives will build up to 91,000 sq. meters (20,000 sq. sazhens), and in counties—43,769 sq. meters (9,615 sq. sazhens) of living space, total approximately for 29,000 people.]

[82] Строительство Москвы [Construction of Moscow]. (1928, January). Ежемесячный журнал Московского совета рабочих, крестьянских и красноармейских депутатов [Monthly Journal of the Moscow Soviet of Workers, Peasants, and Red Army Deputies], 5th year of publication. “В № 12  Строительства Москвы за 1927 г. был помещен эскизный проект Ленинской библиотеки, под коим было указано, что автором проекта является арх. Д. С. Марков. Последний просит нас сообщить, что проект этот им выполнен в сотрудничестве с архитекторами Б. Кондрашевым и Г. Андреевым. Автостроительство Московского Совета. На засе-дании Президиума Моссовета от 21 декабря 1927 года был окончательно разрешен вопрос о постройке нового автомобильного завода. На постройку этого завода, но предварительным подсчетам, потребуется 40—50 миллионов рублей. Вырабатываться на нем будет 10—12 тысяч машин в год маломощного типа, при чем послед-ний будет выбран из существующих ныне за границей марок. В течение первых трех лет выработка машин должна быть увеличена до 25.000.” (p. 24) [In No. 12 of "Construction of Moscow" for 1927, a sketch project of the Lenin Library was published, at the end of which it was indicated that the author of the project is architect D.S. Markov. The latter informed us that this project was executed by him in collaboration with architects B. Kondrashev and G. Andreev. - Automobile Construction of the Moscow Soviet. At the meeting of the Presidium of Mossoviet on December 21, 1927, the issue of building a new automobile plant was finally resolved. For the eastern stage of the plant, according to preliminary estimates, 40-50 million rubles will be required. It will produce 1-2 thousand cars per year initially, including 1) with the latest letter of choice from existing foreign brands. Within the first three years, car production should be increased to 25,000.]

[83] Bliznakov, M. (1993). Soviet housing during the experiment years, 1918–1933. In W. C. Brumfield & B. A. Ruble (Eds.), Russian housing in the modern age: Design and social history(pp. 87–112). Cambridge University Press. (Woodrow Wilson Center series). “The Soviet government took upon itself the enormous task of providing adequate housing for all its citizens even before it had secured its power over the entire territory of the Russian Empire. It began an unprecedented experiment on a global scale, from the Baltic Sea to Mongolia and China. ” (p. 85)

[84] Bliznakov, M. (1993). Soviet housing during the experiment years, 1918–1933. In W. C. Brumfield & B. A. Ruble (Eds.), Russian housing in the modern age: Design and social history(pp. 87–112). Cambridge University Press. (Woodrow Wilson Center series). ”The workers’ housing conditions were abominable, especially in cities where industrial plants were concentrated, such as St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Ivanovo-Voznesensk. Immediate housing needs were satisfied by resettling workers and political activists in the nationalized housing of the rich and affluent upper class. Between 1918 and 1924, in Moscow alone, over half a million workers and their families were rehoused in this manner. Furthermore, 22,500 buildings around the country (18,000 of which were country mansions) were transformed into workers’ clubs, and an additional 543 country palaces and dachas were used as vacation resorts for the workers. Thus, the poor factory worker and the neglected peasant could see and experience the lavish setting of a class which had surrounded itself with what a worker would assume to be “the finest in the world.”” (p. 85-86)

[85] Bliznakov, M. (1993). Soviet housing during the experiment years, 1918–1933. In W. C. Brumfield & B. A. Ruble (Eds.), Russian housing in the modern age: Design and social history(pp. 87–112). Cambridge University Press. (Woodrow Wilson Center series). “Meanwhile, the Soviet regime intended to transform human consciousness and change behavior, a process in which housing was expected to play a major role. Prerevolutionary-era apartments and houses, for example, had only one kitchen to be shared by the new inhabitants, and an entrance hall usually used as a common living space. This communal living arrangement, though a necessary condition at the time, was expected to induce collective behavioral patterns corresponding to a new socialist political system. Thus, many of these houses were renamed house-communes (dom-komuna). In Moscow alone, 865 such house-communes were registered by the end of 1921.” (p. 86)

[86] Bliznakov, M. (1993). Soviet housing during the experiment years, 1918–1933. In W. C. Brumfield & B. A. Ruble (Eds.), Russian housing in the modern age: Design and social history(pp. 87–112). Cambridge University Press. (Woodrow Wilson Center series). “In the course of the 1920s, two radically different housing programs were developed and refined from these options. The first, based on the garden city idea, was imported from England; the second, the communal house concept, originated in France. Both models were known in Russia before the Revolution but evolved afterward as evocative symbols of a new socio-political system.” (p. 88)

[87] Bliznakov, M. (1993). Soviet housing during the experiment years, 1918–1933. In W. C. Brumfield & B. A. Ruble (Eds.), Russian housing in the modern age: Design and social history(pp. 87–112). ”The development of new housing types was closely interwoven with new ideas about the future of cities. Each housing unit was designed in relation to its natural and urban context. Although Moscow was verbally glorified as a model socialist town, significant new towns and housing estates were built in the provinces and in the ethnic republics of the Soviet Union.” (p. 89)

Bliznakov, M. (1993). Soviet housing during the experiment years, 1918–1933. In W. C. Brumfield & B. A. Ruble (Eds.), Russian housing in the modern age: Design and social history(pp. 87–112).  “Government endorsement of Howard’s scheme became obvious when a group of Soviet leaders and functionaries visited British garden towns in 1924.” Articles on the garden cities in England, France, Germany, the United States, and Holland informed Russia’s construction industry on the economic, social, and aesthetic advantages of living in small housing units surrounded by open green space.'? Workers’ settlements following the garden city model sprang up all over Russia. Many of these early settlements allotted a private plot for each household to grow its own vegetables and some allowed livestock on it. Garden cities were promoted by cooperative housing associations and also by Lenin’s State Plan for the Electrification of Russia (GOERLO), which was enthusiastically approved by the Eighth Party Congress (22 December 1920). The plan provided for the design and construction of thirty power stations with adjacent settlements for the workers operating and maintaining the stations. Many of the settlements grew to the size of cities, and eventually lost their original small houses and open green space."' The dwellings in these settlements were either individual cottages for single families or attached row houses for two to four families. Each unit had two or three small bedrooms, a living area, and an eat-in kitchen. This rather traditional house plan could be traced back to the evolution of the peasant’s house and the Russian vernacular revival, which became fashionable after the turn of the century under the influence of the British Arts and Crafts movement. Simple to construct with local materials and labor, these houses were also built for the industrial region around Moscow. Leading examples are the settlements for the Shatursk turf factory (1918) and hydroelectric station (1919) designed by Leonid A. Vesnin (1880-1933), the housing estate for Krasnyi Bogatyr factory (1924) designed by V. M. Maiat, and the Sokol cooperative settlement (1923) designed by Nikolai V. Markovnikov (1869-1942; Fig. 31).' These three architects were established practitioners before the Revolution, and Vesnin became the renowned founder of architectural constructivism.” (p. 90-91)

Bliznakov, M. (1993). Soviet housing during the experiment years, 1918–1933. In W. C. Brumfield & B. A. Ruble (Eds.), Russian housing in the modern age: Design and social history(pp. 87–112). ”As a consequence of a law enacted on 20 August 1918, the municipality became the administrative authority of urban land, yet local soviets were rather slow in executing the law, especially in regard to small houses of low value. Apartment buildings, however, were nationalized and usually assigned to the enterprise of an employer (a factory or industrial trust, an administrative department, or an educational institution) for the housing needs of its employees. The inhabitants formed a housing association (zhilishchnoe tovarishchestvo) which was responsible for the management, maintenance, and operating budget of the building. House rent was fixed by law, according to the number of square meters of the dwelling area (9 square meters per inhabitant was the “sanitary norm”), and adjusted to the earning power of the individual (usually 4 percent, but not exceeding ro percent of the family income). The housing associations were registered with the municipal economic council, and the apartment building was simply renamed a “‘house-commune,” if it was assigned to, and maintained by, a municipal or state enterprise. ” (p. 95-96)

Bliznakov, M. (1993). Soviet housing during the experiment years, 1918–1933. In W. C. Brumfield & B. A. Ruble (Eds.), Russian housing in the modern age: Design and social history(pp. 87–112). ”In contrast to these apartment buildings, called house-communes, the actual house-commune, developed by avant-garde designers during the 1920s, was not just a place for living, but a complete urban unit—an autonomous community with all necessary services and facilities. All space needed to house the various amenities of the housing complex was interconnected, either horizontally or vertically, or both. Sometimes employment was also incorporated into the house-commune, thus equating it with a miniature town. Mixed land use was fundamental for the design of interrelated communal activities. This concept ran counter to the planned assignment of the land according to the uses permitted for the buildings erected on it, a practice which was, and still is, dominating the zoning of most countries today.” (p. 96)

[88] Bliznakov, M. (1993). Soviet housing during the experiment years, 1918–1933. In W. C. Brumfield & B. A. Ruble (Eds.), Russian housing in the modern age: Design and social history(pp. 87–112). “The development of housing types, particularly communal houses, was the main concern of ASNOVA’s rival organization, the Society of Contemporary Architects (Obedinenie sovremennykh arkhitektorov, abbreviated OSA). It was founded in 1925 by several leading architects, usually referred to as the Constructivists.” (p. 101)

Bliznakov, M. (1993). Soviet housing during the experiment years, 1918–1933. In W. C. Brumfield & B. A. Ruble (Eds.), Russian housing in the modern age: Design and social history(pp. 87–112). ” The popularity of OSA was due to the opportunity of its members to voice their opinions and to publish their projects in the pages of the periodical Contemporary Architecture (Sovremennaia arkhitektura; abbreviated SA), the only Modernist periodical in continuous publication for five years (1926-30). From the outset SA proclaimed that contemporary architecture ‘“‘must legalize and crystalize the new social mode of living’’ in designed forms. In its third issue, SA announced a comradely competition of sketch projects for workers’ housing, and in the following issue, the editors launched a public opinion poll about communal living. The six questions addressed to anyone who cared to respond were: 1. How do you envision the physical environment of the workers’ new way of life, and what do you consider unnecessary objects of petty bourgeois origin?; 2. In your opinion which are the new aspects of the mode of living? Which new needs are already forming, and which do you consider [to be] dying out?; 3. Which aspects of everyday life should remain private, separated as personal for the individual, and which should be reorganized as collective for society?; 4. What is your opinion about communal food preparation which will free women from domestic labor?;5. What is your opinion on public education and on the upbringing of children: 22?; 6. Do you have any specific proposal for the organization of individual leisure?// The published responses by workers and civil servants all hailed the freedom of women from domestic chores and the public education of children. Domesticity was not related to traditional family obligations, but rather to personal comfort. Significantly, all insisted on preserving as much privacy for the individual as possible. The new mode of life requires clear separation between the collective and the individual and [differentiation] between the physical environment of each. The physical environment for the personal aspects of everyday life must include everything that promotes an active will [aktivnosti voli]. The creative development of an individual demands a spacious room filled with light and sun, and equipped with all the necessary furniture (well manufactured and comfortable).... The standards for physical and intellectual labor must be somehow differentiated.” (p. 102-103)

Bliznakov, M. (1993). Soviet housing during the experiment years, 1918–1933. In W. C. Brumfield & B. A. Ruble (Eds.), Russian housing in the modern age: Design and social history(pp. 87–112). “With the end of the New Economic Policy period and the inauguration of the first Five-Year Plan (1928-32), the central government took sole responsibility for the design and construction of workers’ housing, a task which was to be facilitated by industrializing the construction process and the mass production of a limited number of building types. In 1928, Moisei Ginzburg was appointed to organize and head the Standardization Section of the Construction Committee for the Russian Republic (Stroikom RSFSR). He was joined by Viacheslav Vladimirov and Aleksandr Pasternak (both graduates of MIGI), Grigorii Sum-Shik (a 1928 graduate of MVTU), and Mikhail Barshch (a 1926 graduate of Vkhutemas). Within three months, Ginzburg’s group produced five types of housing units in several variations to be prefabricated and speedily assembled at sites all over Russia. In addition to economic and technical considerations, the housing units were to ease “the transition to a new, socially superior way of life.’ The housing units were actually small individual apartments of the so-called transitional type, consisting of one or two bedrooms (or sleeping alcoves), a living room with built-in kitchen alcove, and a bath (or toilet and lavatory). Comparative analysis of the units demonstrated that their traditional arrangements around a stairway or a corridor (types A, B, C), or their stacking on two floors (types D and E), was less cost-effective than the split-level, type F unit. All apartment units were carefully studied (Figs. 41, 42). Time-and-motion analysis of each space, daylight penetration in each room, natural through-ventilation, and the efficient use of “unutilized height of service areas (hallways, kitchen, bathroom) considerably increased the economic efficiency of an apartment of the old type.’’ Ginzburg pointed out that “‘the F type unit is important as a step along the road toward a communal form of housing, in keeping with the social process of differentiation of the family and the increased use of collective facilities. Solving the problem of the living unit will enable us to solve the problem of building on a community and regional scale.’’ Studies of the household rational organization, including time-and-motion measures of room layouts and of kitchen arrangements, were a common practice in the Frankfurt am Main city office headed by Ernst May. Grete Schutte-Lichotzky, who worked with May in Frankfurt before moving with him to Moscow, designed the well-known Frankfurt Kitchen (1925) based on these studies. The work of May’s office was widely publicized. More than 3,000 workers’ apartments were built around Frankfurt by the time an exhibition, ‘““The New Flat and Its Interiors,’ was mounted (1925) with full-size models of furnished apartments. This work was a direct source for Ginzburg’s subsequent studies of communal houses, coupled with the Soviet obsession with Taylorism and its application to all aspects of life. Ginzburg’s group promoted the F unit as most economical, yet its novel spatial qualities made this unit very popular. The F unit was adapted for the Narkomfin (Peoples Commissariat of Finances) apartment house, built in 1928-30 by Ginzburg, in collaboration with the architecture student Ignatii Milinis, on Novinskii (now Tchaikovskii) Street. The building, still in use today, consists of two volumes (Figs. 43, 44). The housing units are stacked in a five-story block, lifted above ground on stilts. An enclosed walkway at the second level connects the housing to the community building containing a kitchen and canteen, meeting and hobby rooms, and a kindergarten.” (p. 107-108)

[89] Bliznakov, M. (1993). Soviet housing during the experiment years, 1918–1933. In W. C. Brumfield & B. A. Ruble (Eds.), Russian housing in the modern age: Design and social history(pp. 87–112). “This house-commune was designed for one thousand adults and 680 children (about half of them of school age). This population was calculated so that the optimum group of inhabitants could be served by one public kitchen, by one primary and secondary school, and by other common spaces, while at the same time close relations with the public and private quarters would be maintained. The needs of adults, school-age children, and preschool-age children were separated in three distinct buildings. The first, a ten-story structure, accommodated individual bedrooms on the upper six floors and common rooms in the lower four floors. The buildings for preschool-age and for school-age children were actually boarding schools provided with bedrooms, play rooms, study rooms, separate dining for each age group, medical facilities, inside and outdoor recreation, and everything else imaginable. The project strived to minimize the private rooms, not only in size but also in desirability, and to encourage inhabitants to spend their free time together.” (p. 115-116)

[90] Bliznakov, M. (1993). Soviet housing during the experiment years, 1918–1933. In W. C. Brumfield & B. A. Ruble (Eds.), Russian housing in the modern age: Design and social history(pp. 87–112). “The forceful collectivization of the farmland during the first Five-Year Plan and the resulting migration of the peasantry to industrial centers in search of employment resulted in an unprecedented social change. The plan also called for the construction of 200 new towns around developing industries.” (p. 118)

[91] Bliznakov, M. (1993). Soviet housing during the experiment years, 1918–1933. In W. C. Brumfield & B. A. Ruble (Eds.), Russian housing in the modern age: Design and social history(pp. 87–112). ”Leading examples of new towns designed on the urbanist model are Aleksandr and Leonid Vesnin’s project for Stalingrad (1930) and Kuznets (1929-30), where the inhabitants were housed in large communal houses (for 2,600 people in Kuznets and 3,200 people in Stalingrad) called ‘‘dwelling combines” (zhilkombinaty). Two dwelling combines formed a district with children’s institutions at the center. To house the entire population of Kuznets, therefore, twelve dwelling combines were needed, and twenty for Stalingrad.” (p. 128)

[92] Bliznakov, M. (1993). Soviet housing during the experiment years, 1918–1933. In W. C. Brumfield & B. A. Ruble (Eds.), Russian housing in the modern age: Design and social history(pp. 87–112). “In 1922 Ivanovo-Voznesensk began building its infrastructure: water and sewer systems in 1922, electric power station and central heating system in 1923, the first workers’ settlement in 1924, and the first workers’ canteen (fabrikakukhnia) in the Soviet Union in 1925, which prepared lunch for about a quarter of the town’s workers. The organization of a housing cooperative and a state construction organization (both in 1924) enabled the town to build not only the first workers’ settlement but also the first day-care center and the first modern school, both initiated in 1925. Ivanovo-Voznesensk attracted leading architects to participate in its ambitious building program. The master plan for the first workers’ settlement of 8,000 inhabitants was prepared by Vladimir N. Semenov (1874-1960), the leading designer of garden cities. The housing was designed by a team headed by Leonid Vesnin which included Panteleimon Golosov.? The design consisted of wood frame houses for two, four, and eight families. A second workers’ settlement, begun in 1925 for the railroad employees, also consisted of two-story houses, but the ground floor was of stone and the second of wood frame. A 1926 housing competition for five different sites ‘in the old part of the town resulted in 120 entries, including several by students at Vkhutemas, MVTU, and MIGI. The majority of housing units were for two- and three-room apartments with individual kitchens (9.18 Square meters per person).” (p .130)

[93] Bliznakov, M. (1993). Soviet housing during the experiment years, 1918–1933. In W. C. Brumfield & B. A. Ruble (Eds.), Russian housing in the modern age: Design and social history(pp. 87–112). ”The economic realities of the time favored small structures and individual cottages built of local materials. The architects’ response to these economic constraints was the linear arrangement of small individual housing units as promoted by deurbanist theoreticians. The practical advantages of these easily prefabricated and erected rooms also included easy modification and expansion, according to changing future requirements. Rapid industrialization and collectivization of agriculture had set the rural population in motion, dislocating family members and resettling peasants on new construction sites, away from family, kin, and tribe. Children of deserving workers and peasants, sent to colleges and universities in distant cities during the 1920s, were graduating and filling ranks in the bureaucracy.? The mobility of the population found expression in the design of nearly movable homes.” (p. 139)

[94] Bliznakov, M. (1993). Soviet housing during the experiment years, 1918–1933. In W. C. Brumfield & B. A. Ruble (Eds.), Russian housing in the modern age: Design and social history(pp. 87–112). ”The Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party supported the construction of individual homes as a mode of alleviating the housing shortage. In its 1930 decree, the Central Committee attacked only the supporters of super-collectivization and the construction of large communal houses. The Central Committee notes that along with the movement for socialist way of life there are highly ill-founded, semi-fantastic and hence extremely harmful attempts of certain comrades (Sabsovich, Larin, etc.) to surmount “in one leap” all the obstacles on the road to the socialist reconstruction of everyday life, obstacles rooted in the economic and cultural backwardness of the country. These attempts are linked with recently published projects for complete collectivization of every aspect of the workers’ life: feeding, housing, education and an administrative ban on the private preparation of meals, etc. The decree imposed new rules “for the construction of workers’ settlement and individual homes,’’ demanded ‘‘an adequate green belt to be provided between the industrial and residential zones,” and strongly encouraged the construction of housing through building cooperatives using “the resources of the population itself.’” Most important was the commitment of the government to increase the “production of necessary public facilities (factory-kitchens, mechanized laundries, canteens, etc.) and to examine the question of improving the financing of measures directed toward a transformation of the way of life.” Two years later, however, the Soviet government stopped any private or cooperative effort to alleviate the housing situation. The years of experimentation were over, with the government taking the sole responsibility of housing its population. According to a 1932 decree, all new housing had to consist of separate apartments for individual families and each apartment building had to have “its unique architectural appearance.” The apartment building continues to be the only acceptable form of urban housing to this day.” (p. 139-140) [published in 1993]

[95] Sabosovich, L. M. (1929). СССР через 15 лет: Гипотеза генерального плана, как плана построения социализма в СССР [USSR in 15 years: Hypothesis of a general plan as a plan for building socialism in the USSR]. Государственное техническое издательство. “Наличия материальных и социальных предпосылок (в виде весьма высокого уровня развития производительных сил, уничтожения классов и обобществления всех орудий и средств производства) еще недостаточно для построения социалистического общества. Нужна еще культурная революция, — нужно совершенно переделать человека, а для этого необходимо совершенно изменить бытовые условия и формы существования человечества.” (P. 125)

[”The presence of material and social prerequisites (in the form of a very high level of development of productive forces, the abolition of classes and the socialization of all instruments and means of production) is not yet sufficient for the construction of a socialist society. A cultural revolution is also needed - man must be completely remade, and for this it is necessary to completely change the living conditions and forms of existence of humanity.”]

[96] Sabosovich, L. M. (1929). СССР через 15 лет: Гипотеза генерального плана, как плана построения социализма в СССР [USSR in 15 years: Hypothesis of a general plan as a plan for building socialism in the USSR]. Государственное техническое издательство.

”Условия быта должны быть изменены прежде всего в том направлении, что должно быть уничтожено индивидуальное домашнее хозяйство, тот «домашний очаг», который всегда являлся и является источником рабства женщины.” (p. 125) [Living conditions must be changed first of all in the direction that the individual household, that “hearth and home” which has always been and is the source of women’s slavery, must be destroyed.]

[97] Sabosovich, L. M. (1929). СССР через 15 лет: Гипотеза генерального плана, как плана построения социализма в СССР [USSR in 15 years: Hypothesis of a general plan as a plan for building socialism in the USSR]. Государственное техническое издательство.

“Уничтоженное индивидуальное домашнее хозяйство должно-быть замещено общественным обслуживанием основных потребностей трудящихся. Громадные фабрики-кухни, — в количестве достаточном для обслуживания всего населения,—должны полностью заменить домашнее приготовление пищи; ото в значительной степени улучшит питание населения и в громадной степени удешевит его. Не только для приготовления пищи, но и для наиболее удобного питания населения должен быть создан соответственный, достаточно сложный п механизированный аппарат: организация обширных общественных столовых в местах работы, в местах отдыха, в яслях, в учреждениях общественного воспитания и т. д., громадное расширение и усовершенствование консервной промышленности и т. д.; в целом ряде случаев окажется необходимой и наиболее целесообразной механическая доставка готовой пищи «на дом» и т. д.” (p. 126) [The abolished individual household economy must be replaced by public services for the basic needs of the workers. Enormous factory kitchens, in quantities sufficient to serve the entire population, must completely replace home cooking; this will significantly improve the nutrition of the population and make it enormously cheaper. Not only for the preparation of food, but also for the most convenient nutrition of the population, a corresponding, sufficiently complex and mechanized apparatus must be created: the organization of extensive public canteens in places of work, in places of rest, in nurseries, in institutions of public education, etc., a huge expansion and improvement of the canning industry, etc.; in a number of cases, mechanical delivery of prepared food "to the home" will prove necessary and most expedient, etc.]

[98] Sabosovich, L. M. (1929). СССР через 15 лет: Гипотеза генерального плана, как плана построения социализма в СССР [USSR in 15 years: Hypothesis of a general plan as a plan for building socialism in the USSR]. Государственное техническое издательство.

”Общественные механические прачечные, оборудованные

технически-совершенными машинами (такие прачечные уже имеются в настоящее время в Америке и в некоторых страпах Западной Европы), дезинфицирующие, стирающие, высу-шсвающие и выглаживающие белье в срок в несколько десятков минут, должны совершенно упразднить домашнюю стирку белья. Общественные бани, общественные бассейны и души, устроенные в местах работы, отдыха, учения и т. п. и доступные для всех трудящихся в любое время, упразднят необходимость домашнего приготовления ванн и пр. Фабрики одежды и белья и механические починочные фабрики должны совершенно упразднить необходимость домашней пошивки и починки одежды и белья, отнимающей ныне так много времени и труда, главным образом, у женщин. Наконец, механизация уборки и чистки жилых помещений также освободит, опять таки главным образом женщину, — от необходимости тратить немало труда на индивидуальную уборку жилища.”(p. 126-127) [Public mechanical laundries, equipped with technically perfect machines (such laundries already exist at present in America and in some countries of Western Europe), disinfecting, washing, drying and ironing linen in a period of several dozen minutes, should completely eliminate home washing of linen. Public baths, public swimming pools and showers, arranged in places of work, rest, study, etc. and accessible to all workers at any time, will eliminate the need for home preparation of baths, etc. Clothing and linen factories and mechanical repair factories should completely eliminate the need for home sewing and mending of clothing and linen, which now takes up so much time and labor, mainly from women. Finally, the mechanization of cleaning and cleaning of living quarters will also free, again mainly women, from the need to spend a lot of labor on individual cleaning of the home.]

[99] Sabosovich, L. M. (1929). СССР через 15 лет: Гипотеза генерального плана, как плана построения социализма в СССР [USSR in 15 years: Hypothesis of a general plan as a plan for building socialism in the USSR]. Государственное техническое издательство.

”Наконец, широкая организация общественных зданий для занятий в свободное от обязательного общественного труда время («дворцы науки», библиотеки, читальные залы, отдельные кабинеты для занятий и т. д.) и для отдыха в свободное от труда и от занятий время (клубы, физкультурные залы и площадки, сады или специальные оборудованные терассы для отдыха на свежем воздухе и т. п.), — все это совершенно упразднит необходимость и какой бы то ни было смысл обособленной жизни отдельных семей в изолированных и специально оборудованных для «домашнего очага» квартирах и домиках. Бытовые условия жизни трудящихся изменятся, но для сюего осуществления они потребуют и совершенно других жилищных условий: ибо современные дома и современные юрода совершенно не приспособлены для такого обобщест вленного быта. Современный город — продукт капиталистической культуры, где основной закон — нажива, а не удобства и здоровые условия жизни для трудящихся.” (p. 128-129) [Finally, the extensive organization of public buildings for study in time free from compulsory public labor ("palaces of science", libraries, reading rooms, separate classrooms for study, etc.) and for recreation in time free from work and study (clubs, gyms and playgrounds, gardens or specially equipped terraces for recreation in the fresh air, etc.) - all this will completely eliminate the need and any meaning of the isolated life of individual families in isolated and specially equipped "hearth and home" apartments and houses. The living conditions of workers will change, but for this to be realized they will also require completely different housing conditions: for modern houses and modern holy places are completely unsuited to such a socialized way of life. The modern city is a product of capitalist culture, where the basic law is profit, and not convenience and healthy living conditions for workers.]

[100] Sabosovich, L. M. (1929). СССР через 15 лет: Гипотеза генерального плана, как плана построения социализма в СССР [USSR in 15 years: Hypothesis of a general plan as a plan for building socialism in the USSR]. Государственное техническое издательство.

”Густая сеть электрификации, которая покроет всю страну и будет подавать энергию на громадные расстояния, увеличенная в несколько раз сеть железных дорог, значительно улучшенные. водные пути сообщения и густая сеть местных дорог, приспособленных для обширного грузового автомобильного сообщения,— все это в значительной мере лишит нынешние города их преимуществ, как промышленных центров, и позволит раскинуть новые промышленные предприятия по всей территории Союза, нередко в комбинации с крупными государственными или коллективными сельскохозяйственными предприятиями.” (p. 129) [A dense electrification network that will cover the entire country and supply energy over enormous distances, a network of railways increased several times, significantly improved waterways and a dense network of local roads adapted for extensive freight automobile traffic - all this will to a large extent deprive the current cities of their advantages as industrial centers and will make it possible to spread new industrial enterprises throughout the entire territory of the Union, often in combination with large state or collective agricultural enterprises.]

[101] Sabosovich, L. M. (1929). СССР через 15 лет: Гипотеза генерального плана, как плана построения социализма в СССР [USSR in 15 years: Hypothesis of a general plan as a plan for building socialism in the USSR]. Государственное техническое издательство.

”Стоимость всего жилищного фонда в 1927/28 году исчисляется Госпланом СССР в сумме около 24 млрд, руб., в том числе стоимость городского жилищного фонда исчисляется в сумме 13,3 млрд. руб. (включая промышленный жилищный фонд), а сельского — в 10,8 млрд. руб.... В 1927/28 г. на душу населения приходилось 161 руб. всего жилфонда; в 1942/43 г. эта цифра увеличится до 1.020 руб., т.-е. примерно в 6,5 раз. Однако, нужно отметить, что в 1927/28 г. между жилищным фондом города и деревни существовал большой разрыв: в городе на 1 душу населения приходилось жилфонда на 437 руб., тогда как в деревне— всего 91 руб., т.-е. почти в 5 раз меньше. Правда, в деревне постройки стоят и оцениваются дешевле, так что по физическому об’ему (или по площади пола) разрыв будет несколько меньше, но все же разрыв этот нессмненно является чрезмерным.”(p. 130-131) [The value of the entire housing stock in 1927/28 was estimated by the USSR State Planning Committee at about 24 billion rubles, including the value of the urban housing stock at 13.3 billion rubles (including the industrial housing stock), and the rural housing stock at 10.8 billion rubles... In 1927/28, there were 161 rubles of the total housing stock per capita; in 1942/43, this figure would increase to 1,020 rubles, i.e., approximately 6.5 times. However, it should be noted that in 1927/28, there was a large gap between the housing stock of the city and the village: in the city, there were 437 rubles of housing stock per capita, while in the village, there were only 91 rubles, i.e., almost 5 times less. True, in the village buildings cost and are valued cheaper, so in terms of physical volume (or floor area) the gap will be somewhat smaller, but still this gap is undoubtedly excessive.]

[102] Sabosovich, L. M. (1929). СССР через 15 лет: Гипотеза генерального плана, как плана построения социализма в СССР [USSR in 15 years: Hypothesis of a general plan as a plan for building socialism in the USSR]. Государственное техническое издательство.

”Прежде всего, должно быть значительно увеличено количество учебных заведений всех специальностей и ступеней и значительно улучшено их оборудование. Весьма' значительно должно быть увеличено количество научных институтов, лабораторий и пр. В связи с этим должен весьма значительно возрасти основной фонд (имущество) сектора народного просвещения. Основной фонд народного просвещения оценивается в 1927/28 г. в 2 млрд, руб.; к 1942/43 г. он сможет быть увеличен до 30 млрд. руб. по физическому об’ему (в той же оценке), т.-с. в 15 раз.” (p. 133) [First of all, the number of educational institutions of all specialties and levels must be significantly increased and their equipment significantly improved. The number of scientific institutes, laboratories, etc. must be significantly increased. In connection with this, the fixed assets (property) of the public education sector must increase significantly. The fixed assets of public education were estimated at 2 billion rubles in 1927/28; by 1942/43 it could be increased to 30 billion rubles in physical volume (in the same estimate), i.e., 15 times.]

Sabosovich, L. M. (1929). СССР через 15 лет: Гипотеза генерального плана, как плана построения социализма в СССР [USSR in 15 years: Hypothesis of a general plan as a plan for building socialism in the USSR]. Государственное техническое издательство.

”Улучшение здоровья населения зависит прежде всего от тех условий, в которых оно живет и трудится. Поэтому, уже сокращение рабочего дня с 8 час. до 5 часов, более здоровая обстановка работы в предприятиях и радикальное изменение жилищных условий, о котором говорилось выше, должны привести к значительному улучшению состояния здоровья населения. Однако, процесс радикального улучшения физического здоровья человечества— процесс относительно медленный. Поэтому, заботы о борьбе с болезнями, о предупреждении их и о ликвидации их последствий надолго еще останутся одной из важнейших задач государства трудящихся. Расходы на здравоохранение в 1927/28 г. выразились в общей сумме около 550 млн. руб., или 3 р. 68 коп. на душу населения. По подсчетам настоящей проектировки эта сумма через 15 лет может быть увеличена до 9,8 млрд, руб., т.-е., примерно, в 18 раз (а на душу населения 51 р. или

в 14 раз), а через 20 лет — 28,5 млрд, руб., т.-е. Больше чем в 50 раз (а на душу населения— 125 р., или в 34 раза больше).” (p. 135-136) [Improvement of the population's health depends first of all on the conditions in which it lives and works. Therefore, the reduction of the working day from 8 hours to 5 hours, a healthier working environment in enterprises and the radical change in housing conditions, which was discussed above, should lead to a significant improvement in the health of the population. However, the process of radical improvement of the physical health of mankind is a relatively slow process. Therefore, concerns about the fight against diseases, their prevention and the elimination of their consequences will remain one of the most important tasks of the working people's state for a long time. Expenditures on health care in 1927/28 amounted to a total of about 550 million rubles, or 3 rubles 68 kopecks per capita. According to the calculations of the present project, this amount can be increased in 15 years to 9.8 billion rubles, i.e., approximately 18 times (and per capita 51 rubles or 14 times), and in 20 years - 28.5 billion rubles, i.e. More than 50 times (and per capita - 125 rubles, or 34 times more)]

[103] Central Intelligence Agency. (1961). Prospects for construction of housing in the USSR (No. 95). “Table 2 USSR: Construction of Urban Housing 1946-65” (p. 25) “Year,Total,State and Cooperative Construction;1946-50,102.8,72.4;1951,27.6,20.3;1952,27.4,20.0;1953,30.8,23.2;1954,32.5,24.4;1955,33.4,25.0;1956,41.0,29.5;1957,52.0,38.5;1958,71.2,46.7;1959,80.4,53.2;1960,85.0,58.0;1961,96.2,63.8;1962,95.0,62.0;1963,97.0,62.0;1964,99.0,62.0;1965,102.0,63.0;"

[104] Central Intelligence Agency. (1961). Prospects for construction of housing in the USSR (No. 95). “The planned volume of housing in the first phase of the new program was achieved, with state housing exceeding the plan by 6 percent and private housing falling short by 11 percent. In 1957 and 1958 the annual plans were substantially exceeded, a s state housing received a high priority and private builders were strongly supported and encouraged by the government. In 1959 the plan for state housing was slightly exceeded and in 1960 was slightly underfulfilled, whereas private housing was somewhat below plan in 1959 and one-third less than planned in 1960.” (p. 6-7)

[105] Chelyabinsk State University, Bakanov, S. A., Khlyzov, V. E., & Chelyabinsk State University. (2023). All-Union Housing Census of the USSR in 1960: Organization and Results. Modern History of Russia, 13(2), 482–499. https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu24.2023.215. “Введение Право на жилище было закреплено в Конституции СССР только в 1977 г., однако патерналистски ориенти- рованное советское руководство с самого начала считало обеспечение граждан этим благом государственной задачей и важным элементом своей социальной поли- тики. Муниципализация и национализация жилья, осуществленная большевиками в 1917–1918 гг., привела к тому, что именно Советское государство, в лице своих агентов — местных советов, государственных учреждений и ведомств, стало фактическим распорядителем и собственником основной части жилищного фонда в стране. Необобществленный жилищный фонд, находившийся в личной собственности граждан, в основном концентрировался в сельской местности, но и в городах его доля оставалась довольно заметной, достигая 20–25 % жилой площади городского фонда. Необходимость распоряжения жильем в обобществленном секторе потребовала от государства создания системы учета жилья. Впервые он был организован в 1920 г. и затронул только обобществленную часть городского жилищного фонда. Затем в рамках Всесоюзной городской переписи населения 1923 г. была проведена перепись владений, строений и квартир всего городского населения.” (p. 482) [Introduction The right to housing was enshrined in the Constitution of the USSR only in 1977, but the paternalist-oriented Soviet leadership from the very beginning considered the provision of citizens to be a state task and an important element of its social policy. Municipalization and nationalization of housing, carried out by the Bolsheviks in 1917-1918, led to the fact that it was the Soviet state, represented by its agents - local councils, state institutions and departments, that became the de facto manager and owner of the main part of the housing stock in the country. The unsocialized housing stock, which was privately owned by citizens, was mainly concentrated in rural areas, but its share remained quite noticeable in cities, reaching 20-25% of the living area of the urban fund. The need to dispose of housing in the socialized sector required the state to create a housing accounting system. It was first organized in 1920 and affected only the generalized part of the city's housing stock. Then, within the framework of the All-Union City Census of the Population of 1923, a census of possessions, buildings and apartments of the entire urban population was conducted.]

[106] Tian-Shanskaia, S. (n.d.). Village life in late tsarist Russia. “The corners of the yard are boarded up to form pens for livestock. There can be from one to four pens. Plows, carts, harrows, and sleighs are stored under the awning. If a house has only one “shell” (srub), which is most often the case, then the owner also has a shed or small cabin for storing grain, flour, clothing, footwear, his wife’s trunks, and other house- hold items. These sheds or barns are quadrangular structures measuring eight to sixteen feet on a side.” (p. 121-122)

[107] Tian-Shanskaia, S. (n.d.). Village life in late tsarist Russia. “In front of the sheds and the houses, willow trees are planted as a fire-safety measure, and a village constable makes sure the peasants maintain this foliage. The willows can reach considerable size and lend a very pictur- esque aspect to some villages. Inside the sheds, benches line the walls, and shelves are fitted above the benches. Peasants sleep in the sheds during the spring, summer, and fall. For ordinary peasants, these sheds, or small barns, are usually clay-walled, although some log structures also exist, while the rich peasants known as kulaks build masonry sheds and outfit them with metal roofs and iron-plated doors.” (p. 122)

[108] Tian-Shanskaia, S. (n.d.). Village life in late tsarist Russia. “Every house has an outdoor cellar that is constructed nearby and has a thatched gable roof. A door and a flight of stairs lead inside. A cellar is used for storage of milk, radishes, beets, cabbage, pickled apples, and salted beet.

In winter, if it is cold in the pens outside, the sheep are kept in the main house, as are the cows and pigs that have given birth, along with their calves and piglets. Chickens make their winter roost under the awning in the yard.” (p. 123)

[200] Tian-Shanskaia, S. (n.d.). Village life in late tsarist Russia. “The stretch of the wall from the stove to the wall with the entrance door is also lined with a bench (zadnik), which in the comer joins another bench (pridelok) that runs up to the entrance door. Next to the protruding corner of the stove there is a post (the same height as the entrance door) that supports a beam, the other end of which rests on the log forming a lintel just above the door. The space between this beam and the wall running parallel to it is covered with planks to form a kind of raised platform or loft, on which older members of the family and small children sleep. The rest of the family is accommodated on the sleeping shelf atop the stove and on the benches lining the walls of the house. In the left-hand corner opposite the entryway stands a table. Normally a peasant’s house has one or two short portable benches that are brought to the table for dinner and supper. ” (p. 120)

[109] Engel, B., & Rogge, N. (Eds.). (2024). Large Housing Estates under Socialism: Experiences and Perspectives on Sustainable Development of Mass Housing Districts (Vol. 75). transcript Verlag. https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839467824. “At the time of the construction of housing estates, people had high hopes for them. There was great excitement, since new apartments in modernist housing estates offered major improvements in living quality. Many of the previous residential units were without running water (or cold water only), without showers or baths, without indoor toilets, and without central heating. This made people enthusiastic about newly constructed housing estates, which offered a modern living style. Since social mixing within housing estates was a common aim of policymakers and planners, both working-class and middle- class families had the chance to live in a new, modern apartment.” (p. 36)

[110] Engel, B., & Rogge, N. (Eds.). (2024). Large Housing Estates under Socialism: Experiences and Perspectives on Sustainable Development of Mass Housing Districts (Vol. 75). transcript Verlag. https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839467824. “The shortage of residential space in many large cities and the question about how this can be alleviated takes us to the existing large residential housing estates. These settlements are of great significance when it comes to providing living space for broad sections of the population now and in the future—after all, millions of people live there. ” (p. 12)

[111] Kholodilin, K. A., Limonov, L. E., & Waltl, S. R. (2021). Housing rent dynamics and rent regulation in St. Petersburg (1880–1917). Explorations in Economic History, 81, 101398. “In pre-Soviet St. Petersburg, the cost of housing is best understood by studying housing rents because, indeed, the vast majority of city dwellers were renters. During the period under study, the homeownership rate in St. Petersburg was low, fluctuating around 3.6%. Thus, an analysis of the rental market is of great importance.” (p. 2)

[201] Kholodilin, K. A., Limonov, L. E., & Waltl, S. R. (2021). Housing rent dynamics and rent regulation in St. Petersburg (1880–1917). Explorations in Economic History, 81, 101398. “We find that housing rents were quite stable between 1880 and the early 1890s. This fundamentally changes from 1905 onward: the second part of our observation window covers an eventful period of Russian and world history, which is reflected by the turbulence in the rental market. Never before seen up- and down-swings characterize this period. A particularly strong rise in rents is observed following the outbreak of World War I.” (p. 2)

[112] Kholodilin, K. A., Limonov, L. E., & Waltl, S. R. (2021). Housing rent dynamics and rent regulation in St. Petersburg (1880–1917). Explorations in Economic History, 81, 101398. “Table 1” (p. 5)

[113] Morton, H. W. (1984). Housing in the Soviet Union. Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science, 35(3), 69–80. “Soviet Russia inherited, along with an underdeveloped economy, a predominantly rural population. Only two cities, Moscow and Petrograd (now Lenin-grad), had populations of more than 1 million. Before 1917 most of the urban housing consisted of small, wooden, single-story, one-family homes, almost all of which lacked basic utilities.” (p. 70)

[114] Morton, H. W. (1984). Housing in the Soviet Union. Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science, 35(3), 69–80. “Soviet Russia inherited, along with an underdeveloped economy, a predominantly rural population. Only two cities, Moscow and Petrograd (now Lenin-grad), had populations of more than 1 million. Before 1917 most of the urban housing consisted of small, wooden, single-story, one-family homes, almost all of which lacked basic utilities.” (p. 70)

[115] Строительство Москвы [Construction of Moscow]. (1928, January). Ежемесячный журнал Московского совета рабочих, крестьянских и красноармейских депутатов [Monthly Journal of the Moscow Soviet of Workers, Peasants, and Red Army Deputies], 5th year of publication. “Электрификация подносковного участка Северных жел. дор. Работы по электрификании участка Мо-сква-Мытищи, Северных ж. д., в настоящее время знаительно подвинулись вперед. Все подготовительные путевые и станционные сооружения на этом участке уже закончены. На всех остановочных пунктах вы-с троены вновь высокие платформы, едеаны пешеходные мосты, пути переложены и приведены в тот вид, какими они должны быть уже при электрической тяге. Подвижной состав строится на Мытищинском заводе. К сборке первых вагонов уже приступлено. Моторы к вагонам строит ГЭТ. По установленной и утвержденной СТО программе, все моторы должны быть готовы и монтированы на вагонах в такой срок, чтобы к 1 апреля 1929 года было открыто электрифицированное движение. Остальное электрическое оборудование (подстанции и контактный провод) заказаны за границей. Исполнительные проекты установки его на месте закончены и она уже поступает на Северную дорогу.” (p. 24) [Electrification of the Moscow Section of the Northern Railways. Work on the electrification of the Moscow-Mytishchi section of the Northern Railway has now advanced significantly. All preparatory track and stationary structures on this section have been completed. At all stopping points, new platforms have been built, pedestrian bridges have been made, tracks have been relaid and brought to the form they should be with electric traction. Rolling stock is being built at the Mytishchi plant. Assembly of the first cars has already begun. Motors for the cars are being built by GET. According to the program approved by the STO, all motors must be ready and installed on the cars in such a time that by April 1, 1929, electric traffic can be opened. The rest of the electrical equipment (substation and contact wire) is ordered abroad. Executive projects for the installation sites are established, and it is already arriving at the Northern Railway.]

[116] Bliznakov, M. (1993). Soviet housing during the experiment years, 1918–1933. In W. C. Brumfield & B. A. Ruble (Eds.), Russian housing in the modern age: Design and social history(pp. 87–112). “With the end of the New Economic Policy period and the inauguration of the first Five-Year Plan (1928-32), the central government took sole responsibility for the design and construction of workers’ housing, a task which was to be facilitated by industrializing the construction process and the mass production of a limited number of building types. In 1928, Moisei Ginzburg was appointed to organize and head the Standardization Section of the Construction Committee for the Russian Republic (Stroikom RSFSR). He was joined by Viacheslav Vladimirov and Aleksandr Pasternak (both graduates of MIGI), Grigorii Sum-Shik (a 1928 graduate of MVTU), and Mikhail Barshch (a 1926 graduate of Vkhutemas). Within three months, Ginzburg’s group produced five types of housing units in several variations to be prefabricated and speedily assembled at sites all over Russia. In addition to economic and technical considerations, the housing units were to ease “the transition to a new, socially superior way of life.’ The housing units were actually small individual apartments of the so-called transitional type, consisting of one or two bedrooms (or sleeping alcoves), a living room with built-in kitchen alcove, and a bath (or toilet and lavatory). Comparative analysis of the units demonstrated that their traditional arrangements around a stairway or a corridor (types A, B, C), or their stacking on two floors (types D and E), was less cost-effective than the split-level, type F unit. All apartment units were carefully studied (Figs. 41, 42). Time-and-motion analysis of each space, daylight penetration in each room, natural through-ventilation, and the efficient use of “unutilized height of service areas (hallways, kitchen, bathroom) considerably increased the economic efficiency of an apartment of the old type.’’ Ginzburg pointed out that “‘the F type unit is important as a step along the road toward a communal form of housing, in keeping with the social process of differentiation of the family and the increased use of collective facilities. Solving the problem of the living unit will enable us to solve the problem of building on a community and regional scale.’’ Studies of the household rational organization, including time-and-motion measures of room layouts and of kitchen arrangements, were a common practice in the Frankfurt am Main city office headed by Ernst May. Grete Schutte-Lichotzky, who worked with May in Frankfurt before moving with him to Moscow, designed the well-known Frankfurt Kitchen (1925) based on these studies. The work of May’s office was widely publicized. More than 3,000 workers’ apartments were built around Frankfurt by the time an exhibition, ‘““The New Flat and Its Interiors,’ was mounted (1925) with full-size models of furnished apartments. This work was a direct source for Ginzburg’s subsequent studies of communal houses, coupled with the Soviet obsession with Taylorism and its application to all aspects of life. Ginzburg’s group promoted the F unit as most economical, yet its novel spatial qualities made this unit very popular. The F unit was adapted for the Narkomfin (Peoples Commissariat of Finances) apartment house, built in 1928-30 by Ginzburg, in collaboration with the architecture student Ignatii Milinis, on Novinskii (now Tchaikovskii) Street. The building, still in use today, consists of two volumes (Figs. 43, 44). The housing units are stacked in a five-story block, lifted above ground on stilts. An enclosed walkway at the second level connects the housing to the community building containing a kitchen and canteen, meeting and hobby rooms, and a kindergarten.” (p. 107-108)

EXTRA INFO SECTION 3

[117] Fisher, J. C. (1962). Planning the City of Socialist Man. Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 28 (4), 251–265. https://doi.org/10.1080/01944366208979451. “Though the existing urban reality in Eastern Europe does not appear as yet to have been strongly influenced by Marxist philosophy, nevertheless the influence on practical planning objectives is clear. There are four general, but basic, elements characteristic of socialist urban planning: 1. Standardization: The establishment of norms for the standardization of housing or “living space” has become an operational part of socialist city planning. In order to achieve urban uniformity and, perhaps even more important, to maximize the effectiveness of limited investments, “it is necessary to regulate in a socially correct way the standard of satisfaction of housing needs.”  Thus, “in accordance with the discussed ordinance, the average size of apartment in houses constructed by housing cooperatives of the tenant type cannot exceed 50 square meters, and the maximum [referring to other construction types] 71 square meters of floor space.. . .” All housing construction in Poland at the present time must conform to the legally established norms. The size of apartments assigned in new projects depends on the number in the family. Single people and married couples without children are segregated into special units containing the legally-delimited living space for one or two persons. Apartments for larger families are in units clustered together adjacent to service areas for the families. Specifically the writer has found that new apartments for families with children in cooperative developments in Warsaw aver- age about 42 square meters of total floor area. Out of this, 34 square meters is the “living space” area (living room, bedroom, dining room). 2. Proper Size of a Town: Another planning feature is that the growth and size of cities will have definite restrictions. The critical element in determining the limits of any particular urban agglomeration is “the size of the productive substance”-the labor force- within it. Thus, its size is determined by the ratio of employed population to total population: Proper size of a town depends, first of all, upon its productive framework and upon the number of people employed in its establishments and institutions.. . . Proper proportion between the size of the city’s creative groups, the size of the servicing groups, and the total number of inhabitants should always be maintained. Subsequently, any further development of the town should be adjusted proportionately to the increase of its productive substance? Any increase in the size of the urban complex depends, first of all, upon calculation of the “city- forming” segment of the population. According to a Soviet definition, “city-forming” includes employees of all basic industries, transportation and construction enterprises, administrative units above the city level, educational, scientific, and medical institutions. 3. The City’s Center: The distinctive character of the socialist conception of the city’s center is that it functions not as an area of retail concentration but as the political-cultural-administrative center. The city center receives priority in programming for the total urban complex: it is the vital part necessary to coordinate the entire complex. The usual center in reconstructed cities has a large square designed to provide room for parading troops and for throngs of people on holidays. The center also serves as a setting for the principal public buildings and monuments. The only commercial elements programmed for the socialist center are the hotel for tourists, the single department store, and perhaps a restaurant and coffee shop. The more closely the socialist center approaches the above outlined concept, the more radically will it depart from the traditional capitalist concept of the central business district. Land costs and the prices of goods are uniform throughout the entire socialist urban complex. The center is an area where the needs of the population of the entire regional complex, as set by the state, are administered, but in which the masses of the population have little need to venture ex- cept for state holidays and occasional visits to the one department store, the restaurant, and the coffee shop. 4. Neighborhood Unit Concept: The basic tool of socialist planners in their attempt to create “urban uniformity” is today the division and construction of cities by neighborhood units. All the preceding features of socialist planning have gradually merged to support an elaborate division of the city into self- contained units. The planned structure of the population defines the ultimate size of the city, and thus indicates the size and number of neighborhood units and the relationship of each unit’s center to the administrative core.” (p. 252-253)

[118] Hatherley, O. (2015, June). Housing in the Eastern Bloc. The Architectural Review. https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/housing-in-the-eastern-bloc. “Although the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact countries were not the inventors of industrialised housing – it has a long history, and was used en masse by such disparate countries as Sweden and France – they deployed it on a greater scale than anywhere else on earth. From the 1950s onwards, nearly all housing (75 per cent of all Soviet stock by 1991) had been constructed from industrially produced concrete panels slotted together, with such a degree of automation – production lines and gantry cranes eliminating much of the need for on-site labour, let alone ‘craftsmanship’. The other countries in the Soviet sphere of influence adopted similar construction projects, so you can have remarkably similar housing appearing in Rostock and Ulan Bator.”

[119] Hatherley, O. (2015, June). Housing in the Eastern Bloc. The Architectural Review. https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/housing-in-the-eastern-bloc. “Some effort from the late 1960s onwards was put into making sure the style was varied, even if the construction technology remained identical. Sometimes this was literally a matter of applied ornament – in the Caucasian and Central Asian republics of the Soviet Union, many of the panels came with precast louvres, brise-soleil and Brutalo-Islamic detail; elsewhere, mosaics on revolutionary or national themes enlivened the blank compositions. In other places, the attempts to enliven the slabs were more serious. At the Šeškinė estate in Vilnius, curved rather than rectilinear panels were placed in irregular patterns on the blocks, giving them a dashing, Mendelsohn-goes-steampunk appearance; similarly, in Wrocław, in Poland, the factories produced convex and concave béton brut segments, producing expressionistic, dynamic facades.”

[120] Hatherley, O. (2015, June). Housing in the Eastern Bloc. The Architectural Review. https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/housing-in-the-eastern-bloc. “On its own terms – solving a problem, fast – industrialised housing in the Warsaw Pact countries is one of the few real housing successes of the last century. Now, after blocks in many countries have been insulated and painted in pastel colours, they’re in better condition than many in the West. They were originally, and today sometimes still are, much more mixed in employment and class than council housing became from the ’70s on.”

[121] Bunkse, E. V. (1979). The Role of a Humane Environment in Soviet Urban Planning. Geographical Review, 69 (4), 379–394. JSTOR. http://www.jstor.org/stable/214802. “Below the level of philosophical abstractions lies the reality of the human habitat as it is developed through the methods of industrialization. This reality consists of industrially manufactured, standardized tower blocks or "great-panel" structures. In Riga the first of the great-panel houses was erected in 1959. Since then, construction has been increasingly of serial types, labelled L-316, M-3, and, the most widespread, I-464. Each of these types was developed in Moscow, but the Latvian architectural institute has modified details to suit local conditions. The modifications, however, are minor. For example, L-316 is employed in construction of four- and five-story apart- ment blocks. In Riga the dimension of rooms from windows to rear walls has been made narrower (4.80 meters) than elsewhere in the Soviet Union for the ostensible reason of providing more light and ventilation in a climate with a high incidence of cloudy days. The standard apartment consists of two rooms and a bath. M-3 is used to construct two- to three-story buildings, but it is more common in smaller cities than in Riga. The I-464 Series is the basic unit employed in the principal micro- boroughs of Riga. The advantage of this series is the extremely low cost of construc- tion, achieved by having interior walls bear most of the weight. Recently, L3-400 was developed expressly for Latvian conditions. The new type is the most economical because it allows flexibility in relating the building mass to terrain. The use of pre- planned, manufactured housing in Riga, as in other cities of the Soviet Union, fits with overall planning that is predicated on the doctrine of complete control over landscape formation at all levels. As Rozenbergs summed up the process, from villages to cities there are rationally determined zones of production, boroughs for living, social and cultural institutions, service establishments, and energy provisions, as well as a transportation net. Rozenbergs stressed that these facilities secure "for the human the best conditions for working, living, and recreation." She perceived the city of the future emerging from the apartment complexes that have been erected within the cities of Latvia—a city conceived with the "best conditions of life and work in mind."” (p. 390)

[122] Central Intelligence Agency. (1961). Prospects for construction of housing in the USSR (No. 95). “In the light of these difficulties, it is not surprising that construction of housing by the large-panel method has fallen short of expectations. In 1960, only 1.5 million sq m of large-panel housing was built, out of a planned total of more than 4 million sq m. Constriction by the large-panel method has been of poorer quality and has cost more than was expected.” (p. 12)

[123] Engel, B., & Rogge, N. (Eds.). (2024). Large Housing Estates under Socialism: Experiences and Perspectives on Sustainable Development of Mass Housing Districts (Vol. 75). transcript Verlag. https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839467824. “Large housing estates potentially have a valuable role to play in providing housing. The dwellings there are highly adaptable, making them suitable for designing a living environment with few barriers. Additionally, the estates have a high proportion of open spaces, which becomes increasingly relevant when thinking of climate-resilient neighborhoods. They offer extensive and varied housing options and living conditions that are interesting for different groups in the population. In addition to comparatively low rents, the comprehensive range of existing amenities and services that the estates offer are very important for certain types of households). At the same time, the districts require extensive renewal and improvement to make them capable of responding to new societal, functional, and technical needs. It is necessary to make technical improvements to the aging building stock, to expand the mix of dwelling types and offerings, and to create an attractive environment. The requisite renovation strategies necessitate measures at different levels and different scales—including an improvement of the spatial-structural organization and orientation, a redesign of the open spaces, and new mobility concepts and services. , see Figure 3, Figure 4” (p. 13-14)

[124] Central Intelligence Agency. (1957). Economic intelligence report: Housing in the USSR (Report No. 30). U.S. Government Printing Office. “The First Five Year Plan called for a n investment of 4 billion rubles in new state housing -- 9 percent of total state investments. Although actual expenditures exceeded the plan, the cost of construction rose considerably, and the plan for increased living space was fulfilled by less than 50 percent in the state sector. The First Five Year Plan specified that total private housing investment should total 965 million rubles, of which 20 million were to be provided by the state in the form of long-term loans. There is no information on actual expenditures. It is doubtful that any loans were granted during this time because of the changed policy toward private building after 1930. On the basis of the amount of private housing built, it is estimated that during this time urban dwellers spent about 200 million rubles on private housing.” (p. 28)

[125] Hess, P. B., & Tammaru, T. (Eds.). (2019). Housing Estates in the Baltic Countries: The Legacy of Central Planning in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Springer. ”The first apartment houses built using prefabricated panel walls (in the 1960s) took advantage of industrial production to orchestrate residential building more cheaply. This was followed by improved standard designs, introduced in the USSR in the mid-1970s and used widely by the 1980s . Each housing unit included‘modern’ conveniences—kitchens, washrooms and toilets, central heating, large windows. As the design process matured and mechanisms within it advanced during subsequent iterations, the height of residential buildings increased and the size of individual dwelling units expanded.” (p. 141)

[126] Hess, P. B., & Tammaru, T. (Eds.). (2019). Housing Estates in the Baltic Countries: The Legacy of Central Planning in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Springer. “Mass housing was a large-scale enterprise in Lithuania: Vilnius’ housing stock multiplied nearly five times between 1945 and 1990” (p. 182)

[127] Hess, P. B., & Tammaru, T. (Eds.). (2019). Housing Estates in the Baltic Countries: The Legacy of Central Planning in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Springer. ”Naturally, the construction process had to start somewhere. The 1968 plan suggested the initial construction order to enable habitation of the first parts of the district while subsequent construction occurred. Certain buildings had to be erected first: two courtyards with 9-storey and grouped 5-storey residential buildings, one school, three kindergartens and one of the planned service centres. Interestingly, Centre No. 2 became the first that was built. The rationale to start construction activities in this sector of the new district was its proximity to Mustamäe. Although Mustamäe was not yet finished, its infrastructure and utilities could be used; for example, the initial dwellings in Väike-Õismäe could temporarily be heated from boilers from Mustamäe (until the heating system for Väike-Õismäe was complete). In reality, major investments related to the physical preparation of the construction site became the prerequisites without which housing construction could not be launched in Soviet Tallinn. The first Väike-Õismäe plan paid a great deal of attention to infrastructure: power supply, central heating, water, sewage, and stormwater sewers. It was clearly stated, for example, that construction in Väike-Õismäe could not begin before sewage collector No. 3 had been installed.” (p. 283)

[128] Fisher, J. C. (1962). Planning the City of Socialist Man. Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 28 (4), 251–265. https://doi.org/10.1080/01944366208979451. “Nowa Huta in Poland has long symbolized the very essence of a socialist new city. Located ten miles from Cracow in Southern Poland, the city houses the workers employed in the major steel mill in Poland, with an annual steel production of over 1.5 million tons. A city of 100,000 now stands where a few short years ago there were only open fields. The city was planned to balance Nowa Huta’s residential area against the vast layout of the industrial complex.” (p. 256)

[129] Fisher, J. C. (1962). Planning the City of Socialist Man. Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 28 (4), 251–265. https://doi.org/10.1080/01944366208979451. “It is in Yugoslavia, however, that, at the moment, the model of a city which conforms in broad terms to the tenets of socialist planning is found. In the north, in the Republic of Slovenia, lies Velenje, center for a coal district. The planned population is set at 30,000 and at the present time the city has attained somewhat less than half of that figure. The average density of the residential area is 183 inhabitants per hectare—relatively high due to the apartment house nature of the complex. The residential area is divided into four small neighborhood units, equipped with school, shop- ping center and local public buildings. The entire residential complex is located around a large open square for pedestrian use where civic, cultural, and educational buildings have been placed to serve the whole district. The center itself offers the impression, not of a potential area of high concentration of retail goods and services, but as a point of orientation, a muted centripetal force which provides a subtle unity to the entire complex. The standardization of residential construction, gradual population influx, distinct neighborhood units-each with corresponding services-located around an administrative-cultural center, and a high quality of construction and design suggest that Velenje today takes first place in both the planning and realization of a “socialist” city. One can, with proper insight, envisage Velenje as an ideal urbanistic and architectural expression of socialist realism.” (p. 256-257)

[130] Bunkse, E. V. (1979). The Role of a Humane Environment in Soviet Urban Planning. Geographical Review, 69 (4), 379–394. JSTOR. http://www.jstor.org/stable/214802. “In terms of the construction process, the most radical aspect of the central plan for Soviet urbanization was the creation of an immense housing industry along mass-production lines in order to reconstruct war-devastated cities and to build new ones. The scale and the magnitude of the entire effort were awesome, predicated on economy and speed in the construction process. Housing design and construction had to be standardized for mass production. The Academy of Architecture initially made fifty series of residential-housing designs-more than a thousand separate designs were eventually approved-and approximately two hundred designs, called "type projects," for municipal buildings.' Many major structural elements such as wall panels, floors, and stairs were standardized and manufactured in factories. The Soviets regarded as particularly important the application of a process of continuous rolling to the manufacture of structural elements of reinforced concrete-a process that speeded production and cut costs by reducing the amount of material used in buildings.'" The function of a building site was altered from the traditional in situ production of a structure to a place for the assembly of manufactured building parts."' In short, the backbone of the Soviet housing construction system is mass pro- duction and on-site assembly. Standardization was also carried into the design of individual apartments, and eventually even apartment furniture was designed and manufactured to fit basic apartment models. The standard apartment was geared to the small family and con- sisted of one or two rooms, with kitchen facilities incorporated into the living area. The arrangement was explained as a convenience for the woman, but the underlying rationale was to cut costs whenever possible. Further economies were achieved by eliminating circulation spaces such as corridors, by reducing service spaces to a mini- mum, and by lowering ceiling heights. The initial scheme was made viable by the substitution of institutional services such as child-care centers and dining halls for functions that might normally have been performed in the confines of the individual apartment.” (p. 384-386)

[131] Bunkse, E. V. (1979). The Role of a Humane Environment in Soviet Urban Planning. Geographical Review, 69 (4), 379–394. JSTOR. http://www.jstor.org/stable/214802. “Assembled buildings were fitted into a designed housing district that the Soviets call a microborough (also translated as microrayon or microdistrict). The micro- borough consists of residential superblocks and was conceived as a self-sufficient unit containing the essential social and cultural services for as many as several hundred thousand people.9 Microboroughs were to be located on the peripheries of city cores, to which they would be tied by transportation arteries and to which they would look for the major administrative, commercial, and cultural services. Close proximity to rural lands, water bodies, and forests would provide for interaction with nature. Since the 1960s the Soviets have formalized the notion of a semiurban zone or fringe that provides outdoor recreation and communal activities and that serves as a fresh air reservoir for the city. ” (p. 386)

[132] Bunkse, E. V. (1979). The Role of a Humane Environment in Soviet Urban Planning. Geographical Review, 69 (4), 379–394. JSTOR. http://www.jstor.org/stable/214802. “After 1944 the context of Riga's development altered radically. Riga became an important port for a large segment of the western Soviet Union. But more important was the city's incorporation into the socioeconomic system of the Soviet Union. The face of the city was transformed according to the projected ideals of Soviet planners. Allegedly the metamorphosis was already perceptible in 1962 when Arija Rozen- bergs assessed the impact of Soviet planning on Latvian cities. She described a complete transformation of Latvian urban landscapes from their previous character. The critical element in that transformation was the construction of apartment buildings on a large scale, usually on the periphery of urban cores. For Rozenbergs the most significant aspect was that Latvian cities had "acquired the imprint characteristic of Socialist cities, where everything is subordinated to the interests of working peoples." She contended that whereas pre-Soviet Riga was differentiated by a fine, well-developed and well-serviced central area and a poor, ill-serviced periphery, under the Soviets the dichotomy was being "liquidated."” (p. 382-383)

[133] Bliznakov, M. (1993). Soviet housing during the experiment years, 1918–1933. In W. C. Brumfield & B. A. Ruble (Eds.), Russian housing in the modern age: Design and social history(pp. 87–112). ”The transitional housing type accommodated private family life (bed-rooms, bath, and kitchen) and, whenever built according to specifications, also provided ample communal spaces for joint activities: child care and education, adult education and recreation, meeting and hobby rooms, and often a canteen with dining room.” (p. 113)

[134] Bliznakov, M. (1993). Soviet housing during the experiment years, 1918–1933. In W. C. Brumfield & B. A. Ruble (Eds.), Russian housing in the modern age: Design and social history(pp. 87–112). ”Marx had postulated and Lenin accepted the dissolution of the family as a private economic entity (the household) and its replacement with the collective domestic economy (communal preparation and distribution of food). The individual, therefore, needed privacy for relaxation, sleeping, personal hygiene, and sexual life. These activities could easily be accommodated in one room. Actually communal houses for singles were built during the 1920s, yet they were all for temporary inhabitants. Hostels, students’ and workers’ dormitories, and housing for unmarried factory workers often had lounges and canteens, and sometimes a full range of common spaces. The housing complex for 2,000 students built (1929-30) by Ivan Nikolaev (a 1925 graduate of MVTU) in Moscow consisted of an eight-story block with bedrooms (6 square meters) for double occupancy and a three-story communal building attached to it (Fig. 47). The latter accommodated a thousand-seat auditorium, a gymnasium, dining room and cafeteria, study hall and reading room with study cubicles, club rooms, medical facilities, laundry, a day-care center, and so on. The communal living idea found strong support among students and young workers. Several similar hostels were built in Moscow (one on the Kotel’nicheskaia Embankment) and in other cities.” (p. 113)

[135] Bliznakov, M. (1993). Soviet housing during the experiment years, 1918–1933. In W. C. Brumfield & B. A. Ruble (Eds.), Russian housing in the modern age: Design and social history(pp. 87–112). “The ultimate house-commune, accepted for mass construction as a building type, was designed in 1929 by the Stroikom group members Barshch and Vladimirov (Fig. 48). According to the young authors, The widespread housing types today, in bourgeois countries and in ours, are all, without exception, individual apartments preserving the family as an economically independent unit... . All so-called “workers’ dwellings” created by the bourgeois society are either simple barracks without any conveniences, or huts and cottages where a decent and cultured life is unthinkable. The new socialist community needs correspondingly new housing types, responsive to the new way of life, and the new economic and cultural needs of the population. ... Public services for workers’ families (food preparation, cleaning, laundry), for their children (education, care, and supervision), and for the cultural and recreational needs of the workers and their children could and should be socialized. Therefore, all spaces serving an entire collective ... should be well equipped public rooms for dining, rest, reading, exercise, and for children’s needs. Only bedrooms and rooms for individual rest and study should be recognized as separate individual spaces. ...The house-commune not only solved a new the problem of spatial differentiation but also gives depth and further develops this problem. The most important social achievement of the house-commune ... is in the organic, indissoluble bond of the spaces serving the inhabitants collectively and each of its members individually Only such an absolutely new type of housing ... where the spaces for common use are not separated from the spaces for individual lodging ... but public and private premises supplement each other ... only such a housing could actually be called a communal house.”” (p. 113-114)

[136] Chelyabinsk State University, Bakanov, S. A., Khlyzov, V. E., & Chelyabinsk State University. (2023). All-Union Housing Census of the USSR in 1960: Organization and Results. Modern History of Russia, 13(2), 482–499. https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu24.2023.215. “Во второй половине 1950-х гг. советское правительство предприняло реформы в деле организации жилищного строительства. Объемы ввода нового жилья в годы шестой пятилетки выросли вдвое по отношению к предыдущему периоду и должны были наращиваться в дальнейшем. Для рационального использования капиталовложений при реализации масштабной программы массового жилищного строительства и оценки эффективности самой программы, правительству потребовалось получение точных сведений о реальном наличии и состоянии жилищного фонда, его строительных характеристиках, благоустройстве и заселенности, причем в разрезе отдельных регионов и территорий.” (p. 483) [In the second half of the 1950s, the Soviet government undertook reforms in the organization of housing construction. The volume of new housing commissioning in the sixth five-year plan doubled compared to the previous period and was to increase in the future. For the rational use of capital investments in the implementation of a large-scale mass housing construction program and to assess the effectiveness of the program itself, the government needed to obtain accurate information on the real availability and condition of the housing stock, its construction characteristics, improvement and population, and in the context of individual regions and territories.]

[137] Hess, P. B., & Tammaru, T. (Eds.). (2019). Housing Estates in the Baltic Countries: The Legacy of Central Planning in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Springer. “Housing estates arose in the decades following World War II in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to meet desperate housing needs, but Baltic housing estates were distinguished from housing estates elsewhere in the Soviet Union, even though all were built under the same strictly controlled and centrally administered Soviet system. It was compulsory to follow the USSR norms for housing estates in the Baltic countries, especially those norms related to the design of apartment buildings; nonetheless, a detectable Western influence on town planning, especially from Nordic countries, was absorbed by the Baltic countries during the Soviet years. Furthermore, the Baltic countries served as a bridge that allowed these‘imported’ ideas to travel further to the East, and Nordic housing estates consequently became exemplars for housing estates throughout the USSR.” (p. 10-11)

[138] Hess, P. B., & Tammaru, T. (Eds.). (2019). Housing Estates in the Baltic Countries: The Legacy of Central Planning in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Springer. “There was popular excitement about new apartment buildings in the 1950s. These first-generation buildings contained signi cant improvements over the existing housing stock, with basic comfort facilities inside apartments. The design of housing estates initially emphasised ample shared communal space outside individual apartments—within schools, child care centres, Culture Halls, social clubs, saunas, shared dining, sports and recreation—in which individual Soviets were envisioned to maximise their participation in socialist life. In the first generation of standardised housing, apartments were small, while service networks and community space in housing estates were intended to be rich. With abundant services in every superblock and mikrorayon, people were expected to spend a great deal of time away from their apartment, participating in a structured socialist life. Daily services such as kindergartens, schools, food shops, canteens, clubs, housing unit administration services, sports fields and playgrounds had to be located within the boundaries of a given mikrorayon and no further than 400 metres from any residence. Large employers often provided space for leisure activity in Culture Halls. In reality, however, these service networks were undersupplied, and there was a chronic shortage of nearby commercial opportunities. In later-generation standardised housing, when it was evident that services could not be supplied at levels suggested in housing estates norms (subscribing to socialist doctrine), individual apartments within apartment buildings were designed to be larger. For example, a communal one-bedroom apartment only 45 m2 in size was the most common, and it constituted 51% of the dwellings in the large Lithuanian housing estate Karoliniškės. In the more spacious apartments, toilet and bath were separated, and comfort amenities increased in number both within apartments and apartment buildings; for example, interior trash receptacles and elevators were installed in apartment buildings taller than ve storeys. Architects attempted to improve on standardised designs by enlarging the interior space of apartments and creating flexible configurations of interior space in dwellings to provide families with greater comfort. Plans were drafted for experimental series of apartment buildings in which apartments were equipped with corner balconies, larger service rooms and larger kitchens. Consequently, older housing estates now possess cramped apartments but more human-scaled exterior space (such as the older parts of Ķengarags in Riga, Mustamäe in Tallinn and Lazdynai in Vilnius), while later-period Soviet-era housing estates have larger apartments but repetitive and monumental exterior space not appropriately scaled for pedestrians (such as Plavnieki in Riga, Lasnamäe in Tallinn and Justinskes in Vilnius).” (p. 18-19)

[139] Hess, P. B., & Tammaru, T. (Eds.). (2019). Housing Estates in the Baltic Countries: The Legacy of Central Planning in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Springer. ”Public transport and automobile transport have vastly improved since socialist times in Baltic cities, with better connections to city centres. The socialist system was a virtually carless society (for the average resident), but Soviet-era planners always had lofty aspirations for urban grandiosity and therefore built wide and spacious roads unwittingly capable of accommodating today’s significantly higher traffic volumes. Housing estates were rather grand places with large infrastructure and generous space between buildings, and the‘extra space’ is now available for other uses, including automobile parking. Another important element of the improved relative location pertains to services: new commercial outlets have been added to housing estates, especially shopping centres within or adjacent to residential districts. This has improved the comfort and convenience of living in housing estates because they now contain fitness centres and swimming pools, schools (for all levels), cinemas and shopping malls. These additions to housing estates have helped shift the urban form of Baltic cities in part from compact to sprawling, as many of these new services are provided in automobile-friendly (more than pedestrian-friendly) environments.” (p. 20)

Hess, P. B., & Tammaru, T. (Eds.). (2019). Housing Estates in the Baltic Countries: The Legacy of Central Planning in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Springer. ”The competition also focused on social planning, introducing a tiered system of public, cultural and consumer services. Tiers were based on the estimated needs of 1000 inhabitants and were de ned by frequency of use: daily use sites, periodic use facilities (visited two to three times per week), and episodic use facilities, used twice or three times monthly. The core unit of the microrayon was a group of residential buildings for 2000 inhabitants, further grouped into a microrayon with 9000–12,000 inhabitants. Services usually accessed on a daily basis included kindergartens, schools, food shops, canteens, clubs, housing unit administration services, sports elds and playgrounds. These were all located within the boundaries of a given microrayon, and no further than 400 m from any one home. All first-tier public buildings were expected to follow standard designs and consist of prefabricated parts. Second-tier facilities, such as cinemas, libraries, department stores and healthcare facilities, were to be built for the larger residential area (made of several microrayons) and intended to be used periodically. Once these new types of large-scale residential districts began to emerge, management and financing had to be transferred from enterprises to municipal authorities and local governments, who then became responsible for both planning and construction. This was perhaps the most significant change in the modernisation of Soviet urban planning.” (p. 75)

[140] Hess, P. B., & Tammaru, T. (Eds.). (2019). Housing Estates in the Baltic Countries: The Legacy of Central Planning in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Springer. “Housing estates arose in the decades following World War II in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to meet desperate housing needs, but Baltic housing estates were distinguished from housing estates elsewhere in the Soviet Union, even though all were built under the same strictly controlled and centrally administered Soviet system. It was compulsory to follow the USSR norms for housing estates in the Baltic countries, especially those norms related to the design of apartment buildings; nonetheless, a detectable Western influence on town planning, especially from Nordic countries, was absorbed by the Baltic countries during the Soviet years. Furthermore, the Baltic countries served as a bridge that allowed these‘imported’ ideas to travel further to the East, and Nordic housing estates consequently became exemplars for housing estates throughout the USSR.” (p. 10-11)

[141] Hess, P. B., & Tammaru, T. (Eds.). (2019). Housing Estates in the Baltic Countries: The Legacy of Central Planning in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Springer. “There was popular excitement about new apartment buildings in the 1950s. These first-generation buildings contained signi cant improvements over the existing housing stock, with basic comfort facilities inside apartments. The design of housing estates initially emphasised ample shared communal space outside individual apartments—within schools, child care centres, Culture Halls, social clubs, saunas, shared dining, sports and recreation—in which individual Soviets were envisioned to maximise their participation in socialist life. In the first generation of standardised housing, apartments were small, while service networks and community space in housing estates were intended to be rich. With abundant services in every superblock and mikrorayon, people were expected to spend a great deal of time away from their apartment, participating in a structured socialist life. Daily services such as kindergartens, schools, food shops, canteens, clubs, housing unit administration services, sports fields and playgrounds had to be located within the boundaries of a given mikrorayon and no further than 400 metres from any residence. Large employers often provided space for leisure activity in Culture Halls. In reality, however, these service networks were undersupplied, and there was a chronic shortage of nearby commercial opportunities. In later-generation standardised housing, when it was evident that services could not be supplied at levels suggested in housing estates norms (subscribing to socialist doctrine), individual apartments within apartment buildings were designed to be larger. For example, a communal one-bedroom apartment only 45 m2 in size was the most common, and it constituted 51% of the dwellings in the large Lithuanian housing estate Karoliniškės. In the more spacious apartments, toilet and bath were separated, and comfort amenities increased in number both within apartments and apartment buildings; for example, interior trash receptacles and elevators were installed in apartment buildings taller than ve storeys. Architects attempted to improve on standardised designs by enlarging the interior space of apartments and creating flexible configurations of interior space in dwellings to provide families with greater comfort. Plans were drafted for experimental series of apartment buildings in which apartments were equipped with corner balconies, larger service rooms and larger kitchens. Consequently, older housing estates now possess cramped apartments but more human-scaled exterior space (such as the older parts of Ķengarags in Riga, Mustamäe in Tallinn and Lazdynai in Vilnius), while later-period Soviet-era housing estates have larger apartments but repetitive and monumental exterior space not appropriately scaled for pedestrians (such as Plavnieki in Riga, Lasnamäe in Tallinn and Justinskes in Vilnius).” (p. 18-19)

[142] Hess, P. B., & Tammaru, T. (Eds.). (2019). Housing Estates in the Baltic Countries: The Legacy of Central Planning in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Springer. ”Public transport and automobile transport have vastly improved since socialist times in Baltic cities, with better connections to city centres. The socialist system was a virtually carless society (for the average resident), but Soviet-era planners always had lofty aspirations for urban grandiosity and therefore built wide and spacious roads unwittingly capable of accommodating today’s significantly higher traffic volumes. Housing estates were rather grand places with large infrastructure and generous space between buildings, and the‘extra space’ is now available for other uses, including automobile parking. Another important element of the improved relative location pertains to services: new commercial outlets have been added to housing estates, especially shopping centres within or adjacent to residential districts. This has improved the comfort and convenience of living in housing estates because they now contain fitness centres and swimming pools, schools (for all levels), cinemas and shopping malls. These additions to housing estates have helped shift the urban form of Baltic cities in part from compact to sprawling, as many of these new services are provided in automobile-friendly (more than pedestrian-friendly) environments.” (p. 20)

Hess, P. B., & Tammaru, T. (Eds.). (2019). Housing Estates in the Baltic Countries: The Legacy of Central Planning in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Springer. ”The competition also focused on social planning, introducing a tiered system of public, cultural and consumer services. Tiers were based on the estimated needs of 1000 inhabitants and were determined by frequency of use: daily use sites, periodic use facilities (visited two to three times per week), and episodic use facilities, used twice or three times monthly. The core unit of the microrayon was a group of residential buildings for 2000 inhabitants, further grouped into a microrayon with 9000–12,000 inhabitants. Services usually accessed on a daily basis included kindergartens, schools, food shops, canteens, clubs, housing unit administration services, sports elds and playgrounds. These were all located within the boundaries of a given microrayon, and no further than 400 m from any one home. All first-tier public buildings were expected to follow standard designs and consist of prefabricated parts. Second-tier facilities, such as cinemas, libraries, department stores and healthcare facilities, were to be built for the larger residential area (made of several microrayons) and intended to be used periodically. Once these new types of large-scale residential districts began to emerge, management and financing had to be transferred from enterprises to municipal authorities and local governments, who then became responsible for both planning and construction. This was perhaps the most significant change in the modernisation of Soviet urban planning.” (p. 75)

[143] Hess, P. B., & Tammaru, T. (Eds.). (2019). Housing Estates in the Baltic Countries: The Legacy of Central Planning in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Springer. “In all three mikrorayons, newcomers were assigned to new apartments equipped with modern conveniences. Shops, schools and kindergartens designated for the inhabitants’ daily needs were located nearby. Plans for public transport and new roads existed to connect the estates—proclaimed as being quiet and green—with the city centre and industrial areas.” (p. 182)

[144] Hess, P. B., & Tammaru, T. (Eds.). (2019). Housing Estates in the Baltic Countries: The Legacy of Central Planning in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Springer. “‘One family in one apartment’, was an of cial goal established by the USSR Communist Party in 1957 (Drėmaitė 2006: 323). Yet getting a private, modern apartment was considered an immense achievement throughout the 1960s and 1970s. As Laima from Lazdynai emotionally recalled:‘When you don’t have anything and you get an apartment, you feel as if you’re in heaven’. There were three ways to get an apartment through the state-regulated housing allocation system: first, people could wait in a general housing queue; second, they could get an apartment from the organisation where they were employed (depending on the type of organisation: retail staff stood no chance in comparison to construction workers) and third, they could join a building cooperative. Waiting lists were long (though considerably shorter for cooperative housing), and the housing distribution system was never transparent causing many people to join cooperatives and pay for a new apartment themselves. Paying for cooperative housing was also the only officially permitted way to acquire more square metres per person than could be allocated according to the rules.” (p. 185)

[145] Hess, P. B., & Tammaru, T. (Eds.). (2019). Housing Estates in the Baltic Countries: The Legacy of Central Planning in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Springer. “All three housing estates resembled Scandinavian-type suburbs. Despite the fact that nearly all residents worked elsewhere, there was planning for various services according to a three-level system: a primary service centre within the distance of 150m, a secondary centre within 500m and a third-level centre (designated for the entire estate) within 1200m. Built first were the living quarters, due to the housing shortage, and new residents usually moved in while public and commercial buildings were still under construction. This situation resulted in many schoolchildren commuting back and forth on a daily basis to finish their school year in their previous schools in the city centre. Shabby temporary wooden kiosks served initially as grocery stores. Later, modern buildings and self-service supermarkets replaced these. Žirmūnai residents also appreciated the Dzeržinskis market, where people went on foot or using trolleybus No. 5. There were several cafés in each of the estates, which served coffee (often remembered as of quite poor quality) and pastries. They are now long closed and older residents consider the lack of meeting places as one of the main disadvantages compared with the past. A restaurant on the first floor of the Minsk shopping centre in Žirmūnai was atypical, serving meals prepared according to special dietary requirements and for which patrons needed a doctor’s prescription. The cream of the crop was Erfurtas, a restaurant and nightclub in Lazdynai, renowned in Lithuania and promoted to foreign guests, including of cial delegations. Locals too enjoyed being near it in various ways. Petras and Aldona, who lived in front of it, listened on their balcony for free to concerts of famous Lithuanian stars of the time, audible through the bar’s open windows. Otherwise, it was not easy to get in unless one knew how to skip the long queues: ‘If you took ten roubles and showed it through the window, you would get in immediately’ (Nadia). Meanwhile, Marius used to go there after school because it offered a menu of the day for‘one rouble and you could eat more than enough for that’. It seems, however, that people from Žirmūnai and even from Karoliniškės seldom visited this famous place.)” (p. 191-192)

[146] Hess, P. B., & Tammaru, T. (Eds.). (2019). Housing Estates in the Baltic Countries: The Legacy of Central Planning in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Springer. “The Soviet system provided a unique opportunity to experiment with new models of city planning that was embraced by architects. A centrally planned economy and government ownership of all land and industry, including the construction sector, permitted a grand-scale approach to the processes of industrialisation, employment-driven migration and urbanisation. The rapid expansion of housing in post-World War cities in the Baltic countries thus dramatically altered the region’s traditional cityscapes. But the initial estate-based housing programmes were delayed in the Eastern Bloc (compared to Western Europe), mainly due to Communist Party leader Joseph Stalin’s preference for expensive grand architecture (also known as Stalin Baroque), a general emphasis on heavy industry under central planning and, accordingly, a low priority assigned to housing construction. However, construction of housing estates continued through the early 1990s—a longer duration in the Eastern Bloc compared to Western Europe—due to intensive urbanisation.” (p. 9)

[147] Andrianova, A. (2015). Architecture of Soviet housing and main Soviet urban planning concepts [Research report]. ResearchGate. https://doi.org/10.13140/1962.1.51417-5586. “In Times Of Leonid Brezhnev Architects Got More Freedom Compare To Nikita Khrushev Times. Standard Design Was Still In Force But There Were More Variety Of Projects Series According To The Different Climate Zones And Urban Planning Conditions. Houses Usually Had From 9 To 16 Floors, Were Equipped With Elevator. It Gave The Possibility To Increase Building Density And Use The Territory More Efficient. Sectional Houses Of 1970-1990s Had Bigger Apartments Area Compare To “Khrushchyovka” Houses But Smaller Than “Stalinkas”. Houses Consisted Of Sections That Could Be Attached To Each Other In Different Position And Could Have Different Height. Materials Were Mostly Prefabricated Concrete Panels And Silicate Brick. Often Sectional Houses Were Quite Long (Up To 800 Meters Length) And Could Have Up To 9000 Inhabitants. It Were Developed Alternative To Level (Step) System Concepts Of Public Service (Functional System, Ideal Communist City Concept) That Counted Transportation As The Main Factor That Influence The Buildings Location. Functional System Was Implemented In Several Experimental Microdistricts In Ussr But Other Microdistricts Were Constructed Under Level (Step) System Of Public Service.”

[148] Chelyabinsk State University, Bakanov, S. A., Khlyzov, V. E., & Chelyabinsk State University. (2023). All-Union Housing Census of the USSR in 1960: Organization and Results. Modern History of Russia, 13(2), 482–499. https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu24.2023.215. “Доля обобществленного фонда в городах составляла по жилой площади 57,4 %, соответственно, на фонд, находящийся в личной собственности граждан, приходилось 42,6 %. По числу проживающих соотношение было примерно таким же — 56,6 на 43,4 %. Однако по числу строений городской фонд, находящийся в личной собственности граждан, заметно преобладал и составлял 9,1 млн (82 %) всех жилых зданий. Если в городском обобщест- вленном фонде средняя населенность жилых строений была около 28,6 чел. на одно здание, то в личном — только 4,6 чел. Это объясняется тем, что большую часть личного фонда в городской местности составляли небольшие по площади одноэтажные дома (в среднем около 28 м2 жилой площади) усадебного типа, в которых проживали одна или две семьи. В сельской местности, где переписывался только обобществленный жилищный фонд, было выявлено 1,1 млн жилых зданий с жилой площадью более 68 млн м2, где проживало 11,7 млн чел” (p. 488) [The share of the socialized fund in cities was 57.4% of living space, respectively, the fund, which is personally owned by citizens, accounted for 42.6%. In terms of the number of residents, the ratio was approximately the same - 56.6 to 43.4%. However, in terms of the number of buildings, the city fund, which is personally owned by citizens, significantly prevailed and amounted to 9.1 million (82%) of all residential buildings. If in the city generalized fund the average population of residential buildings was about 28.6 people per building, in the personal one - only 4.6 people. This is explained by the fact that most of the personal fund in the urban area was made up of small one-story houses (on average about 28 m2 of living space) of the estate type, in which one or two families lived. In the countryside, where only the socialized housing stock was transferred, 1.1 million residential buildings with a living area of more than 68 million m2 were identified, where 11.7 million people lived]

[149] Chelyabinsk State University, Bakanov, S. A., Khlyzov, V. E., & Chelyabinsk State University. (2023). All-Union Housing Census of the USSR in 1960: Organization and Results. Modern History of Russia, 13(2), 482–499. https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu24.2023.215. “Таблица 1 Этажность жилых строений обобществленного фонда СССР на 1 января 1960 г. Одноэтажное,1447602,1123032; Двухэтажное,381171,32976; Трехэтажное,48176,638; Четырехэтажное,23875,99; Пятиэтажное,16208,35; Шестиэтажное и выше,4938,0; Всего,1921970,1156780;” (p. 488) [Table 1 Number of Stories in Publicly Owned Residential Buildings of the USSR as of January 1, 1960 One-story,1447602,1123032; Two-story,381171,32976; Three-story,48176,638; Four-story,23875,99; Five-story,16208,35; Six-story and higher,4938,0; Total,1921970,1156780;]

[150]  Chelyabinsk State University, Bakanov, S. A., Khlyzov, V. E., & Chelyabinsk State University. (2023). All-Union Housing Census of the USSR in 1960: Organization and Results. Modern History of Russia, 13(2), 482–499. https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu24.2023.215. “Как видно из табл. 1, в сельской местности (в обобществленном фонде) 97 % зданий составляли одноэтажные дома. В городской местности обобществленный фонд также был представлен в основном одноэтажными строениями (75,3 %). Однако если добавить к нему более 9 млн одноэтажных домов из лич- ного фонда, то получится, что советские города в 1960 г. также оставались по большей части одноэтажными. Суммарное число жилых зданий в два и более этажей оказалось около 500 тыс., или 4,5 % от 12,2 млн домов, охваченных переписью.” (p. 488) [As can be seen from Table 1, in rural areas (in the socialized fund) 97% of buildings were one-story houses. In the urban area, the generalized fund was also represented mainly by one-story buildings (75.3%). However, if we add to it more than 9 million one-story houses from the personal fund, it turns out that Soviet cities in 1960 also remained mostly one-story. The total number of residential buildings with two or more floors was about 500 thousand, or 4.5% of the 12.2 million houses covered by the census.]

[151] Chelyabinsk State University, Bakanov, S. A., Khlyzov, V. E., & Chelyabinsk State University. (2023). All-Union Housing Census of the USSR in 1960: Organization and Results. Modern History of Russia, 13(2), 482–499. https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu24.2023.215. “При проведении переписи все здания по материалу стен подразделялись на семь типов: блочные и панельные, кирпичные, каменные, деревянные рубленые и брусчатые, деревянные каркасные и щитовые, а также здания из смешанных материалов (жилые дома, у которых первый этаж был кирпичный или каменный, второй — деревянный рубленый или брусчатый, или деревянные строения, обложенные кирпичом) и из прочих материалов (строения из камышита, самана и сырца). Для удобства анализа статистических данных в итоговых документах переписи они объединялись в три укрупненные группы (табл. 2). В сельской местности большинство зданий составляли постройки из дерева (67 %) и из прочих материалов (20 %). В то же время доля каменных и кирпичных зданий была незначительной — около 13 %. В городской местности больше половины всех зданий по материалу стен (56 %) также занимали деревянные дома. Вместе с тем доля каменных, кирпичных, панельных и блочных зданий здесь была заметно выше — более 34 %, на долю сооружений из прочих материалов оставалось около 9 %.” (p. 489) [During the census, all buildings were divided into seven types based on wall material: block and panel, brick, stone, wooden chopped and plank, wooden frame and panel, as well as buildings made of mixed materials (residential buildings with a brick or stone ground floor and a wooden chopped or plank second floor, or wooden buildings faced with brick) and other materials (buildings made of reed, adobe, and adobe). For ease of analysis of statistical data in the final census documents, they were combined into three large groups (Table 2). In rural areas, the majority of buildings were made of wood (67%) and other materials (20%). At the same time, the share of stone and brick buildings was insignificant - about 13%. In urban areas, more than half of all buildings based on wall material (56%) were also wooden houses. At the same time, the share of stone, brick, panel and block buildings here was noticeably higher - more than 34%, while the share of structures made from other materials remained at about 9%.]

[152] Chelyabinsk State University, Bakanov, S. A., Khlyzov, V. E., & Chelyabinsk State University. (2023). All-Union Housing Census of the USSR in 1960: Organization and Results. Modern History of Russia, 13(2), 482–499. https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu24.2023.215. “По республикам СССР ситуация с благоустройством жилья также заметно отличалась. В табл. 3 приведены расчетные данные, объединившие значения по благоустройству как обобществленного, так и необобществленного городского жилищного фонда. Из этих данных видно, что разница в уровне оснащенности отдельными видами благоустройства между республиками могла достигать нескольких раз. Наибольший уровень оснащенности водопроводом, канализацией и ванными комнатами (ванна/душ) был достигнут в республиках Прибалтики. По оборудованию домов газом с большим отрывом лидировала Азербайджанская ССР. Центральным отоплением были лучше оснащены го- рода РСФСР. В то время как республики Средней Азии отставали от лидеров в пять-девять раз по всем видам благоустройства, а по оснащенности газом разрыв между лидером (Азербайджанская ССР) и аутсайдером (Казахская ССР) достигал рекордных пятидесяти раз.” (p. 491) [In the republics of the USSR, the situation with housing improvement was also noticeably different. Table 3 shows the estimated data that combine the values for the improvement of both the socialized and non-socialized urban housing stock. These data show that the difference in the level of equipment with certain types of improvement between the republics could reach several times. The highest level of water supply, sewerage and bathrooms (bath/shower) was reached in the Baltic republics. The Azerbaijan SSR was the leader in equipping houses with gas by a large margin. The city of the RSFSR was better equipped with central heating. While the republics of Central Asia were five to nine times behind the leaders in all types of improvement, and in terms of gas equipment, the gap between the leader (Azerbaijani SSR) and the outsider (Kazakh SSR) reached a record fifty times.]

[153] Chelyabinsk State University, Bakanov, S. A., Khlyzov, V. E., & Chelyabinsk State University. (2023). All-Union Housing Census of the USSR in 1960: Organization and Results. Modern History of Russia, 13(2), 482–499. https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu24.2023.215. “Таблица 3 Доля благоустроенного городского жилищного фонда по союзным республикам и видам благоустройства на 1.01.1960 (%)” (p. 491) [Table 3 Share of improved urban housing stock by union republics and types of improvement as of 1.01.1960 (%)]

[154] Chelyabinsk State University, Bakanov, S. A., Khlyzov, V. E., & Chelyabinsk State University. (2023). All-Union Housing Census of the USSR in 1960: Organization and Results. Modern History of Russia, 13(2), 482–499. https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu24.2023.215. “Вместе с тем следует заметить, что даже в самых благополучных республиках Прибалтики существовала значительная разница между уровнем благоустройства в крупных и относительно небольших городах. Например, в Шяуляе (Литовская ССР) доля личного жилищного фонда, оснащенного водопроводом, составляла 3 %, канализацией — 2,9 %55. В то время как в Клайпеде (также Литовская ССР) показатели благоустроенности личного жилищного фонда водопроводом достигали 40 %, а канализацией — 23 %56. Аналогичная ситуация наблюдалась и в обобществленном фонде: в Клайпеде доля жи- лищного фонда, оборудованного водопроводом, составляла 78 %, а в Шяуляе только 6 %, канализацией — 73 и 5 % соответственно. Наиболее благоустроенными были столицы союзных республик. Например, в Риге в 46 % личного фонда города был проведен водопровод, в 29 % имелась канализация и в 22 % ванная комната.” (p. 492) [At the same time, it should be noted that even in the most prosperous Baltic republics, there was a significant difference between the level of amenities in large and relatively small cities. For example, in Šiauliai (Lithuanian SSR), the share of private housing stock equipped with running water was 3%, with sewerage - 2.9%55. While in Klaipeda (also Lithuanian SSR), the indicators of amenities of private housing stock with running water reached 40%, and with sewerage - 23%56. A similar situation was observed in the socialized stock: in Klaipeda, the share of housing stock equipped with running water was 78%, and in Šiauliai only 6%, with sewerage - 73 and 5%, respectively. The capitals of the union republics were the most well-appointed. For example, in Riga, 46% of the city's private housing stock had running water, 29% had sewerage, and 22% had a bathroom.]

[155] Chelyabinsk State University, Bakanov, S. A., Khlyzov, V. E., & Chelyabinsk State University. (2023). All-Union Housing Census of the USSR in 1960: Organization and Results. Modern History of Russia, 13(2), 482–499. https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu24.2023.215. “Как видно из табл. 4, наиболее обеспеченными жилой площадью на душу населения были Латвийская, Эстонская и Грузинская ССР, где этот показатель превышал 7 м2 на человека. Самая низкая обеспеченность жилой площадью наблюдалась в Таджикской, Киргизской и Армянской ССР, где на человека приходилось менее 5,6 м2. Однако внутри самих республик ситуация также ме- нялась от региона к региону. В качестве примера можно рассмотреть РСФСР, где средняя обеспеченность жилой площадью составляла 5,9 м2. При этом не- которые области и автономные республики в составе РСФСР имели несколько лучшую обеспеченность: Калининградская область — 7,2 м2, Ставропольский край — 7 м2, Чечено-Ингушская АССР — 7 м2. В то время как в Удмуртской АССР приходилось только 5,2 м2, а в Московской и Магаданской областях — 5,3 м2 на человека” (p. 493) [As can be seen from Table 4, the Latvian, Estonian and Georgian SSRs had the highest per capita living space, where this indicator exceeded 7 m2 per person. The lowest living space was observed in the Tajik, Kirghiz and Armenian SSRs, where there was less than 5.6 m2 per person. However, within the republics themselves, the situation also varied from region to region. As an example, we can consider the RSFSR, where the average living space was 5.9 m2. At the same time, some regions and autonomous republics within the RSFSR had slightly better provision: Kaliningrad Region - 7.2 m2, Stavropol Territory - 7 m2, Chechen-Ingush ASSR - 7 m2. While in the Udmurt ASSR there were only 5.2 m2, and in the Moscow and Magadan regions - 5.3 m2 per person]

[156] Chelyabinsk State University, Bakanov, S. A., Khlyzov, V. E., & Chelyabinsk State University. (2023). All-Union Housing Census of the USSR in 1960: Organization and Results. Modern History of Russia, 13(2), 482–499. https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu24.2023.215. “По второму критерию (число комнат на тысячу жителей) союзные ре-

спублики оказались довольно близкими, что говорит о сложившихся в СССР стандартах городского жилья и практиках расселения. Фактически в каждой республике на одну комнату в среднем приходилось 2–2,5 жильца, а в Армянской ССР — более трех. Для сравнения, в Бельгии и Великобритании одна комната приходилась на 0,75 чел., в Швеции, Австрии и Франции — 0,9 чел., в ФРГ, Италии и Чехословакии — 1,1–1,3 чел. По данному показателю республики (за исключением республик Закавказья и Средней Азии) могли сравниться лишь со странами Восточной Европы, где стандарты жилья были относительно схожими. Так, в Польше на одну комнату приходилось 1,8, а в Югославии — 2,3 чел.” (p. 493-494) [According to the second criterion (the number of rooms per thousand residents), the union republics turned out to be quite close, which speaks to the standards of urban housing and resettlement practices that had developed in the USSR. In fact, in each republic there were on average 2–2.5 residents per room, and in the Armenian SSR - more than three. For comparison, in Belgium and Great Britain there was one room per 0.75 people, in Sweden, Austria and France - 0.9 people, in the FRG, Italy and Czechoslovakia - 1.1–1.3 people. According to this indicator, the republics (with the exception of the republics of Transcaucasia and Central Asia) could only compare with the countries of Eastern Europe, where housing standards were relatively similar. Thus, in Poland there were 1.8 people per room, and in Yugoslavia - 2.3 people.]

[157] Chelyabinsk State University, Bakanov, S. A., Khlyzov, V. E., & Chelyabinsk State University. (2023). All-Union Housing Census of the USSR in 1960: Organization and Results. Modern History of Russia, 13(2), 482–499. https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu24.2023.215. “Всего на 1 января 1960 г. в СССР в органах местного самоуправления на учете по получению жилья стояло 5 252 852 чел. Это составляло 2,5 % от всех граждан, проживающих в СССР, согласно результатам переписи населения 1959 г. (208,8 млн чел.)65. Однако стоит заметить, что приведенные цифры не отражают в полной мере ситуацию с нехваткой жилья в стране. Так как пере- пись не учитывала граждан, состоящих на учете для получения жилой площади не в местных Советах, а на предприятиях, в учреждениях и организациях . В качестве примера можно привести ситуацию с учетом населения, нуж- дающегося в жилой площади в Минске. По данным переписи в городе на учете для получения жилья состояло 28 162 чел., между тем еще 91 375 чел. стояли в очереди для получения жилья на предприятиях и переписью не учитывались. Также в статистическом учете не отражались данные, касающиеся жителей ава- рийных домов, подлежащих сносу в ближайшее время, поскольку они должны были получать жилую площадь вне очереди. В Минске в таких жилых помещениях проживало 18 476 чел. Таким образом, перепись охватывала лишь малую часть от реального количества людей, нуждающихся в улучшении жилищных условий. В том же Минске из фактического числа нуждающихся (138 013 чел.) в переписи учитывалось только 28 162 чел., или 20,4 %.” (p. 494) [In total, as of January 1, 1960, in the USSR, there were 5,252,852 people registered for housing in the local self-government bodies. This was 2.5% of all citizens living in the USSR, according to the results of the 1959 census (208.8 million people). However, it is worth noting that the above figures do not fully reflect the situation with the lack of housing in the country. Since the census did not take into account citizens registered for living space not in local Councils, but at enterprises, institutions and organizations66. As an example, we can cite the situation taking into account the population in need of living space in Minsk. According to the census, 28,162 people were registered for housing in the city, meanwhile another 91,375 people stood in line to receive housing at enterprises and were not taken into account by the census. Also, the statistical accounting did not reflect the data on the residents of the out-of-houses to be demolition in the near future, as they were supposed to receive living space out of turn. In Minsk, 18,476 people lived in such residential premises.68 Thus, the census covered only a small part of the real number of people in need of improved housing conditions. In the same Minsk, out of the actual number of needy people (138,013 people), only 28,162 people, or 20.4%, were taken into account in the census.]

[158] Chelyabinsk State University, Bakanov, S. A., Khlyzov, V. E., & Chelyabinsk State University. (2023). All-Union Housing Census of the USSR in 1960: Organization and Results. Modern History of Russia, 13(2), 482–499. https://doi.org/10.21638/spbu24.2023.215. “Перепись зафиксировала изложенный языком цифр облик большинства советских городов, которые к 1960 г. оставались (за исключением столиц и некоторых крупных городов) по большей части деревянными и одноэтажными, с небольшими вкраплениями каменных кварталов постройки начала ХХ в. и периода индустриализации, а также панельных новостроек второй половины 1950-х гг. Уровень благоустройства жилья был еще крайне низким, особенно в сельской местности, и существенно уступал показателям развитых капиталистических стран. Начавшееся во второй половине 1950-х гг. массовое жилищное строительство не поспевало за постоянно растущими потребностями индустриальных городов в новом жилье из-за нарастающего потока мигрантов из сельской местности. Входящий в интенсивную фазу урбанизационный процесс сводил на нет усилия, предпринимаемые правительством в жилищной сфере, а очереди на получение жилья продолжали расти.” (p. 496) [The census recorded the appearance of most Soviet cities in the language of numbers, which by 1960 remained (with the exception of capitals and some large cities) mostly wooden and one-story, with small inclusions of stone quarters built in the early twentieth century and the period of industrialization, as well as panel new buildings of the second half of the 1950s. The level of housing improvement was still extremely low, especially in rural areas, and significantly inferior to the indicators of developed capitalist countries. Mass housing construction, which began in the second half of the 1950s, did not keep up with the constantly growing needs of industrial cities for new housing due to the growing flow of migrants from rural areas. The urbanization process, which was entering an intensive phase, nulled the government's efforts in the housing sector, and the queues for housing continued to grow.]

[159] White, P. M. (1979). Planning of urban transport systems in the Soviet Union: A policy analysis. Transportation Research Part A: General, 13(4), 231–240. https://doi.org/10.1016/0191-2607(79)90049-9. “Cars, including publically-owned taxis and official vehicles, carried a mere five billion passengers. Undoubtedly, the dominance of public transport can be accounted for by the low rate of car ownership, currently at a level of about 30 cars per 1000 population (Sallnow 1976), and the extremely low fares on all modes of public transport, which endow it with a marked advantage over the car.” (p. 231)

[160] White, P. M. (1979). Planning of urban transport systems in the Soviet Union: A policy analysis. Transportation Research Part A: General, 13(4), 231–240. https://doi.org/10.1016/0191-2607(79)90049-9. “Between 1950 and 1967 the number of passengers carried by urban trans- portation systems increased from 7.7 to 35.8 billion, a quite remarkable increase (Jackson 1974). Rodin and Vladimirov (1975) recorded that whilst urban population grew between 1960 and 1970 by 1.3 times, the rate of passenger growth was 1.7. The appropriate figures for the period 1970-1974 show a decline in the rate of growth of passenger traffic but it nevertheless exceeded the growth in urban population ” (p. 231)

[161] White, P. M. (1979). Planning of urban transport systems in the Soviet Union: A policy analysis. Transportation Research Part A: General, 13(4), 231–240. https://doi.org/10.1016/0191-2607(79)90049-9. “The average mobility figure for 1970 of 257 annual trips per person conceals the fact that in the larger cities mobility is considerably higher, reaching the level of 620 in Moscow and Leningrad” (p. 231)

[162] White, P. M. (1979). Planning of urban transport systems in the Soviet Union: A policy analysis. Transportation Research Part A: General, 13(4), 231–240. https://doi.org/10.1016/0191-2607(79)90049-9. “Trams, trolleybuses, buses and both underground and surface railways are represented in varying propor- tions in different cities. A number of interesting trends in their usage have been manifested this century and these are best illustrated by Tables 4--6. Clear trends emerge from the data on change in modal split in the USSR and in Moscow and Leningrad. This century has seen the steady growth in importance of metro travel in the Soviet Union, although the dominant mode still remains the bus which carries well over half the urban passenger trafllic. Growth in usage of trolley- buses has also taken place though it has tended to level off in recent years. With the rise of metro systems the tram has declined steadily in both absolute and relative importance.” (p. 232)

[163] White, P. M. (1979). Planning of urban transport systems in the Soviet Union: A policy analysis. Transportation Research Part A: General, 13(4), 231–240. https://doi.org/10.1016/0191-2607(79)90049-9. “Despite the fact that Moscow has well-developed tram, bus and trolleybus networks carrying about 60% of all passenger traffic very little is written about them.” (p. 232 )

[164] White, P. M. (1979). Planning of urban transport systems in the Soviet Union: A policy analysis. Transportation Research Part A: General, 13(4), 231–240. https://doi.org/10.1016/0191-2607(79)90049-9. “Tables 4-6” (p. 232)

White, P. M. (1979). Planning of urban transport systems in the Soviet Union: A policy analysis. Transportation Research Part A: General, 13(4), 231–240. https://doi.org/10.1016/0191-2607(79)90049-9. “...the Moscow Metro an indispensable carrier of a vast commuter traffic, regularly averaging 5.3 million passengers a day and not in- frequently, carrying as many as 7 million passengers (Grava 1976). In 1976, the Metro carried about 39% of all Moscow passenger trips, accounting for about 55% of all passenger miles. During peak hours over- crowding is the norm, the entire system being heavily loaded in all directions in the central area. The intensive use of the system is reflected in the fact that average journey lengths are much shorter than those on the London Underground but the passenger total is double that in London.” (p. 232-233)

[165] White, P. M. (1979). Planning of urban transport systems in the Soviet Union: A policy analysis. Transportation Research Part A: General, 13(4), 231–240. https://doi.org/10.1016/0191-2607(79)90049-9. “The Moscow Metro is fundamentally a city service, as the suburban and outlying areas are served by surface railways. A series of radial lines linked at the periphery by a circle line make up the network which has some 97 stations spaced, on average, 1.5km apart. Constant improvements are made to the system with new, and extended lines increasing its coverage, particularly in the suburbs. Watson (1977) forecasts that between 1969 and 1980 there is likely to be a doubling of route mileage. Metro trains operate at an average running speed of 45 k.p.h. (28 m.p.h.) and on most lines headways of two to four minutes are maintained, though 87 second head- ways are possible (Grava 1976). Increasingly, sophisticated automated control of scheduling, running speeds and stopping times is being introduced in order to im- prove the efficiency of operation (Grava 1976, Kerov 1975, Legostaev and Maleev 1975).” (p. 233)

[166] White, P. M. (1979). Planning of urban transport systems in the Soviet Union: A policy analysis. Transportation Research Part A: General, 13(4), 231–240. https://doi.org/10.1016/0191-2607(79)90049-9. “Two Soviet cities, Moscow and Leningrad, have benefitted from prodigious investment in transport systems. Leningrad was the second city to construct a Metro system, though on a smaller scale than the Moscow Metro. The 52 route kilometers of the system, with its 25 stations, are intensively used, the passenger traffic being 612.8 million in 1976. Leningrad's public transport system is completed by 230 kilometers of radial tram routes, 450 kilometers of bus routes and a trolleybus network of radial and circular lines, giving a total public transport network of good coverage. More recently, other republican capitals have received increasing investment in public transport systems. Over 2000 towns have bus services, there are tram services in 111 towns, there are trolleybus services in 129 towns and metro systems are planned or constructed in 7 cities” (p. 233)

[167] White, P. M. (1979). Planning of urban transport systems in the Soviet Union: A policy analysis. Transportation Research Part A: General, 13(4), 231–240. https://doi.org/10.1016/0191-2607(79)90049-9. “In the 1970s fares have remained at the same level and yet expenses on salaries, materials, power and amortization payments have risen considerably. Moreover, increases in loadings have been more than out-paced by the opening of additional segments of the system. The clear consequence is that, although services are more extensive, more comfortable and more efficient, there must have been a drop in revenue surplus and with it a rise in subsidies.” (p. 233)

White, P. M. (1979). Planning of urban transport systems in the Soviet Union: A policy analysis. Transportation Research Part A: General, 13(4), 231–240. https://doi.org/10.1016/0191-2607(79)90049-9. “Table 7” (p. 233)

[168] Engel, B., & Rogge, N. (Eds.). (2024). Large Housing Estates under Socialism: Experiences and Perspectives on Sustainable Development of Mass Housing Districts (Vol. 75). transcript Verlag. https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839467824. “This passion for architectural ornamentation was especially pronounced in the southern Soviet republics, such as the multiethnic Caucasus and Islam-dominated Central Asia. In these regions, the Uzbek SSR particularly distin- guished itself as a location where national traditions formed a symbiosis with Soviet construction standards. To this day, Tashkent is still considered a successful example of Moscow’s attempt to give architects and housebuilding fac- tories in the remote republics a certain creative freedom. At the same time, an undeniable analogy between the creative framework of prefabrication and the guiding principles of Islamic art, as well as the interchangeability of location demanded by Khrushchev—and the use of the same principle for every conceivable building type—was proven to be true in the process. Or, to put this more provocatively: the Soviet ideology of housing series and the Islamic set of rules about the use of repetitive basic shapes in construction are indeed based on two different cultural perceptions, but are largely similar in terms of applied architecture (see Meuser 2012).Since design and construction were strictly separated and construction management or artistic supervision by architectural designers was only available in exceptional cases—such as during the construc- tion of important public buildings—this means there is no record of the names of the architects responsible for serial mass housing. To date, facade decora- tion as an independent art form has hardly merited much description. It may be that the example of Tashkent represents regional peculiarities in Soviet architecture. In particular, the reconstruction of the Uzbek SSR’s capital city af- ter the earthquake is proof of the exchange of know-how throughout the Soviet Union. The significance of architecture, which, in addition to space travel and military engineering, enjoyed a glowing reputation amongst the general pub- lic and politicians, is emphasized by the fact that the city’s large-scale transformation as part of the People’s Friendship was recognized by Soviet propaganda as a media-friendly topic.2 In this respect, the building boom in Tashkent and the city’s distinctive facade decoration have made a significant contribution to the style of Soviet architecture. Particularly noteworthy is the architectural work carried out by the brothers Petr, Nikolai, and Alexander Zharsky in Tashkent. It is owing to them that more than two hundred facades featuring colorful mosaics or filigree reliefs were built in Tashkent. Their work represents a link between art and architec- ture. In the floral decoration and core motifs, the heritage of Islamic architec- ture is simultaneously combined with the euphoric mood prevalent regarding the future of Soviet modernity. ” (p. 55-56)

[169] Engel, B., & Rogge, N. (Eds.). (2024). Large Housing Estates under Socialism: Experiences and Perspectives on Sustainable Development of Mass Housing Districts (Vol. 75). transcript Verlag. https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839467824. “Khrushchev-era housing encompasses the microregions of the first generation of massive housing series (1958–1974). Typical prefabricated block housing developments that happened on a wide scale from the late 1950s to early 1980s, commonly referred to as “Khrushchev-era housing,” or “Khrushchevka,” can be found in any city across Russia.” (p. 108)

[170] Engel, B., & Rogge, N. (Eds.). (2024). Large Housing Estates under Socialism: Experiences and Perspectives on Sustainable Development of Mass Housing Districts (Vol. 75). transcript Verlag. https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839467824. “Indicative parameter values are: overall surface of the morphotype in the city = 4,160 ha; surface of the pilot zone = 43.55 ha; 45% private space / 55% public domain; FSI = 0.57; GSI = 0.14; height index = 4.53; OSR = 1.52; street grid density = 0.08; and parks = 6.17.” (p. 108)

[171] Engel, B., & Rogge, N. (Eds.). (2024). Large Housing Estates under Socialism: Experiences and Perspectives on Sustainable Development of Mass Housing Districts (Vol. 75). transcript Verlag. https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839467824. “Microregions of the later generations of mass-produced housing (1975–1991) comprise the most widely distributed type of built environment in the So- viet Union. It is widely considered that Brezhnev-era housing includes all buildings constructed between the mid-1960s and late 1980s. Residential buildings mostly took the form of 9- to 12-storey-high housing organized into microregions. Such a morphology is widely present, taking up to 16 percent of the urban core area. For research purposes, a territory of the microregion adjacent to Prospekt Bolshevikov subway station has been chosen. This morphotype is characterized by diverse typologies of development, an absence of structured spaces and visible boundaries between public and private domains, and, therefore, a low-quality urban environment. The total surface of territo- ries built up with Brezhnev-era houses is enormous, as this morphotype is one of the dominant ones on the territory of the urban core of Saint Petersburg.” (p. 109)

[172] Engel, B., & Rogge, N. (Eds.). (2024). Large Housing Estates under Socialism: Experiences and Perspectives on Sustainable Development of Mass Housing Districts (Vol. 75). transcript Verlag. https://doi.org/10.14361/9783839467824. “Indicative parameter values are: overall surface of the morphotype in the city = 4,313 ha; surface of the pilot zone = 68.94 ha; 47% private space / 53% public domain; FSI = 1.23; GSI = 0.14; height index = 9.34; OSR = 0.70; street grid density = 0.05; and parks = 9.38.” (p. 109)

[173] Morton, H. W. (1984). Housing in the Soviet Union. Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science, 35(3), 69–80. “In the Soviet Union, housing is regarded primarily as a social good, while in the United States it is treated essentially as a commodity. To understand this important difference, it is necessary to examine briefly American housing from a broad perspective. Historically, housing development in the United States was stimulated by land and real estate speculation, not by the government. Even public housing during the Great Depression was intended primarily to aid the ailing housing construc- tion industry and only secondarily to provide housing for those who were temporarily unemployed. After World War II, however, three federal programs helped millions of Americans to buy homes: 1. The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and the Veterans Administration (VA) guaranteed mortgages on new homes. Thus, banks could lower their interest rates, significantly reducing housing costs. 2. An extensive, federally supported highway construction program encour- aged commuters to buy homes in the suburbs. 3. Tax rebates permitted home owners to deduct the interest on their mortgage payment and local taxes from their gross income. The housing boom also benefited the construction industry and manufacturers of building materials, the automobile and home-furnishing industries, banks and financial institutions, and the economy in general. But a house has become both a tax shelter and an investment that has greatly appreciated in value in recent years. The revenue loss for such tax deductions will amount to $40 billion in 1984, while direct federal subsidies for public housing will cost only $8.6 billion. The governmental support that home owners receive prompted the late Charles Abrams, a well-known housing authority, to remark that when it comes to housing, "we have socialism for the rich and free enterprise for the poor."” (p. 69)

[174] Morton, H. W. (1984). Housing in the Soviet Union. Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science, 35(3), 69–80. “The Soviet Union has also improved its housing conditions since World War II. Indeed, the 1977 Constitution guarantees Soviet citizens the right to housing. Article 44 affirms: "This right is insured by the development and upkeep of the state and socially owned housing; and by assistance for cooperative and individual house building; by fair distribution, under public control, of the housing that becomes available through fulfillment of the program of building well-appointed dwellings, and by low rents and low charges for utility services."” (p. 69-70)

[175] Morton, H. W. (1984). Housing in the Soviet Union. Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science, 35(3), 69–80. “ In 1950 the per capita living space in urban areas was 52.7 square feet. That year the state built only 38.4 percent of all housing, consisting chiefly of low-rise apartment units built by conventional construction methods, such as brick-laying and casting in place at the building site.” (p. 72)

[176] Morton, H. W. (1984). Housing in the Soviet Union. Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science, 35(3), 69–80. “By more than doubling the capital investment in housing for the Sixth Five- Year Plan (1956-60), the number of housing units built increased from 1.5 million in 1956 to 2.7 million in 1959-the highest yearly total ever achieved in the USSR. Khrushchev built cheaply, mainly four- and five-story walk-ups. He lowered the ceiling to 8.2 feet, made the rooms small and the corridors narrow, and upset the public by combining the bathroom and toilet in one chamber.” (p. 72)

Morton, H. W. (1984). Housing in the Soviet Union. Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science, 35(3), 69–80. “Since 1957 the country has built an average of more than 2 million housing units a year-an enviable achievement in consistency. This eased the housing shortage over the years but did not eliminate it. Khrushchev also brought radical changes to the construction industry. Stan- dardized prefabricated housing parts and wall-sized load-bearing panels made from prestressed concrete replaced the conventional building materials of brick, steel, and lumber. This change permitted production to continue during the long and severe Russian winter. It also greatly reduced the need for skilled labor, which was in short supply.” (p. 72)

Morton, H. W. (1984). Housing in the Soviet Union. Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science, 35(3), 69–80. “The use of standardized prefabricated housing parts increased from 1.3 per- cent in 1959 to 54 percent in 1980. In cities with more than 1 million population, it accounted for at least 75 percent of all construction. Technological advances in the 1970s made it possible to erect nine-story apartment buildings in large cities. These buildings helped to limit the urban sprawl created by the low-rise Khrushchev model. In the 1980s new apartment buildings in major cities will be primarily twelve and sixteen stories high, with a smaller number as high as twenty-five stories. In large and middle-sized cities the construction of nine- story buildings will predominate. The post-Stalinist leadership's commitment to eliminating the intolerably crowded conditions under which the Soviet people lived has had dramatic results. A visitor to any large Soviet city cannot fail to be impressed by the multiplicity of new housing districts consisting of medium- and high-rise apartment from buildings that dominate an expanding perimeter.” (p. 72-73)

[177] Morton, H. W. (1984). Housing in the Soviet Union. Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science, 35(3), 69–80. “Housing in the USSR consists of three categories: housing owned by the state, housing cooperatives (multiple-dwelling apartment houses) built by the state agencies, and housing that is privately owned. The state owns the land and more than 75 percent of the housing stock in urban areas. It is also in charge of construction and distribution.” (p. 74)

Morton, H. W. (1984). Housing in the Soviet Union. Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science, 35(3), 69–80. “In the USSR the rationing of urban housing is primarily by allocation. More than 70 percent of all urban units are owned by the state. Bureaucrats decide when, where, and how well one will be housed. A Soviet family living in a modern apartment with a reasonable number of rooms near work and good shopping areas is undoubtedly well satisfied with its housing situation. The apartment, though government owned, is for all practical purposes theirs. It can even be passed down to the children, if they remain registered in it, even though they are married and living elsewhere. The fact that housing is distributed free and rent is minimal is very attractive to Soviet urbanites, who do not realize that they are paying higher prices for clothing and other consumer goods to support the state's huge housing subsidy.” (p. 79)

[178] Central Intelligence Agency. (1957). Economic intelligence report: Housing in the USSR (Report No. 30). U.S. Government Printing Office. “The First Five Year Plan called for a n investment of 4 billion rubles in new state housing -- 9 percent of total state investments. Although actual expenditures exceeded the plan, the cost of construction rose considerably, and the plan for increased living space was fulfilled by less than 50 percent in the state sector. The First Five Year Plan specified that total private housing investment should total 965 million rubles, of which 20 million were to be provided by the state in the form of long-term loans. There is no information on actual expenditures. It is doubtful that any loans were granted during this time because of the changed policy toward private building after 1930. On the basis of the amount of private housing built, it is estimated that during this time urban dwellers spent about 200 million rubles on private housing.” (p. 28)

[179] Central Intelligence Agency. (1957). Economic intelligence report: Housing in the USSR (Report No. 30). U.S. Government Printing Office. “The state planned to spend 13.4 billion rubles o n housing construction and repair of municipal housing during the Second Five Year Plan (1933-37).. Of this amount, 11.5 billion rubles. 10 percent of total state investment -- was for new construction, and 1.8 billion rubles was for repair of municipal housing. Actual expenditures totaled almost this amount, but the plan for the amount of space to b e built was greatly underfulfilled, a n indication of further inflation in construction costs. During the previous plan period the state had built almost as much living space with less than half the expenditures of the Second Five Year Plan. Loans for private building were negligible during this time.” (p. 29)

[180] Central Intelligence Agency. (1957). Economic intelligence report: Housing in the USSR (Report No. 30). U.S. Government Printing Office. “Third Five Year Plan (1938-42). The Third Five Year Plan for housing investment was more realistic than the two preceding Plans. An investment of 15.5 billion rubles in state housing was planned -- 7.3 percent of total state invest- ment. Funds allocated were 35 percent greater than those expended in the previous period. This was planned to provide housing space only 31 percent greater than that built in the previous period. Actual expenditures for state construction and municipal repair for 3.5 years have been estimated at 15.5 billion rubles, an amount equivalent to the total.” (p. 29)

[181] Central Intelligence Agency. (1957). Economic intelligence report: Housing in the USSR (Report No. 30). U.S. Government Printing Office. “400 million rubles, most of which were granted after the war. 6. Fourth Five Year Plan (1946-50). The Fourth Five Year Plan stated that a total of 42.3 billion rubles (1945 prices) would be invested in state housing construction. This amounts to 14.5 percent of total state investment of 292 billion rubles. The Plan did not state how much of this was to g o to municipalities or ministries and state organizations. Nor did it state the extent of loans planned for individual housing, either urban or rural. Total investment in housing repairs of municipalities was planned to be 5 billion rubles. Actual investment in state housing is estimated at approximately 12 percent of total state investment, falling short of the planned share of 14.5 percent. Nevertheless, it was very much higher than in the prewar period. Private investment in urban housing also increased considerably, partly because of funds saved during the war and partly because of the liberal state policy toward private construction. State loans for private construction in this period amounted to 5 billion rubles. ” (p. 31-32)

[182] Central Intelligence Agency. (1957). Economic intelligence report: Housing in the USSR (Report No. 30). U.S. Government Printing Office. “ Fifth Five Year Plan (1951-55). The only available information o n planned housing investment for 1951-55 is that capital investments in state housing were to b e almost 100 percent greater than in the period of the Fourth Five Year Plan. At the same time, the state planned to build only 50 percent more total housing space. Several factors account for the increased allocation per square meter, the outstanding factor being that whereas the housing construction planned for the Fifth Five Year Plan was almost entirely new construction, the housing of the Fourth Five Year Plan included the less costly restored and reconstructed housing. Much of the housing construction of the immediate postwar period was of poor, cheap quality, and a large share consisted of 1- and 2-story small structures which were cheaper to build than the taller multiunit apart- ment houses more evident in the 1951-55 period. These factors may account for the increased costs of the latter period. Any interpretation made, however, is subject to certain error because annual data on investments are available for only 4 out of 1 0 postwar years and the data o n construc- tion are confused. Because this is an area of weakness in the economy, the subject is one on which any published information admits shortcomings. Discussion of ruble expenditure on housing investment for this period in Soviet publications has been limited to general criticisms of the excessive building costs of state housing, the failure of minis- tries and municipalities to use up allocations, and the poor management of loan allocations for private construction. Estimated investment for 1951-53 indicates that state housing consumed 13 percent of total state investment. This represents a slight increase over housing's share in the 1946-50 period. 1954 plan for state housing construction expenditures of 25.5 billion rubles -- 15 percent of state investments – represented a rise in allocations of 31 percent over the expenditure for 1953. Investment in housing in 1954, which rose by only 19 percent, represented 14 percent of state investment. An increase in state housing investment of 6.1 percent over actual expenditures of 1954 was planned for 1955, a drop of 1 billion rubles from the planned expenditures of 1954. This plan was not fulfilled, and it is estimated that expenditures fell slightly below those of 1954. Total state housing construction expenditures for the 5-year period are estimated at 99 billion rubles, a n increase of 118 percent over expenditures in the previous period, compared with a planned increase of about 100 percent.” (p. 32-33)

[183] Central Intelligence Agency. (1957). Economic intelligence report: Housing in the USSR (Report No. 30). U.S. Government Printing Office. “Housing conditions in the USSR have never been comparable to those of the West in terms of space, utilities, sanitation, comfort, or privacy. Before the Revolution, private utilities and separate living and sleeping quarters were available only to a small group, and since the Revolution these comforts have been available only to high Party, government, and scientific personnel. not honestly informed of Western housing conditions, and conditions that would not b e tolerated by the average US worker are above average for the Soviet worker. Although the Soviet people are aware that their housing compares favorably with that of Asiatic countries and that a vast housebuilding program is currently under way, housing conditions are not improving at a rate which satisfies the increasing desires of the workers. State urban housing generally has central heating, electricity, and running water. Separate kitchens and toilet facili- ties are being provided in most units of current construction; in existing state housing, however, these facilities are generally shared among families. Many apartments are occupied by several families, and many families occupy single large rooms. The latter is true even in recently built housing because a single large room is cheaper and faster to buila than several smaller rooms. The average number of occupants per room in urban areas of the USSR has been estimated at 2.3 in 1923, 3.9 in 1940, and 4.0 in 1950; the US average has been less than 1.”(p. 37)

[184] Central Intelligence Agency. (1957). Economic intelligence report: Housing in the USSR (Report No. 30). U.S. Government Printing Office. “In urban areas of the USSR, state housing space is allocated by square meters of living space. Living space excludes kitchens, baths, corridors, hallways, and lobbies. Space is allocated b y living space rather than by rooms or apartments because the extreme housing shortage requires that large rooms be shared by more than 1 person or family. Kitchens and baths are shared by 2 to 5 families. Living space gives n o indication of privacy, type or quantity of available services. It takes n o account of unequal distribution of housing space. Housing space is not provided in accordance with needs. Industrial ministries and state organizations allocate housing as a reward to their most productive workers and as an incentive to attract or retain skilled workers and technicians. High Party officials and administrators, teachers, and professional people have much better housing than the average worker, and people with influence or with means to purchase rights to housing space fare better than the average worker. Nevertheless, available space provides the most accurate . measure available of changing standards. Regional a s well a s occupational variations in average space seem to occur. The handbook con- tains population and housing stock data for large cities of the USSR for January 1956. Calculating average total space per person in these cities and grouping the data by economic region produces the averages shown in the following tabulation: Table 7” (p. 39-40)

[185] Central Intelligence Agency. (1957). Economic intelligence report: Housing in the USSR (Report No. 30). U.S. Government Printing Office. “The current average is a living-sleeping space of 1 3 by 1 3 feet for a family of four, or a total space including kitchen, bath, and closets of a little over 16 by 16 feet” (p. 40)

[186] Central Intelligence Agency. (1957). Economic intelligence report: Housing in the USSR (Report No. 30). U.S. Government Printing Office. “Rent comprises a smaller percentage of a worker's budget in the USSR than in the US. In 1955, municipal rental charges averaged 3 to 4 percent of the family budget, utilities costing an additional 4 percent. This compares with a US average of 13 to 18 percent for rent and útilities.” (p. 42)

[187] Central Intelligence Agency. (1957). Economic intelligence report: Housing in the USSR (Report No. 30). U.S. Government Printing Office. ”Monthly rental charges, which are fixed by law and range from a minimum of 44 kopeks to a maximum of 1.32 rubles per square meter of living space, are based on a number of factors. These include location, condition of the dwelling, profession o f the tenant, and number of dependents. Earnings of the tenant exert the greatest influence o n the rate. Starting with the minimum of 4 4 kopeks per square meter for every 100 rubles of monthly earnings over 145 rubles, there is a n additional charge of 3 3 kopeks per square meter, so that almost all Soviet workers pay the maximum rate. 202/ When unusual additional features are provided, such a s refrigeration or built-in closets, the rate may exceed 1.32 rubles per square meter.” (p. 42)

[188] Central Intelligence Agency. (1957). Economic intelligence report: Housing in the USSR (Report No. 30). U.S. Government Printing Office. “For the prewar period the handbook, The National Economy of the USSR, contains data o n total urban space constructed in the 3 prewar 5-year periods for both the state and the private sectors. From previous publications, data are also available for living space on both a 5-year and an annual basis for most years. For the postwar period the handbook contains annual data for total. state and total private urban housing construction. Annual postwar

data in terms of living space are available for 1946 and 1947 only, after which time all announcements were made in terms of total space. It has therefore been necessary to estimate the relationship between living and total space for most of the postwar period in order to determine the amount of living space constructed. The data tabulated below are in terms of both living and total space for the Soviet period.”” (p. 45)

[189] Central Intelligence Agency. (1957). Economic intelligence report: Housing in the USSR (Report No. 30). U.S. Government Printing Office. ”1917-28: Published annual data o n living space constructed were used for each year in this period. There is some question, however, as to whether the same original data were used in the compilations of the handbook. The handbook reports that the state sector built more total space than the private sector, whereas previously published figures indicate that the private sector built more living space. If the same original data were used, of housing built in 1917-28, 50 percent of privately built total space was living space; only 35 percent of state-built total space was living space. Several points regarding conflicting data o n living space are as follows: Zaslavskiy presents a figure stated to cover 1924-28 which actually covers the period 1917-28 according to annual data. Sosnovy includes reconstruction a s well a s new construction in his data for private housing construction 1923-28. Reconstruction is not included in prewar data presented in this report. Filatov presents a figure of 7 million square meters for state construction In 1917-28 and a figure of 9.7 million square meters for private construction in the same period. These figures d o not fit annual data. Maslakov presents the same data a s Filatov.//1929-32: Annual data are available for construction of living space in the state sector. A total figure for the 4-year period and for 1929 are available for private construction. The other years are estimated. During this period, living space constructed in the state sector was 72 percent of total space; in the private sector, 75 percent; and for the combined total, 72.6 percent. Zaslavskiy presents a figure for state construction in 1929-32 which has been rejected in favor of the official fulfillment figure.//1933-37 A 5-year figure for construction of living space in the state sector is available. Annual figures were not released, however, probably because of the decrease in housing construction after 1934. The relationship between living and total space constructed in this period by the state sector is 72 percent. The estimate for private living space constructed is obtained by taking 75 percent of total private space constructed, the relationship during the First Five Year Plan.//1938 - June 1941: This period contains conflicting data on construction. The handbook presents figures of 34.4 million square meters of total space for state construction, 7.6 million square meters for private construction, a total of 4 2 million square meters. If the relationship between total and living space in the first two Five Year Plans is used, living space constructed was a s follows: state sector, 24.8 million square meters; private sector, 5.7 million square meters; and total, 30.5 million square meters. Broner presents a figure of 30 million square meters of living space referring to the “total increase in housing space” (state only( during the period 1938-42. Bol’shaya sovetsksaya entiskloediya indicates a figure of 30 million square meters as being state construction for 1938-May1941. Another figure for state concussion exists—20.7 million square meters for the period 1938-May 1941, with 17.2 million square meters for 1938-40 and 3.5 million square meters for the first half of 1941. It is estimated that living space constructed during this period, including construction in newly occupied areas, totaled 25.6 million square meters -- 20.7 in the state sector and 4.9 in the private sector. A check on the reliability of the 1938-41 estimate for living space built is found in a recent statement that urban living space increased more than 85 million square meters during 1928-41 (beginning of war) as a result of new construction. Estimates construction during the period, total 84 million square meters. State living space constructed is estimated at 60 percent of total space, private living space at 64 percent, and the combined total at 61 percent. Annual estimates of living space for state construction are based on the figures for 1938-40 and the first half of 1941 presented above, and a total figure for state construction in 1927-39 of 64 million square meters. Annual estimates for private construction are based on the figure for total space for the 3.5 year period presented in the handbook, with consideration of the increased territory in 1940 and 1941. If it were assumed that the relationship between living and total space existing during the first two Five Year Plan periods continued into the period under consideration, the resulting figure for 1941 would be unrealistically high in comparison with annual construction in 1938-40.//During this and subsequent periods, reconstruction a s well as new construction is included in Soviet housing construction data. According to the handbook, total construction and reconstruction during this period amounted to 49.8 million square meters of total space -- 41.3 million in the state sector and 8.5 million in the private sector. The only data available in terms of living space for this period are a s follows: State sector, July 1941 - May 1945; State sector, 1943-44 liberated areas 17.9 million square meters 12.7 million square meters. A high estimate for state construction of living space for June to December 1945 totals 5 million square meters with a total for July 1941 - 1945 of 23.9 million. For the private sector, a control figure of 19 million square meters for living space constructed during the entire plan period up to 1945 provides an estimate of 5.1 million square meters for the private sector for the period under consideration, with a total of 29 million square meters of living space for the combined total. This is only 58 percent of total space claimed for the period -- 57.9 percent in the state sector and 60 percent in the private sector. This relationship is considered reasonable for the period under consideration.///” (p. 47-50)

[190] Central Intelligence Agency. (1957). Economic intelligence report: Housing in the USSR (Report No. 30). U.S. Government Printing Office. ”It is of interest to note that data released annually disagree

slightly with figures presented in the handbook, as shown in the tabulation below. This probably occurs because of incomplete data at the time of release of annual plan fulfillment results. Period ,Previously_Announced,Handbook_232; 1946-48,51,57; 1949,22,22 1950,28,24; 1951,27,26; 1952,27,26; 1953,28,29; 1954,32,31; 1955,35,32. ” (p. 50)

[191] Central Intelligence Agency. (1957). Economic intelligence report: Housing in the USSR (Report No. 30). U.S. Government Printing Office. ”The USSR claimed that losses during the war amounted to 70 million square meters of living space (over 100 million square meters of total space). 252/ Net actual losses derived from data in handbook are now presented as having been about two-thirds of this claim as follows: Total space in urban areas, 1950(from handbook) Total space in urban areas, 1940 (from handbook) Net gain from 1940 to 1950 Gross construction and reconstruction 1941-50 (from handbook). Net loss 513 million square meters; 421 million square meter; 92 million square meters; 160 million square meters 68 million square meters; The maximum net war loss possible, assuming no retirements during this period except for war losses, was 60 million square meters of total space or 40 million to 45 million square meters of living space. In order to determine war losses in terms of living space, the same technique was used as in the case of total space. In applying this technique, living space in 1950 was assumed to be 65 percent of total space, 62 percent in the state sector and 70 percent in the private sector.” (p. 55)

[192] Hess, P. B., & Tammaru, T. (Eds.). (2019). Housing Estates in the Baltic Countries: The Legacy of Central Planning in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Springer. ”Considered to be a highlight of modern city planning, enormous housing estates included apartments (at high density, in standardised high-rise blocks) with modern conveniences in mixed-use settings containing schools, everyday services, day care, and recreational and socialisation opportunities. Usually, one housing estate consisted of several mikrorayons, which were designated by central authority according to housing requirements that were calculated proportional to the needs for workers in enterprises. Site selection for large housing estates was usually designated in general town plans prepared for up to 25-year horizons. Within new residential districts, site planning was conducted at the district or mikrorayon level with detailed planning projects that were magnificent in size and comprehensive in scope, covering street networks, architectural elements, access and transport and greenery. Strict norms dictated the living space that was allowable for each family, and housing units were allocated according to need (based on family size) with rent computed proportional to income (with large state subsidies).” (p. 141-142)

[193] Hess, P. B., & Tammaru, T. (Eds.). (2019). Housing Estates in the Baltic Countries: The Legacy of Central Planning in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Springer. ”What resulted were distinctive modernist spaces that, although they contained standard Soviet residential buildings at their core (this could not be helped), were otherwise state of the art. Apartments in new housing estates provided coveted conveniences (for example, modern kitchens, comfortable toilets and washrooms, central heating) that were superior to amenities offered in contemporaneous pre-World War II housing (Hess 2011) and were thus quite prestigious . Individual apartments in new Estonian housing estates had grown larger during the Soviet era, and, by the late Soviet years, Estonians enjoyed the highest living space per capita at (11.7 m2) in the Soviet Union (the USSR average was 9.4 m2). Only budget constraints and notoriously cheap construction materials dampened the modernist vision that Soviet-era Estonian architects created for new residential space in Estonia’s capital city. If the conditions in Estonia that allowed town planning innovation that we describe in this article had not existed, built environments in housing estates could be of much lesser quality than those that endure today.” (p. 156)

[194] Hess, P. B., & Tammaru, T. (Eds.). (2019). Housing Estates in the Baltic Countries: The Legacy of Central Planning in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Springer. ”For 50 years until the beginning of the 1990s, large-slab buildings were erected in Riga according to a set of 11 standardised projects that differed in terms of exterior wall material, number of floors, number of apartments and useful floor area. Elements of the buildings were produced in many large-slab construction factories in Riga as well as in other major towns in Latvia… Nevertheless, this generation of buildings provided a comparatively higher level of comfort with regard to basic utilities. Each apartment was equipped with running water and sewage mains, toilet and bath, and, where possible, access to central heating and hot water. Post-war housing ideology implied construction of small-sized apartments based on‘economic’ standard projects with small living rooms and minimum auxiliary space. The hallway was designed as a narrow corridor, the kitchen area was around 6.0 m2 or less, the bathroom and toilet were installed in a single space taking up 2.0–2.5 m2 in which a bathtub just 1.5 m long could be placed. Integrated bathrooms were not equipped with sinks; those were available only in buildings with separate bathrooms. The kitchen and bathroom pipes were connected in one block. This saved plumbing costs but did not allow for making changes to the apartment layout. Many apartments consisted only of adjoining rooms. There were no outdoor spaces or they appeared in the form of very small balconies.” (p. 171)

[195]  Hess, P. B., & Tammaru, T. (Eds.). (2019). Housing Estates in the Baltic Countries: The Legacy of Central Planning in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Springer. “The second phase, which began in the mid-1960s, can be considered as the period of residential building modernisation. Prior to that, only standard projects developed in the central offices of the USSR were allowed for construction. Starting with 1965, Latvian architects could adapt the USSR standard projects to local conditions which effectively allowed updates in many instances. This process started with ve-storey large-slab buildings and was followed by those of nine storeys. A group of architects and civil engineers was awarded with a State Award of the Latvian SSR for their modernisations of the standard building project. Compared to the first generation, there were wider entrance halls and, in some designs, a built-in wardrobe. The kitchen area was increased and the toilet was removed from the bathroom and placed into a separate room; however, the short bathtubs still remained. In some apartments, the number of adjoining rooms decreased. Loggias were erected instead of balconies. In 1972, a second large-slab manufacturer was launched, the Riga Large-Slab Construction Plant. It produced building blocks for the standard nine-storey large-slab houses. Its capacity, 240,000 m2 per year, was about twice as large as the output of the first standard construction plant. The third phase commenced in the mid-1970s. While work on future projects continued during the second-generation construction phase, it was necessary to wait several years until construction of the new generation of standard buildings could start. The initial third-generation buildings without construction dif culties appeared in the beginning of the 1970s. Third-generation apartments were about 5% more spacious than those of the second generation. An important feature appeared in the apartment layout. Larger apartments were equipped with separate guest toilet near the entrance while the bathroom and family toilet were placed in the private area of the apartment. The bathroom had a 1.7 m long bathtub and a place for a washing machine. The entrance was equipped with a double door to minimise heat loss and provide better sound insulation. The buildings higher than ve floors were equipped with garbage containers and buildings higher than six floors had an elevator. The buildings erected according to the latest standards had enlarged apartment spaces, entrance halls with daylight and strict apartment layouts. These qualities were included in the typical project series 119, developed by Latvian architects, who received a gold medal at the USSR National Economic Achievement Exhibition.”(p. 171-172)

[196] Hess, P. B., & Tammaru, T. (Eds.). (2019). Housing Estates in the Baltic Countries: The Legacy of Central Planning in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Springer. “The most popular apartment type was a communal one-bedroom apartment (with a typical size of approximately 45 m2), which constituted 42.9% of all the apartments built in Lazdynai, and 50.7% in Karoliniškės. These apartments were never referred to as‘one-bedroom apartments’ but were instead known as two-room apartments because the rooms did not differ significantly in size or other qualities and usually served as multifunctional spaces. In Indrė’s opinion, this practice had a negative impact on the demographic composition of residences:‘virtually the whole block consisted of two-room apartments, so all the families on this staircase were single-child families’. Yet, a 1974 survey of the then prestigious Lazdynai revealed that in almost one-third of three-bedroom apartments, someone was regularly sleeping in the walk-through living room. In one-bedroom apartments, this number increased to nearly two-thirds. Therefore, design professionals promoted convertible furniture which was highly desired by tenants.” (p. 185)

EXTRA INFO SECTION 4

[197] Hess, P. B., & Tammaru, T. (Eds.). (2019). Housing Estates in the Baltic Countries: The Legacy of Central Planning in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Springer. “Approximately 200,000 apartments were built in Riga from 1958 to 1990. Despite the remarkable growth of construction volume that culminated in 1987, the demand for separate living space for each household was not satisfied. Riga had a significant apartment deficit at the time because the increase in construction speed and volume did not keep up with the increasing number of inhabitants. As a result, the average provision of residential living space did not increase. In 1940, the provision of useful living space per person in Riga was 19.2 m2 but at the end of the Soviet era at the beginning of the 1990s it was only 18 m2.” (p. 174)

[198] ​​Hess, P. B., & Tammaru, T. (Eds.). (2019). Housing Estates in the Baltic Countries: The Legacy of Central Planning in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Springer. “Most of the apartments were identical: thus, the main distinguishing feature, except for the apartment number, was its vertical location in the building. The first and second floors were almost uniformly recognised as the best options as they were elevated from the ground level but not too high, considering that five-storey buildings for economic reasons were still designed without an elevator. In the higher blocks, which were usually regarded as inferior for many reasons by those who lived in the lower buildings, opinions were divided between the lower and the upper floors, which offered stunning views (except for the very last floor which was notorious for its coldness in winter, heat in summer and constant leaking). There was common agreement that the ground floor was the worst for having no privacy (security issues emerged only a few decades later). It was possible to swap between floors, but this happened only in exceptional circumstances such as a sick or disabled person in a family needing to live on the ground floor. In cooperative buildings, the procedure of drawing lots was adopted to ensure a fair distribution process, but in many cases it introduced possibilities for corruption:‘it was discrimination because we all paid the same money but we drew different lots: all the philologists and teachers drew a lot with the ground or the fourth floor and a bad layout’ (Elvyra, Žirmūnai).” (p. 185-186)

[199] Hess, P. B., & Tammaru, T. (Eds.). (2019). Housing Estates in the Baltic Countries: The Legacy of Central Planning in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Springer. ”This research confirms that, despite many negative opinions in contemporary public discourse and the significant change in housing standards, large socialist-era housing estates are still viewed as good places to live by their long-term residents. These findings also contradict prevailing professional view defining large housing estates as places constructed and lived in out of necessity and not embraced by residents. There are several reasons why. First, the then newcomers came to newly built modern neighbourhoods that were organised to impose a certain way of life and, over time, to become a standard model for residential environments. Furthermore, over many years, housing estates became vital parts of people’s lives and their memories. Even tenants who at the very beginning were longing for a socially and culturally vibrant Old Town atmospheres now describe a good housing estate as quiet and green; that is to say, they prefer the modernist model with separate work and recreational areas connected by convenient public transport. Highly appreciated green space in housing estates embodies the modernist ideal of an interesting mix of values and uses: in the very modern housing estate, most people welcome opportunities to enjoy ample nature. A key concern in all the housing estates is a possible increase in density (i.e. to make them less suburban and more‘city-like’), since residents nearly always regard high-density living negatively and appreciate and seek to preserve another significant feature of modernist planning—open space.” (p. 197)