USSR: Housing

housing was a c_____ p______ for the soviet people

continual problem

what was the property policy that began in 1918 that took land away from aristocrats and the middle class?

who took the land?

what happened to former owners?

who did lenin want the property to be rredistributed to ?

the Redistribution Of Property 1918-28

working class people and peasants took the land

former owners= killed or forced out or allowed a single room for their families or forced to squatt in deserted buildings

lenin wanted propertty to be given to homeless and poor

what happened to housing post civil war and why?

(hint:where were people going?)

houses were destroyed to provide timber for fuel as workers were fleeing the cities to search for food as rations had become extreme

what happened to housing under the NEP?

(it was d__________)

and what was outlawed?

denaationalised ( from public/state back to private ownership)

outlawed=the redistribution of property

what % of housing was denationalised in urban areas under the NEP?

60-80%

what happened to churches and church land under the NEP?

nationalised

preists=evicted and buildings were turned into civic centres, houses or stores

(this helped to solve housing problem as well as challenge and undermine the power of the church as an influencial institution)

under the NEP what % of house building was undertaken by private companies?

89%

what style of housing became popular under lenin and until the takeover of power by stalin?

tell me about it.

give an EG.

(think a popular avant-garde style)

constructivism/constructivist architecture:

• was delib futuristic

• tended to be based on/made of geometric shapes eg:cubes and cylinders

• EG: the Narkomfin Apartment House in Moscow

• vv designed to facilitate collective living,, collective kitchen, créche,library,gym,ext (the kitchen and créche also reflected attempts to liberate women from domestic drudgery)

• only 2 were ever built!!

• revolutionary and well designed and had potential, BUT made little impact on soviet citizens lives (in theory VS reality)

what happened to the amount of urban housing 1950-56?

more than doubled

what did khrushchev stop the building of?

what did he order the mass building of? why?

give the technical name.

stopped→building new gov buildings and communal buildings

began→ cheap,mass housing as it was necessary in the short term he said, and that in 1980s when comms had been acheived these houses could be replaced by more sophisticated housing

nicknamed→ ‘Khrushchyovka’ and became the standard model for all new homes and continued through 1970s and 1980s

what did k want housing to be? (compare breifly to stalin’s)

low cost and made from low-cost materials and be functional instead of grand like stalin’s architecture

result= the K-7 apartment block:

• 5 story building

• but poorly constructed as too fast

• lack of insulation

• builtin urban areas to cope with influx of pop from rural

features of the K-7 apartment block?

fams could have an entire apartment instead of being crammed into one singular room

had a bathroom, kitchen,2 bed rooms, small BUT 10x bigger than ‘kommunalka’ of the stalin period

Why did the Khrushchovka worry authorities?

as they effectively recreated/reintroduced privacy so authorities couldnt keep check on the popthrough informants in the buildings/rooms

(therefore lead to a new propaganda campaign which encouraged people to live good socialist lives)