Power, Architecture and Ordinary Citizens: A Study of Nikita Khrushchev’s Mass Housing Campaign

Power, Architecture and Ordinary Citizens

Student name: Maria Lisnic

Student number: 200475284

Elective group name: Critical Reparative Practices: Architectures of Maintenance and Care

Dissertation tutor: Toby Blackman

Title of dissertation: Power, Architecture and Ordinary Citizens: A Study of Khrushchev’s Mass Housing Campaign.

Word count (Inclusive of longer captions): 8076

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my tutor Toby Blackman for guiding me throughout this year-long journey. The support and advice I have received cannot be overestimated.

I am also grateful to my colleagues for reading the chapters of my dissertation and providing constructive feedback.

Lastly, special thanks to my dear father, who unfolded the family archives for me and encouraged me in moments of doubt.

GLOSSARY

Thaw - the period from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s when repression and censorship in the Soviet Union were relaxed due to Nikita Khrushchev’s policies of de-Stalinization and peaceful coexistence with other nations

Khrushchevka (multiple khrushchevki) - low-cost concrete-paneled, large block or brick apartment building which was developed during the late 1950s - 1960s, during the time Nikita Khrushchev directed the Soviet government

Mikroraion (multiple mikroraioni) - housing microdistrict

Living space - floor space in apartment’s rooms

Auxiliary space - floor space in kitchens, corridors, bathrooms, toilets and other units

Overall space - total floor space of apartment

ABSTRACT

This study examines Nikita Khrushchev’s mas-scale housing campaign, which began in the mid-1950s, and its product, khrushchevka, in the context of architecture and power relations. These relationships are defined in two ways: architecture as an embodiment of power and architecture as a source of power. This dissertation creates a comprehensive image of Khrushchev’s mass housing campaign and khrushchevka by carefully analysing previous academic work in the field of study, archival materials, media and photographs, ordinary citizens’ opinions, and personal encounters. The personal encounter shared through the methodology of “situated knowledge” is an important part of the research, opening up a new direction in the topic’s exploration. The dissertation concludes, through an in-depth analysis of khrushchevka and all the underlying political, ideological, and policing principles, that Khrushchev’s mass housing campaign serves as a perfect example of the power and architecture relationship expressed through both the influence of power in shaping housing and the use of housing to reinforce ideology.

Key words: khrushchevka, housing, Soviet Union, power and architecture, ideology

INTRODUCTION

Architecture is inherently political. It is not solely an artistic practice concerned with aesthetics and semiotics but a cultural form with long-standing and close links to dominant political interests. Influence, determinism, interaction, projection and dependence epitomise the close relationship between the built environment and the political reality in which it emerged. 1 Almost everything we consider today to be architectural masterpieces or historical and artistic monuments results from the close relationship between architecture and power. Built structures glorified the rulers and regimes who authorised their construction by displaying their power and wealth, proclaiming their victories, and intimidating their adversaries. As the state expanded its reach into everyday life, architecture rapidly became a tool for controlling, regulating, and directing public and private spaces.

In totalitarian and highly ideological societies, architecture has always held a significant position because of its power to create nationalist images and mould ideological consciousness. The state and the political reality it seeks to establish can both greatly benefit from the architecture’s potential to turn “fraught geopolitical “space” into the unified “place” of nationhood, as much through its entrenched social, symbolic, and ceremonial values, as by the cultural and social values that inform its appearance”.2 In this context, Henri Lefebvre’s ideas about the production of space may be quite useful in understanding the role of architecture in the development and reinforcement of political ideology among the masses. In his view, “Without the concepts of space and of its production the framework of power simply cannot achieve concreteness.”

3 Lefebvre’s work draws heavily on Marx’s theories, who is widely regarded as the originator of Marxism alongside Friedrich Engels. Making architecture, according to Marxist thinking, is a powerful way to shape social and economic relationships, construct knowledge, and build visions. The notion that every work of architecture will reflect the society that produced it is also deeply rooted in these theories.

4 What’s more, Soviet communism and so-called Leninism were heavily based on Marxism, revealing that architecture and power relationship was built into the very foundation of USSR theory and ideology.

The architecture of Soviet State was born together with the October Socialist Revolution as an architecture of revolution.5 From its genesis it had to fulfil the revolutionary promises of Bolshevik’s party to rebuild the country and improve the lives of ordinary people, to solve

1 Albena Yaneva , Five Ways to Make Architecture Political : an Introduction to the Politics of Design Practice (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017), p.15

2 Federico Freschi, ‘Postapartheid Publics and the Politics of Ornament: Nationalism, Identity, and the Rhetoric of Community in the Decorative Program of the New Constitutional Court, Johannesburg.’ Africa Today, 54.2 (2007), 27–49 <http://www.jstor.org/stable/27666891> [accessed 11 November 2022]

3 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. by Donald Nicholson-Smith (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), p. 281

4 Albena Yaneva, p.16

5 Andrei Ikonnikov, Russian Architecture of the Soviet Period, trans. by Lev Lyapin (Moscow: Raduga Publishers, 1988) p.5

the tasks the new political, economic and social system puts on it, to construct a new built environment which will reflect the views and ideas of communist ideology. In this context, Khrushchev’s mass housing campaign may be viewed as the fulfillment of Bolshevik’s revolutionary promise to end the housing shortage, improve the living conditions and establishing a new communist way of life. The rational imperative established a systematic and non-arbitrary mechanism for carrying out the housing programme, appealed to citizens’ enlightened self-interest, and measured success in terms of material goals, primarily newly constructed square metres. The emphasis on the communist future sought to foster a community-minded and mobilised population, as well as re-craft citizens’ proto-communist consciousness through housing.6 The use of housing to shape ideological cognition used by Khrushchev directly speaks to the ideas expressed by Lawrence J. Vale in his work Architecture, Power and National Identity. In Vale’s view the discourse on the meaning of architecture is understood through acculturation.7 This allows us to see architecture not only as a visual and spatial means of legitimising a political regime, but also as a genuine act of constructing political reality. 8

Michael Minkenberg defines two primary ways of connection between power and architecture, the first of which implies that built form reflects the purposes and ideology of the political regime, and the second in reverse suggests that architecture has the power to shape the political realm we live in.9 This idea directly speaks to the statement made by Albena Yaneva: “Architecture is both configured by power and is a resource for power.” 10 This dissertation will investigate how those two academically identified connections existed in the context of Khrushchev’s mass housing campaign and its product, khrushchevka. The investigation aims to place the khrushchevka in a broader context of politics and architecture relationship and investigate its impact on the social and political life of the USSR and its citizens, through both archival research and analysis of previous academic study of the topic.

Khrushchev came to power after Stalin and ruled from 1953 to 1964, the period which is widely known as “thaw” can be shortly described as period of “de-Stalinization” and reformism. Most ordinary citizens, however, remember his “thaw” as the time when they were finally able to move into a new separate apartment and improve their living conditions after decades of waiting for Bolsheviks to fulfill promises made in October 1917. These ordinary Soviet citizens became the main characters in Steven E. Harris’ book Communism on Tomorrow Street: Mass Housing and Everyday Life after Stalin, in which he examines Khrushchev’s mass housing campaign through the eyes of ordinary people who received a State apartment. Steven E. Harris argues that “ordinary Soviet citizens’ words and actions could be dramatic in their own right and can tell us as much, if not more, about what this post-Stalinist existence and Khrushchev’s reforms were all about.”11 His approach prompted me to think about my own khrushevka in the Republic of Moldova, where I spent my entire childhood and adolescence. I did not live in this apartment during Khrushchev’s rule, or even during the USSR’s existence, but the imprint Khrushchev’s mass housing campaign left on the housing reality I experienced is irrefutable.

6 Melanie Ilic and Jeremy Smith, Soviet State and Society under Nikita Khrushchev (London: Routledge, 2009), p.26

7 Lawrence J. Vale, Architecture, Power, and National Identity, 2nd ed.. (Oxon: Routledge, 2008), p.7

8 Michael Minkenberg, ed, Power and Architecture: The Construction of Capitals and the Politics of Space (New York: Berghahn Books, 2014), pp.2-3

9 Ibid., p.2-3

10 Albena Yaneva, p.16

11 Steven E. Harris, Communism on Tomorrow Street (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2013), p.1

To position my personal encounter with the object of study in this dissertation, I will use the methodological concept of “situated knowledge” which suggests that any knowledge is informed by the position of the knower or knowledge producer. In her 1988 essay Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial, Donna Haraway coined the term “situated knowledges,” describing it as “the apparatus of bodily production.”12 This concept will allow me to acknowledge my subjectivity in the analysis of the khrushchevka while also providing a new perspective on the question based on my embodied knowledge and experience.

Khrushchev’s mass housing campaign still remains extremely understudied and usually avoided by academics. Therefore, this dissertation not only aims to put the khrushchevka and its underlying political characteristic in a broader interdisciplinary study of the architecture and power relationship, but also contribute to the existing limited research on the Khrushchev’s mass housing campaign by expanding and filling in the gaps in the existing works of academics. The research gains more of its relevance as around sixty thousand people just in Moscow still live in khrushchevki – the mass-produced cheap panel housing during Khrushchev.13 Khrushchev’s mass housing campaign produced millions of apartments which were settled by millions of Soviet citizens, and after the dissolution of USSR these apartments didn’t disappear with the regime that produced them. Many housing blocks constructed under Khrushchev’s rule continue to stand and serve to its inhabitants, therefore forming the housing reality for those who live in post-Soviet Union countries.

The study is split into three parts, where each contributes to the overall understanding of the politics and architecture relationship expressed though khrushevka by Soviet mass housing campaign. First chapter examines the context, politics and policy related questions which contributed to the design and production of khrushevka as well as its emergence as the Soviet Union’s answer to the housing question. The study is based on the previously written academic publications on the political situation in USSR during the Khrushchev’s rule as well as analysis of works on Khrushchev’s mass housing campaign. Second chapter goes into an examination of the reality constructed by the campaign with its merits and drawbacks. This part of the study brings together academic works, media publications, opinions of ordinary Soviet citizens, archival materials and photographs to construct a comprehensive image of Khrushchev’s housing reality. The third and final chapter constitutes the interpretative and investigative part of the dissertation based on the personal encounter with the mass housing campaign expressed through “situated knowledge”. The chapter continues to explore academic works and experiences of ordinary Soviet citizens while contextualising them through my embodied knowledge.

12 Donna Haraway, ‘Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective,’ in Feminist Studies, v.14, n.3. (Autumn, 1988), p.595

13 Dmitrii Bulin, Skol’ko eshio prostoiat “khrushchevki“ v Rosii? [How much longer will the “Khrushchevki” stay in Russia?] (2013) <https://www.bbc.com/russian/society/2013/10/131004_russia_slums_khruschev> [Accessed 5 October 2022]

CHAPTER 1

Context, Politics and Policy

Housing Question as a Chronic Disease

The promise to solve the housing shortage and implement mass construction was rooted in the 1917 October Revolution. Motivated by Marxist ideology, Bolsheviks sought to abolish private property, resolve the housing question, and establish a society without social classes. The Bolsheviks issued the “Decree on Land” on their second day in power, proclaiming the abolition and redistribution of private land ownership through nationalisation.14 Nevertheless, the supply of living space inherited from the tsarist regime was inadequate, and the State was too impoverished at the time to make significant investments in new housing construction. Simultaneously the concentration of progressive development in cities made them the epicentres of working opportunities and socialist intervention prompting rural residents to actively migrate to urban areas, which caused the housing shortage and conditions to worsen throughout the 1920s. When Stalin came to power in the 1930s, he neglected housing provision even more, allocating all capital and resources to industrialisation while disregarding consumer needs.15 Furthermore, the damage and destruction of the USSR’s building sector during World War II deteriorated an already inadequate housing stock making the situation even worse.16 The last time chronic disease of the Soviet State appeared within sight was in July 1957, when Nikita Khrushchev (Fig.1), who came to power in 1953 after Stalin, issued a decree “On the development of domestic building in the USSR” to solve the housing question for first, last and all the time.

Soviet Union was in a deep state of political, economic and social crisis after Stalin’s death in March 1953. The system of terror and control he created over decades of his rule simply outlived itself and became even harmful, which made it evident that political machinery of the vast country needed to be revitalized and restored. 17 Khrushchev came to power after Stalin’s death and ruled until 1964. Edward Crankshaw, the Observer Soviet affairs correspondent during Khrushchev’s rule summed up well the challenges the regime was facing during the period:

14 The process of nationalisation and redistribution in this case implies that Bolsheviks expropriated private property owned by wealthy elites in pre-revolutionary society and then distributed it among the working-class citizens, while keeping the ownership of the property. The latter remained a common practice for USSR throughout its existence.

Christine Varga-Harris, Stories of House and Home Soviet Apartment Life during the Khrushchev Years (Ithaca; London: Cornell University Press, 2015), pp. 1-2

15 Donald Filtzer, The Khrushchev Era: De-Stalinisation and the Limits of Reform in the USSR, 19531964, Studies in European History, (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1993), pp. 32-34

16 Christine Varga-Harris, Stories of House and Home, pp. 1-2

17 Donald Filtzer, pp. 6-7

“What is important, however, is that the post-Stalin reforms, or some of them, were inevitable. The problem facing the new leadership, collective or individual, was how to massage life back into the numbed limbs of society, how to encourage the new vitality to express itself and fructify, and how, at the same time, keep it within bounds, so that the whole elaborate edifice of administration was not swept away.”18

Khrushchev was an aspiring reformist, a dreamer perhaps. Many of his reforms failed or required even more reforms to fill in the faulty gaps and omissions.19 However, most ordinary citizens remember his “thaw” as the time when they were finally able to move into a new separate apartment and improve their living conditions after decades of waiting for the fulfilment of promises made by Bolsheviks back in October 1917.

Forty years passed between the 1917 October Revolution, in the wake of which Bolsheviks waged war on the family, private ownership, and a traditional way of life, and the 1957 housing decree, in which the Soviet State under Khrushchev set a goal to eliminate housing shortage by providing each Soviet family with a separate apartment. Early Bolsheviks who aspired to a classless society and an egalitarian way of life saw the separate apartment as a problem rather than a solution since, prior to the revolution, simple workers languished in overcrowded factory barracks and tenements, while single-family residences were only available to bourgeoisie and aristocrats. Khrushchev alternatively presented separate apartments as a way to fulfill Bolsheviks’ revolutionary promise to solve the housing question. 20 Moreover, the State gave the new housing a meaning of truly socialist as it intended to make separate apartments a widespread phenomenon by distributing them to the one social group — the family— that transcended all other divisions. 21

18 Ibid., p.9

19 Martin McCauley, Khrushchev and Khrushchevism (Basingstoke: Macmillan in association with the school of Slavonic and East European Studies University of London, 1987), pp.2-3

20 Steven E. Harris, pp.11-12

21 Khrushchev deserves credit for providing Soviet families with separate apartments, but he did not invent the concept within the context of Soviet Country. In his book Communism on Tomorrow Street, Steven E. Harris discusses Stalin's often-overlooked role in the rise of single-family housing. Harris remarks, "The Stalinist regime marginalized radical architectural theories on collectivist living and rehabilitated the singlefamily apartment as a "cultured" form of urban housing".

Ibid., pp.1-68

Fig.1- Nikita Khrushchev, the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and chairman of the country’s Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1964.

Living conditions prior to Khrushchev’s mass housing campaign

Fig.2- Two families of candy factory workers rent a corner in a room, 1920-1923

Fig.3- Tsentralny special settlement, general view of one of the barracks, 1933

Fig.4- Destruction of Ukranian USSR city Kharkiv during World War II

Fig.5- Kitchen of a Stalinist communal apartment, postwar years

Fig. 2

Fig.3

Fig.4

Fig.5

Years

Housing Built by State and Cooperative Enterprises and Organisations, and Housing Cooperatives

Housing Built by Workers and White-Collar Employees at Their Expense and with State Credit

Housing Built by Collective Farms, Collective Farmers, and Rural Intelligentsia

Khrushchev did not come up with a ground-breaking or unconventional solution to the housing question, but his approach to solving it was truly innovative for the Soviet Union. In contrast to the country’s previous leadership, which sought to invent an utterly novel housing reality to end the housing shortage and create a new way of life for Soviet people,23 Khrushchev learned from the past practices and rectified them. He kept the Bolsheviks’ approach to housing which included the abolition of private property, nationalisation of the housing stock and land, rationing of living space in square meters, and use of housing to control society.24 Also, he kept the idea of single-family occupancy earlier reintroduced in the USSR by Stalin in the 1930s. Meanwhile, under Khrushchev, new changes to the previous housing construction and distribution practice occurred. He established a much more coherent and clearly expressed relationship between citizens’ rights and housing provision, significantly increased housing construction, and massively invested in material, financial, and labour resources. Archival data shows that the total urban housing stock in the Soviet Union increased by 87.5% between 1950 and 1960 and that the all-union urban ‘departmental’ fund grew by 78.2% from 1960 to 1965. 25 As evidenced by data, it didn’t take long to see the results of the new approach and renewed commitment, which finally “cured” the chronic disease of the Soviet Union: the housing question.

Ideological Intervention

The ownership control and political infusion of various spatial orders have existed since the formation of the Soviet Union throughout all the spaces and social hierarchies. Housing and domestic reality were not an exemption. Christine Varga-Harris argues that “housing – denoting the design, construction, and decoration of living space, and the ways in which people manoeuvre within it – was a negotiated site where policy matters related to distribution and consumptions, norms associated with materials culture, and

22 Narodnoe khoziaistvo SSSR v 1967 [National economy of USSR in 1967] (Moscow: Statistika, 1968), p.675

As explained in source, the data for the years 1941-1950 represents both housing that was reconstructed and newly built.

23 The novel housing reality statement refers to the ideas of Soviet avant-garde architects in 1920s about creating “house communes” (doma-kommuny) where residents will have small rooms for sleeping, while cooking, eating, childcare and leisure would be socialised and organised in communal spaces. In reality this theory was presented by communal apartments.

24 Steven E. Harris, p.43

25 Melanie Ilic and Jeremy Smith, pp.27-28

Table 1 - Construction of Housing in the Soviet Union,1917-65 (millions of square meters of overall space)22

social concerns all converged.”26 The nationalisation of land and property, as well as the official political rhetoric of egalitarian housing provision, occurred in the early days of the October Revolution and signified the first signs of the regime’s tendency to politicise the most intimate spaces and practises of Soviet citizens. “Everyday life was not opposed to ideological life. On the contrary, it was a fundamental site of ideological intervention.”, where domestic space played an essential role in this interference. 27

With the Khrushchev regime’s intense house-building programme, the idea that living space could be ordered and used for political purposes became especially important. While taking steps to provide one-family housing for all, it made the home and leisure spaces critical sites of political intervention.28 It may seem like a popular “thaw” slogan, “A separate apartment for every family!” implied the revival of privacy in the Soviet State after decades of a widespread practice of communal apartments. Still, it only concerned other citizens, not the state ideology itself. While visiting the USSR in 1928, Walter Benjamin claimed, “Bolshevism has abolished private life”. 29 Later in 1958, the title of one Soviet agitational brochure proclaimed, “Everyday life is not a private matter”.30 From being a “monopolist” in mass housing construction and furniture design, management, and distribution to providing brochures and literature on how to efficiently operate the new apartment and establish a socialist way of life (Fig.6), the Soviet State politicised every square metre of the tiny apartment and instilled ideological meaning into housing campaign.

The totalitarian nature of the Soviet Union enabled it to translate the mass-scale housing campaign and interfere with the ideological meaning in all spheres, including the media. In August 1957, on the Day of the Builder, an article appeared on the front page of “The Evening Leningrad” declaring that this holiday should be associated not only with construction workers but also, more broadly, with the recently published decree on housing construction and the upcoming 40th anniversary of “Great October.” The correspondent, emphasizing the seriousness of the task put before the builders, stated, “Socialist competition in our construction should flare up brighter than ever before.”31 Such a comprehensive discussion of construction issues suggests that the completion of the task of housing provision was viewed both literally and figuratively as a sign of success in the revolutionary transformation of society. Moving into comfortable, satisfactory, and, most importantly, egalitarian housing made it possible to “touch with your hands” the most important promise of the new society: a communist utopia. 32

On a bigger scale, Khrushchev’s regime mobilised the provision of housing to achieve the broader goals of creating a classless society, moulding the New Soviet Man and Woman, and demonstrating the superiority of socialism over capitalism. In contrast to the war,

26 Christine Varga-Harris, Stories of House and Home, p.6

27 David Crowley and Susan E Reid, Socialist Spaces: Sites of Everyday Life in Eastern Bloc (New York: Berg Pub Limited, 2002), p.3-11

28 Ibid., p.11

29 The statement made by Benjamin addressed the communal apartments, which were dominating the housing sector at the time. However, in this case, it can be applied to the broader understanding of Soviet housing practices and private life.

Walter Benjamin, ‘Moscow’ (1927), in One Way Street (London: Verso, 1979), pp. 8–187

30 O. Kuprin, Byt – ne chastnoe delo [Everyday life is not a private matter] (Moscow: Gospolitzdat, 1959), pp. 1-7

31 ‘Prazdnik stroitelej’ [Day of the Builder], Vechernii Leningrad [The Evening Leningrad], 10 August 1957, p.1

32 Christine Varga-Harris, ‘Khrushchevka, kommunalka: sotsializm i povsednevnosti vo vremya “ottepeli”’ [Khrushchevka, communal apartment: socialism and everyday life during “thaw”], Modern History of Russia, 1 (2011), pp.160-166

Fig.7-Soviet agitational poster ‘To build fast, cheap and good!’ (1960)

Fig.8- Soviet agitational poster ‘For the good of the nation!’ (1960)

Fig.6 - Extract from the book Advices on housekeeping , ed. by R. V. Svetsova

(Volgograd: Volgogradskoie Knizhnoie Izdatel’stvo, 1959), pp.4-5. Pages provide visual and textual guidance on how to furnish the room to make efficient use of space and produce enjoyable environment.

Fig.6

Fig.7

Fig.8

terror, and repression employed by Stalin’s regime, the new way of life was to be established through a consensus-building project involving the resettlement of families into their own apartments, therefore framing a new political and social reality after the death of Stalin in 1953.33 Steven E. Harris describes the transition in the context of the housing program, “When the members of a family left their communal apartment for a separate apartment, they left behind the Stalinist past as embodied in their previous housing for a new and empty apartment, a clean slate mirroring the uncharted reformism and “thaw” of the Khrushchev era.” 34 The Soviet State under Khrushchev not only instilled ideological meaning in the separate apartment and the mass-scale housing campaign but also used them as a powerful tool to reinforce and present the State’s ideology and political regime internally and externally.

Policy and the Separate Apartment

In the context of the mass-housing campaign, the underlying policies and limitations associated with Khrushchev’s separate apartment production and design were just as important as the State ideology that imposed them. The State is accountable for primary constraints faced by the housing campaign due to both the early decision of the People’s Commissariat of Health in 1919 to establish a standard of 8.25 square metres of living space per person35 and the goal to end the housing shortage in ten to twelve years adopted in the 1957 decree ‘On the development of domestic building in the USSR’. As a result, the distribution norms, cost limitations, almost exclusive use of prefabricated construction elements, tight time frames, and waiting lists all constituted part of the programme, which aimed to provide every Soviet family with a separate apartment. As Steven E. Harris argues, the Soviet State’s intense and urgent quest to find housing solutions occurred “not on the drawing board of utopias but in the process of designing the real world,” with its imminent technological, economic, and policing constraints, as well as tight schedules. 36

The State presented the small size of Khrushchev’s separate apartments as a rational and scientific organisation of space that would complete the transformation of all residents into the New Soviet Man and Woman. However, a more logical evaluation of the reasons behind the small size of khrushchevka reveals a negotiation between single-family occupancy and distribution norm based on living space and sanitary norm. The architects of Khrushchev’s mass-housing programme decided to drastically reduce living space in apartments to the point where local officials could not settle apartments with more than one family, therefore preventing communalisation. 37 The distribution norm of 8.25-9.00 square meters of living space per person was used as a maximum cut-off, implying that a family of four would receive an apartment with 33-36 square meters of living space. Nevertheless, this allowed to 33 In February 1956 Nikita Khrushchev delivered his famous “Secret Speech” at the Twentieth Communist Party Congress which denounced Stalin’s crimes including mass repressions, terror and cult of personality. It encouraged a thaw in state-society relations and revival of the country’s quest for communism. This significant event and mass-scale programme can be both viewed as integral parts of Khrushchev’s regime political and ideological intervention.

Steven E. Harris, p.267

34 Ibid., p.5

35 Steven E. Harris in his work Communism on Tomorrow Street introduced the idea that the sanitary norm to living space relationship in USSR originated in ideas about minimum living standards in the nineteenth-century housing reform movement. He traces the routes of how pan-European housing reform influenced country’s norms and housing sizes starting from France’s mid-19th century research on the minimum amount of airflow a prisoner would need to avoid asphyxiating.

Ibid., pp.31-39

36 Andrei Ikonnikov, p.7

37 Steven E. Harris, pp.1-72

achieve the desired single-family occupancy in 91 to 92 per cent of newly built apartments for the years 1959-1962 and had grown to 95.3 per cent by 1963, as evidenced by Gosstroi studies.38

The reduction of living space ensured the apartment’s distribution to individual families; however, it caused an increase in cost estimates. According to the distribution norms, a condo with smaller living spaces will ensure single-family occupancy but cost more per square metre because of the expensive provision of services in auxiliary spaces. To cut costs, the architects significantly reduced the size and infrastructure of auxiliary spaces: kitchens and entrances were shrunk, pass-through rooms were added, and bathrooms and toilets were merged. Other measures of keeping costs down included simplifying layouts, lowering ceilings, and reducing the number of rooms. 39 The State did not reform the underlying principles that tied design and cost to the distribution of housing based on the allocation of square meters per person, therefore, constricting what architects could do with separate apartments. Once the basic apartment design, which was small enough to fit one family, keep the costs down and remain separated, was created, architects concentrated on mundane technical questions and minor design adjustments. 40

In the broader discussion about the relationship between architecture and politics, Albena Yaneva observes that architecture is “shaped by bureaucratically codified state regulations” and “fundamentally conditioned by the broader political-economic context in which it is commissioned, designed, and understood.”41 These statements directly address the chronic housing shortage, political rhetoric, ideological intervention, and policy-related constarits, all of which shaped Khrushchev’s mass housing campaign and separate apartments as we know them today. Khrushchevka was a product of the Soviet Union, reflecting all of its social, historical, political, and economical characteristics while also passing them on to ordinary Soviet citizens who lived in it. In this way, this product’s merits and flaws can be traced back to the underlying principles that shaped and conditioned it.

38 Izrail B. Martkovich and others, Zhilishchnoe zakonodatel’stvo v SSSR i RSFSR [Housing legislation in USSR and RSFSR] (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo literatury po stroitel’stvu, 1965), pp.80-81

39 Steven E. Harris, pp.27-85

40 Ibid., pp.106-107

41 Albena Yaneva, pp.15-16

Fig.9- Plan of the I-335K housing block type, butt latitudinal section 2-2-3 (1961)

CHAPTER 2

Production, Circulation and Consumption

Minimal Living Space in Reality

After years of waiting for a much-desired separate apartment in a newly-built khrushchevka, many residents opened the doors to their new homes with unbridled joy, followed by dismay.42 The most pronounced problem for new residents was the small size of their new apartments, expressed through narrow entrances and doorways, low ceilings, tiny kitchens, and small rooms.43 Three faculty members of the Polytechnic Institute in Gor’kii complained in a letter to the Third All-Union Congress of architects in 1961 about the shrinking dimensions of mass housing, arguing that they could not satisfy people in the present, not to mention the future. The letter stated, “It isn’t normal when you can’t put a coat closet in an entranceway, when people have to drag in their furniture through the balcony and, we’re sorry to say, carry out a coffin almost vertically.”44 The limitations imposed on the masshousing campaign by previously discussed distribution norms and cost constraints resulted in an apartment with poultry dimensions, which presented inconvenience to its residents rather than the rational comfort promised by the Soviet State.

42 Steven E. Harris, p.275

43 Mark B. Smith, Property of Communists: The Urban Housing Program from Stalin to Khrushchev (Illinois: Norther Illinois University Press, 2010), p.126

44 Steven E. Harris, p.27

Fig.10 - scene from the movie Veroi i Pravdoi [By Truth and Faith] dir.by Andrei Smirnov (Kinostudiya MosFilm, 1979). One Soviet family has just received a separate apartment from the government and is preparing to welcome guests. The small dimensions are exemplified by the dining table, which did not fit in a single room and had to be placed in two rooms through a doorway that was entirely occupied by the table.

The archival photograph (Fig.11) of the room in the newly-built house taken in 1959 reveals the cramped and shrunken reality of the new socialist way of life established by Khrushchev’s mass housing campaign. The photograph is taken from a corner of the room, implying that a broader range is visible, but the crampedness and size of the space shrink the image somehow. The captured room features interesting furniture items: a bookcase with a section that folds out to serve as a small desk, a table with a collapsible section, and a sofa bed. Khrushchev’s housing campaign produced entirely new consumer goods that corresponded to the dimensions and aesthetics of the millions of new small apartments, thereby shaping people’s daily behaviours in accordance with the communist way of life.45 The decoration of the photographed room is kept to a minimum.”There should be nothing ostentatious and superfluous in our home,” wrote the Soviet journal “Working Woman.”46 These suggestions addressed one of the most pressing issues people faced when moving into new apartments: where to put all their belongings in such a small space.

45 Steven E. Harris, p.229

46 Il’ia Varlamov, Kak mi doshli do jizni takoi: khrushchevki [How did we get to this life: khrushchevki]

(2019) <https://pikabu.ru/story/kak_myi_doshli_do_zhizni_takoy_khrushchyovki_6598101> [accessed 10 January 2023]

Fig.11- The interior of the room in the new house (1959)

Typification and Standardisation

The notion that “it is possible and practical for buildings which are intended for the same purpose and are of the same capacity to be built a number of times in the same form” became critical for Khrushchev’s housing campaign. It resulted in the implementation of typification, prefabricated large-panel construction technology and standardised design.47 These changes in the very nature of design and construction methods were possibly the only ones capable of completing the Soviet State’s hasty endeavour to provide each family with a small, low-cost apartment at breakneck speed. To begin with, Soviet architects and designers whittled down the number of available housing options to a bare minimum and created prototype plans and layouts. Following that, industrial prefabrication techniques were developed to aid in the rapid speed of construction while also lowering costs. 48 Simultaneously, the Council of Ministers issued a decree in 1960 advocating the design and construction of prototype apartment blocks for prefabrication and mass production. If a commission of experts determines that a prototype building is technically and economically advanced, it is identified as a “type” and approved for mass production. 49 As a result, “lookalike towers grew like mushrooms after a rain shower” as every housing feature in the USSR, from construction technique to layout, became standardised.50

47 Philipp Meuser and Dimitrij Zadorin, Towards a Typology of Soviet Mass Housing: Prefabrication in the USSR 1955-199, trans. by Clarice Knowles (Berlin: DOM Publishers, 2015) p.11

48 Blair A. Ruble, ‘From khrushcheby to korobki’, in Russian Housing in the Modern Age: Design and Social History, ed. by William Craft Brumfield and Blair A. Ruble (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1993). p.238

49 Andrei Ikonnikov, p.7

50 Blair A. Ruble, p.243

Fig.12- Across the Soviet Union (Mogilev, Vilnius, Minsk): the wide geographical scope of the Khrushchev-era housing programme.

Fig.13 - Approximate nomenclature of the standard designs for Khrushchev’s housing campaign

Fig.14- Basic nomenclature of articles for I-464 housing block type

Fig.15-Construction of the large-panel khrushchevka

Fig.16- Standardised apartment plans for different family compositions

Fig.13

Fig.14

Fig.16

Fig.15

The project 10/1 of Romanian photographer Bogdan Girbovan allows us to visually understand and comprehend the typification and standardisation of the housing programme. The photographer captured all the apartments in a vertical row, including his own on the tenth floor, located in an old soviet housing block which emerged in the period of mass construction of typified housing. 51 The author emphasised that, despite each apartment having the same layout, each resident added their own colour and personality to it. That is undeniably true; however, it is also true that some other common features remained present from the past, even though the dissolution of the USSR occurred more than three decades ago and the building itself was most likely built more than five decades ago.

Girbovan took all photographs from the same vantage point, which not only highlights the identical arrangement of the walls but also enables the identification of peculiar similarities. Six of the ten images depict wooden parquet floors with the same warmtoned varnish and arrangement, which can be found in nearly every apartment from the period of mass-housing construction. What’s more intriguing is the similar arrangement of furniture in three of the captured rooms (9th, 8th, and 5th), which are all inhabited by the older generation: a double bed on the left, a closet in the back, a foldable couch on the right, and a table with chairs in the middle. Some other apartments (6th, 3rd, and 2nd) have minor variations of the same layout, perhaps the original one intended for this type of apartment. This cannot be sheer coincidence. The mass-housing campaign is often viewed as “a symbol of individual suppression and dejection” due to its tendency to standardise and typify.52 Could this be the reason why the residents of the apartments depicted in Bogdan Girbovan’s series maintained the state-mandated layout? If not, maybe there is a more logical explanation, such as the fact that the room in the khrushchevka is so tiny that only this layout can accommodate all the necessary furniture? Perhaps it is both at the same time.

51 Bogdan described his project in the following words, “I took a photograph of each apartment (the interior of each space) from the same angle, in order to better illustrate the mix of social classes in the block, displaying only differences in the character and design of the interior. The rooms may be regarded as a psychological chart of those who live in them, reflecting their history and relation to present times.”

Martynas Klimas, ‘Identical Apartments, Different Lives in Photos by a Romanian Artist’, Demilked, 2016 <https://www.demilked.com/ten-floors-identical-apartments-neighbors-bogdan-girbovan-romania/> [accessed 13 November 2022].

52 Philipp Meuser and Dimitrij Zadorin, p.7

Fig.17- 10th floor

Fig.18- 9th floor

Fig.19- 8th floor

Fig.20- 7th floor

Fig.24- 4th floor

Fig.25- 3rd floor

Fig.26- 2nd floor

Fig.27- 1st floor

Fig.21- 6th floor

Fig.23- 5th floor

Aesthetic deprivation

With its typification and mass production, Khrushchev’s urban housing programme created a startlingly uniform cityscape throughout the Soviet Union, with the clusters and rows of prefabricated, five to nine-story standardised khrushchevka acting as “lead characters” of this uniformity. The new cityscape from Minsk to Magadan appeared the same because it was composed of the same elements: similar apartment buildings, homogeneous residential areas, and an overall urban design that followed centralised directives.53 The story of the Soviet film “The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath!” revolves ironically around this new cityscape uniformity created by the mass-housing campaign. By mistake, the central character, muscovite Zhenya Lukashin, arrives at Leningrad airport. He gets a taxi and gives the driver his Moscow address. It turns out that there is an identical address in Leningrad that belongs to an apartment building with the same design as Zhenya’s building in Moscow. Unsuspectingly, upon arrival, he takes the elevator to “his” apartment, and the key fits in the door. Inside, even the furniture is nearly identical to Zhenya’s. 54 Academics, such as Blair A. Ruble and Mark B. Smith, view such replicated city reality as oppressive, displeasing and psychologically debilitating.55 In 1964 Laurens van der Post published his account of his recent journey across the USSR. While he found it depressing to have the same apartments for everyone, his Tashkent guide argued that they are all equal in USSR and that what is good for one is good for all.56 Soviet propaganda clearly worked well. Identical buildings, streets, and cities were the new socialist housing reality for Soviet citizens imposed by the Soviet Union, in which everyone, according to ideology, should be equal, if not identical.

Decree of November 4, 1955 No. 1871 “On the elimination of excesses in design and construction” became another reason for the extreme aesthetic deprivation faced by the Khrushchev’s mass housing campaign. Khrushchev was arguing that the outwardly ostentatious and extravagant style of architecture no longer corresponds with the Party and Government’s architectural and construction policies, and the Soviet architectural style should be characterised by simplicity, formalism, and cost-effectiveness.57 This resulted in buildings that have lost their aesthetics and individuality. Any decorative elements such as arches, columns or moldings disappeared. In return for this, economy and strict functionality increased dramatically, which made it possible to provide housing for everyone.

As evidenced by this chapter, Khrushchev’s housing programme adopted a quantitative rather than qualitative approach to housing production and provision. For the Soviet State, it was more critical to meet production quotas and deadlines than to consider the needs of the families who would live in the apartments and their aesthetics. As a result, “the most ambitious governmental housing program in human history” not only solved the housing question but also produced “the worst of all possible housing worlds”58

53 Mark B. Smith, p.111

54 Ironiya sudby, ili S lyogkim parom! [The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath!], dir. by Eldar Ryazanov (State Committee of Television and Radio Broadcasting of the Soviet Union, 1976) [Motion picture]

55 Mark B. Smith, p.112; Blair A. Ruble, p.251

56 Laurens van der Post, Journey into Russia (London: Penguin, 1971), p.73

57 Postanovlenie Tsentral’nogo Komiteta KPSS i Soveta Ministrov SSSR ot 4 noiabria 1955 goda №1871

“Ob ustranenii izlishestv v proiektirovanii i stroitel’stve” [Decree of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR of November 4, 1955 No. 1871 “On the elimination of excesses in design and construction”] (1955) <https://web.archive.org/web/20140716132943/http://sovarch.ru/postanovlenie55/>

[accessed 12 January 2023]

58 Blair A. Ruble, pp.234-259

Fig.28 - Moscow’s Cheryomushki district, built in 1950s

CHAPTER 3

My Personal Khrushchevka

Khrushchev’s Housing Reality

Thirty-two years ago, the Republic of Moldova: the country where I was born and lived most of my life, had been known as Moldavian Socialist Soviet Republic, or simply MSSR. This country disappeared in 1991 with the dissolution of the USSR and the collapse of socialism, just ten years before I was born. I have not lived a day in Moldavian Socialist Soviet Republic; however, the ghosts of the past keep percolating into my life, as the “new” urban reality constructed across all Soviet Union republics by Khrushchev’s mass housing campaign is still in place. Buildings did not collapse with the regime which produced them; they continued to stand still while the world around them did a U-turn.

I grew up in an apartment on the fifth floor of a housing block in the Riscanovca district of Chisinau, the capital of the Republic of Moldova. This district began to develop in 1958 when the Soviet State, led by Khrushchev, launched the mass construction campaign there.59 The exact year of my block’s construction is unknown; however, it was built around the beginning of the 1960s. The structure is made of large coquina blocks and presents four section cascade, conditioned by its location on a slope.60 Compared to the nearby rectangular “box” houses built around the same time, this cascade block stood out to me as both intriguing and beautiful. The Soviet uniform cityscape was more than just photographs or book pages for me; it was a reality in which even minor changes in design could delight. Unlike academics, I did not see the uniformity and typical construction as oppressive and psychologically debilitating, at least from the outside, not because of the ideological propaganda or a sense of equality imposed by the Soviet State but because this was the only housing reality I knew.61

59 Galina Makisheva, Riscanovca – raion dlia bednih jiteley [Riscanovca – district for poor citizens]

(2019) <https://bloknot-moldova.ru/news/kogda-to-ryshkanovka-byla-nishchey-okrainoy-stolits-1145982>

[accessed 12 January 2023]

60 Typical mass housing in the Soviet Union was mostly built with concrete pre-fabricated panels, whereas in the MSSR large coquina blocks were used for housing construction alongside, including my own apartment block.

61 Mark B. Smith, p.112; Blair A. Ruble, p.251

Fig.29

Fig.30

Fig.31

Fig.32

Fig.33

Fig.34

Fig.29 - My housing block

Fig.30-34 - Housing reality constructed by Khrushchev around me

My parents bought the three-bedroom apartment in the housing block mentioned above in 2001, before I was born, to accommodate their growing family of four, soon to be five. After a lengthy search, they finally settled on our current apartment, with the location being the deciding factor in their choice. My father always liked to remark how lucky we are to live in such a good residential area which provides all the necessary social, recreational and commercial services within walking distance. During Khrushchev’s mass-housing campaign, it became important not only to build individual housing units but also to create new residential systems known as microdistricts (mikroraion). These districts included functional zoning to separate housing from services and industry, incorporated green areas serving as vital passageways, and provided all social and commercial services. 62

Nevertheless, new residential districts often failed to live up to their ideal design, as in practice, the open spaces between apartments became “empty voids” which lacked the planned recreational facilities. In the worst cases, buildings sprouted in unlit and unpaved areas with hardly any infrastructure, public transportation, or access to social services and stores. 63 This was not the case with the residential area surrounding my apartment building, as it was one of the few to put theory into practice. Two parks are within five minutes of walking distance from my apartment. In close proximity are several kindergartens, schools, and a hospital. These and other amenities were planned and constructed concurrently with the apartment buildings under Khrushchev’s rule. Since there were no private landowners in the Soviet Union, the municipalities and their planning, architectural, and construction agencies were free to let their collective imagination determine the size and shape of major construction projects, including the design of the mikroraioni.64 Such a monopoly in the construction and service provision implied that if the State did not provide all the needed amenities, no one else would. As a result, some microdistricts became “socialist bedroom communities,” while others, including mine, became the realisation of ideal residential area design.65

My parents intended to move into their new apartment after minor renovations. Still, the apartment’s condition thwarted their plans, as the previous owners left everything from furniture to walls in dilapidation. My parents decided that if they could not avoid major construction works, they might as well completely redevelop the typical khrushchevka to their needs and tastes. The redevelopment of Soviet mass housing apartments became an increasing trend among the citizens of post-Soviet states. Khrushchevki unquestionably resolved the housing shortage, and at the time, many of those who received new apartments were ready to close their eyes to design flaws and deficiencies. Many continued to live in State-provided separate apartments after the dissolution of the USSR, but the political and social situation around them changed, as did people’s priorities and desires. Numerous online resources provide information on how to redevelop a khrushchevka, ranging from initial design advice and an overview of planning legislation to examples of the replanned layout and photographs of numerous redeveloped khrushchevki.66 Some design and architecture firms, such as Moscow’s planning and design studio “Colosseum” (“Kolizey”), even specialise in the redevelopment of khrushchevka.67

62 Blair A. Ruble, p.248

63 Steven E. Harris, p.201

64 Blair A. Ruble, p.249

65 Ibid., p.249

66 An example of a web page providing information on how to redesign a khrushchevka: Pereplanirovka khrushchevki: idei dlia vseh tipov kvartir i gotovie plani [Redesign of khrushchevka: ideas for all the types of apartments and complete plans] (2022) <https://www.ivd.ru/stroitelstvo-i-remont/organizaciya-i-podgotovka/pereplanirovka-hrushchevki-91832> [accessed 12 January 2023]

67 Studia proiektirovania i dizaina Kolizey [Planning and design studio "Colosseum"] (2023) <https:// www.spd-kolizey.ru/uslugi/pereplanirovka_kvartir/khrushchevki/> [accessed 12 January 2023]

Fig.35 - Apartment plan and layout before the redevelopment

Fig.36 - Current apartment plan and layout

According to Christine Varga Harris, architectural and urban forms in the Soviet Union concluded and symbolised the regimes that fostered them. She viewed “the simplicity and modernity” of Khruschev’s architecture as a representation of the regime’s “populism and intention to realise the egalitarian ideals of communist ideology”.68 In this context, the tendency to replan and reconfigure the Khrushchevki in the post-Soviet Union States may represent a withdrawal from the individual oppression and dejection imposed by Soviet ideology and the mass housing campaign to revive individuality and the importance of consumer needs consideration in the new capitalist reality following the dissolution of the USSR.

Reimagining Khrushchevka

Although I had always been aware that our apartment was replanned, I must admit that seeing the original plan left me feeling a little taken aback. I could not imagine how we would live in this apartment if the previous layout remained in place. At that moment, I felt extreme gratitude toward my parents for transforming our domestic space, as well as frustration and sadness for those who were pressured to reside in such cramped, inconvenient apartments. One chairman of the residential “assistance commission”, Iakovlev, described Khrushev’s separate apartments as “small dormitories” while expressing his dissatisfaction with the excessive reduction in the size of the spaces within the flats and their inconvenient layout.69 Soviet architects reduced living space to ensure that apartments were distributed to individual families; however, to offset the resulting increase in cost estimates, they minimised auxiliary spaces and simplified the layout.70 Distribution norms and cost limitations had shaped spatial arrangements and dimensions, not concerns about commodity, convenience, and usability.

The initial prototype apartment designs created by housing authorities were based on rather primitive presumptions about family composition. Some even argued that eight prototype apartments at most could accommodate every possible family configuration. Although more layouts were later developed to accommodate various families, the lack of a market mechanism prevented serious consideration of the individual, family, and even group preferences in housing design and construction. 71 When designing the new layout for our apartment, my parents accounted for the eventual changes that would occur in our family over time and created a more flexible layout which could accommodate those. In this context, the biggest inconvenience presented the room without direct access to the corridor, which could only be accessed through the pass-through room. These interconnected rooms were a part of the strategy for maximising the efficient use of space, as they reduced the required corridor space, thereby decreasing the apartment’s total square footage and minimising costs.72 My parents decided to create a recessed corridor out of the existing doorway of the walk-through room, which allowed to make a separate entrance for each room (Fig.40). Eventually, as our family changed over time, we easily converted the rooms according to our wishes and needs (Fig.37, Fig.38, Fig.39).

68 Christine Varga-Harris, Stories of House and Home, p.6

69 Steven E. Harris, p.270

70 Ibid., p.82

71 Blair A. Ruble, pp.252-254

72 Mark B. Smith., p.126

Fig.37 - Initially implemented apartment layout after the redevelopment. My parents and I occupied the smaller bedroom, while my teenage brothers occupied the bigger one.

Fig.38 - Changed layout. A couple years after redevelopment my brothers had moved out I occupied their room.

Fig.39 - Current layout. When I was in high school me and my parents exchanged rooms, as I wanted a smaller bedroom and my father needed more space to work from home.

Fig.37

Fig.38

Fig.39

Soviet citizens did not have the privilege of redesigning their apartments, nor could they find flexibility in the existing standard layout to accommodate the changes in family life and structure. A.F.Timofeeva had lived in an apartment with two interconnected rooms for a year with her husband and two daughters, aged sixteen and twenty-two. When her elder daughter married and her son-in-law moved in, the question of who should live in the walk-through room arose. Seeing it as their right, the young ones demanded a separate room. Timofeeva, on the other hand, was not pleased. She was glad to receive new housing, but she desired peace and quiet in her old age, not a young couple passing by her and her husband’s room every day.73 While designing a limited number of standard layouts, architects did not consider marriages, divorces, births, and deaths - all of which occur naturally in every family. Central planning did not address the human concerns that were prominent in socialist ideology, nor did it provide housing flexibility and resilience. 74

The redesigned layout allowed our family to enjoy convenient and comfortable housing. Still, it would likely be impossible to implement it in the Soviet Union due to its cost and distribution unsuccessfulness. In order to estimate and compare the cost of 1 square metre of living space across designs, Soviet architects utilised various coefficients relating living space to auxiliary and non-apartment building spaces. K1, the coefficient of living area to the overall area, was used most frequently. By maintaining this coefficient as high as possible, architects could have reasonable assurance that their designs were cost-effective. 75 Our apartment’s original layout included 52 square metres of living space and 68.3 square metres of overall space. This results in K1 equal to 0.76. If we repeat the same calculation with the dimensions of the new layout, which are 47.7 square metres of living space and 73.8 square metres of total space, we obtain K1 equal to 0.64. The previous design was costefficient, while the new one, on the contrary, would make the apartment too expensive to be built under Khrushchev’s mass-housing campaign. Moreover, based on the distribution norm of 8.25 to 9 square meters of living space per person, the previous layout would allow to settle a family of six in the apartment, whereas the new layout limits this number to five. The State and its architects were put in a straightjacket by distribution standards and cost constraints, which dictated the designs. These principles were never reformed, making it impossible to make the changes necessary to ensure the residents’ comfort and the functionality of the khrushchevki.

73 Ibid., p.126

74 Blair A. Ruble, pp.252-254

75 Steven E. Harris, p.80

Fig.40 - Redesigned separate entrances to rooms which were previously interconnected

Kitchen: from “Rationality” to Comfort

Fig.41- View to the kitchen through the doorway

No other unit of the separate apartment paid as much attention to integrating space in a rational system replete with the most recent amenities and appliances as the kitchen. Sinks, a stove and oven, a refrigerator, food preparation counters, a table and chairs, storage areas, cooking and eating equipment, a radiator, and even a washing machine for clothes all had to fit into a 5.5-square-meter space. The rationally organised kitchen resembled an assembly line, allowing the outside world’s scientific organisation to permeate and shape the new Soviet home. 76 Prior to the renovation, our apartment featured a similar six-square-meter “assembly line” in which realistically, only one person could cook or two people could dine at the table, given that the apartment, as previously stated, was inhabited by six people during Soviet times under the distribution norm. The Soviet State portrayed these tiny kitchens as ideal spaces in which small dimensions were actually advantageous and more practical. In reality, such a kitchen would appear highly inconvenient even for one person cooking, let alone accommodating all six people residing in the khrushchevka.

I recall my father saying we have such a large and spacious kitchen, but is a 10-square-meter space actually that generous for a family of five? It certainly isn’t until you compare it to the 6-square-meter one that was there before renovation. The 5- to 7-square-meter kitchen became an inseparable feature of the Soviet khrushchevka. The cartoon advertisement published by the State demonstrated that everything is proximate and rational in new 5.6 square meters of kitchen space. They claimed that 500 steps were required to prepare soup previously and that this extensive movement is now eliminated.77 The kitchen was even a site of Cold War ideological conflict in which the Soviet housewife’s mastery of rational living and restrained consumerism would prove the superiority of socialism over the grotesque excesses of irrational capitalist consumption.78 In reality, many residents were unsatisfied with the new small and functional kitchen. They compared it to a “matchbox” and argued that “the calculation is done incorrectly”.79 My parents refused to accept such inconvenience, so designing a new, more comfortable, and spacious kitchen became an essential part of the renovation. They expanded the kitchen at the expense of the bathroom, which was relocated to the opposite side of the entrance. Two people can now cook at the same time in the kitchen, and up to five people can eat comfortably. It also allows for the simultaneous preparation and consumption of food without crowding or disturbing other users. The new kitchen is unquestionably not as large or as spacious as my father described, but it is undeniably more user-friendly and convenient.

76 Steven E. Harris, pp.249-250

77 ‘Nikita Khrushchev. Golos iz

[Nikita

materiali [Additional materials], Pervii kanal, 5 April 2010, 00:23:03

78 Steven E. Harris, p.29

79 Ibid., pp. 271-274

proshlogo’

Khrushchev. Voice from the past], Dopolnitel’nie

Fig.43 - Corner of the redeveloped kitchen

Fig.42 - View from the living room. From left to right: kitchen, toilet, main entrance, bathroom.

The housing program launched by Khrushchev has been both a “resounding success” and “a woeful failure.” 80 Khrushchev solved the housing question, but his solution was not about ensuring that people would live in pleasant and comfortable apartments in the present and future. Rather, it was about demonstrating that the USSR solved the problem quickly and convincing people through ideology that the way he did it was a pass to a better and most importantly communist life. Through the “situated knowledge” and experiences of ordinary Soviet citizens, this chapter revealed Khrushchev’s distorted depiction of housing reality, with contradictions between the State’s assurances that khrushchevka was a step towards communism and the actual state of housing life.81

80 Blair A. Ruble, p.256

81 Christine Varga-Harris, ‘Khrushchevka, kommunalka: sotsializm i povsednevnosti vo vremya “ottepeli”’, pp.160-166

CONCLUSION

Through this dissertation, Khrushchev’s mass-housing programme and its product, khrushchevka, were unfolded by the author within the context of a broader understanding of the relationship between architecture and politics based on two primary connections that position architecture as an embodiment of power and architecture as a resource for power. The first connection was discovered through the following Soviet regime events and actions:

(1) the State’s exclusive ownership of the housing stock as well as its management through the governmental established housing campaign, (2) the establishment of policy and state regulations shaping the direction and design of the khrushchevka, (3) the use of Bolsheviks’ initial revolutionary promise to end the housing shortage and improve the lives of ordinary people as a primary drive of the mass housing campaign, and (4) provision of housing on an egalitarian basis. The second connection represented by architecture as a resource of power was discovered through the following: (1) demonstration of socialism’s superiority over capitalism through the successful and rapid completion of the mass housing campaign, (2) utilisation of khrushchevka’s rational and efficient design to shape and reinforce the ideological consciousness of Soviet citizens, (3) use of housing to construct the communist way of life, and (4) manifestation of the communist way of life and rational approach to living to hide the downfalls and drawbacks of the khrushchevka’s design. According to these findings, khrushchevka and the mass housing campaign present the perfect examples of architecture and power dynamics.

Ordinary citizens’ understanding and perceptions of Khrushchev’s mass housing campaign were successfully integrated and analysed within the context of architecture and power relationships expressed through khrushchevka. Their dissatisfaction and complaints revealed the actual state of the constructed housing reality and the newly established domestic way of life. Personal encounter with the topic built through “situated knowledge” was incorporated into this context, demonstrating how Soviet State could have created an actually enjoyable and comfortable housing environment for citizens if it did not impose so many limitations and have as much power and control over it as it did. The embodied knowledge also revealed the state and influence of Khrushchev’s mass housing campaign in the modern capitalist world that emerged in post-Soviet Union republics after the dissolution of the USSR.

The dissertation investigated the architecture and power relationship through the research of academics who covered the theme in their works, presentation of the mass housing campaign in the media, photographic studies, opinions of ordinary Soviet citizens who inhabited khrushchevki, and personal encounter. In this way, the study positioned these various sources and ideas within them to form a comprehensive picture of the mass-housing programme, including its benefits and drawbacks, as well as its close relationship with Soviet politics and communist ideology.

The analysis and study presented in this dissertation contributed to the limited academic work related to Khrushchev’s mass-housing campaign and khrushchevka itself by filling

the gaps within the existing research and enriching it with the new approach to analysing the question expressed through the methodology of “situated knowledge”. Furthermore, academics typically study the housing that emerged under Khrushchev’s rule only within the context of a broader topic concerning housing development in the USSR and modern Russia. This study focused solely on the khrushchevka, treating it as a separate phenomenon. Additionally, the research contributes to the interdisciplinary field of study concerning architecture and power relationships. Academics within the field tend to focus on monumental architecture to analyse the relationship, neglecting khrushchevka. This dissertation proved Khurshchev’s mass housing campaign’s ability to contribute to architecture and power relationship studies.

The most vital recommendation deriving from the research is to continue unfolding the mass-housing campaign, khrushchevka and their underlying principles and ideologies by expanding the study into other fields such as sociology and psychology. Furthermore, the methodology of “situated knowledge” can extend to the autotheoretical practice of writing, which can reveal a new perspective on the question. The final recommendation is to continue the analysis of the khrushchevka in the modern capitalist reality, briefly introduced in this dissertation. This can significantly contribute to the understanding of the remains of the Soviet past practices, including architecture, in the post-Soviet Union countries. This dissertation has hopefully opened a new, provocative, and intriguing perspective on Khrushchev’s mass housing campaign and khrushchevka, prompting academics to focus more on this phenomenon in their future works.

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<https://www.ivd.ru/stroitelstvo-i-remont/organizaciya-i-podgotovka/pereplanirovkahrushchevki-91832> [accessed 12 January 2023]

Postanovlenie Tsentral’nogo Komiteta KPSS i Soveta Ministrov SSSR ot 4 noiabria 1955 goda №1871 “Ob ustranenii izlishestv v proiektirovanii i stroitel’stve” [Decree of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR of November 4, 1955 No. 1871 “On the elimination of excesses in design and construction”] (1955) <https://web.archive. org/web/20140716132943/http://sovarch.ru/postanovlenie55/> [accessed 12 January 2023]

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Smith, Mark B., Property of Communists: The Urban Housing Program from Stalin to Khrushchev (Illinois: Norther Illinois University Press, 2010)

Studia proiektirovania i dizaina Kolizey [Planning and design studio “Colosseum”] (2023) <https://www.spd-kolizey.ru/uslugi/pereplanirovka_kvartir/khrushchevki/> [accessed 12 January 2023]

Udovicki-Selb, Danilo, Soviet Architectural Avant-Gardes Architecture and Stalin’s Revolution from Above (London ; New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020)

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van der Post, Laurens, Journey into Russia (London: Penguin, 1971)

Varga-Harris, Christine, ‘Khrushchevka, kommunalka: sotsializm i povsednevnosti vo vremya “ottepeli”’ [Khrushchevka, communal apartment: socialism and everyday life during “thaw”], Modern History of Russia, 1 (2011)

Varga-Harris, Christine, Stories of House and Home Soviet Apartment Life during the Khrushchev Years (Ithaca; London: Cornell University Press, 2015)

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Veroi i Pravdoi [By Truth and Faith] dir.by Andrei Smirnov (Kinostudiya MosFilm, 1979) [Motion picture]

Yaneva, Albena, Five Ways to Make Architecture Political : an Introduction to the Politics of Design Practice (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017)

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES

Cover page – Artwork by Zupagrafika <https://www.zupagrafika.com/shop-posters/praguejizni-mesto> [accessed 5 January 2023]

Figure 1 – Photograph of Nikita Khrushchev <https://lenta.ru/articles/2021/09/11/ khrushchev/> [accessed 19 December 2023]

Figure 2 – Two families of candy factory workers rent a corner in a room, 1920-1923

<https://russiainphoto.ru/search/photo/?index=2&paginate_page=1&page=1&query=% D0%B1%D1%8B%D1%82+%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B1%D0%BE%D1%87%D0%B8 %D1%85> [accessed 19 December 2023]

Figure 3 – Tsentralny special settlement, general view of one of the barracks, 1933 <https:// russiainphoto.ru/search/photo/years-1926-1938/?index=6&query=%D0%B1%D0%B0%D 1%80%D0%B0%D0%BA&paginate_page=1&page=1> [accessed 19 December 2023]

Figure 4 - Destruction of Ukranian USSR city Kharkiv during World War II <https://hvylya. net/analytics/history/2010-05-08-22-08-35.html> [accessed 19 December 2023]

Figure 5 - Kitchen of a Stalinist communal apartment, postwar years <https://back-in-ussr. com/2016/11/pro-kommunalnye-kvartiry.html> [accessed 19 December 2023]

Figure 6 - Extract from the book Advices on housekeeping , ed. by R. V. Svetsova (Volgograd: Volgogradskoie Knizhnoie Izdatel’stvo, 1959) <https://issuu.com/98517886/ docs/______________________-_1959_____> [accessed 10 December 2023]

Figure 7 - Soviet agitational poster <https://philatelist.ru/product/stroit-bystro-deshevo-dobrotno-plakat-1960-g-razmer-57kh91-sm/> [accessed 10 November 2023]

Figure 8 – Soviet agitational poster <https://papik.pro/plakat/14933-stroitelnye-plakaty-31foto.html> [accessed 10 November 2023]

Figure 9 - Plan of the I-335K housing block type, image scanned from Meuser, Philipp and Dimitrij Zadorin, Towards a Typology of Soviet Mass Housing: Prefabrication in the USSR 1955-199, trans. by Clarice Knowles (Berlin: DOM Publishers, 2015), p.210

Figure 10 - Scene from the movie Veroi i Pravdoi [By Truth and Faith] dir.by Andrei Smirnov (Kinostudiya MosFilm, 1979)

Figure 11 - The interior of the room in the new house <https://realty.rbc.ru/news/5927c8f69a7947b63c1888c4> [accessed 10 November 2023]

Figure 12 - Across the Soviet Union (Mogilev, Vilnius, Minsk): the wide geographical scope of the Khrushchev-era housing programme, image scanned from Smith, Mark B., Property of Communists: The Urban Housing Program from Stalin to Khrushchev (Illinois: Norther Illinois University Press, 2010), pp.84-85

Figure 13 - Approximate nomenclature of the standard designs for Khrushchev’s housing

campaign, image scanned from Meuser, Philipp and Dimitrij Zadorin, Towards a Typology of Soviet Mass Housing: Prefabrication in the USSR 1955-199, trans. by Clarice Knowles (Berlin: DOM Publishers, 2015), p.210

Figure 14 - Basic nomenclature of articles for I-464 housing block type, image scanned from Meuser, Philipp and Dimitrij Zadorin, Towards a Typology of Soviet Mass Housing: Prefabrication in the USSR 1955-199, trans. by Clarice Knowles (Berlin: DOM Publishers, 2015), p.210

Figure 15 - Construction of the large-panel khrushchevka <https://realty.rbc.ru/ news/58d512f29a7947e284344448> [accessed 19 December 2023]

Figure 16 - Standardised apartment plans for different family compositions, image scanned from Meuser, Philipp and Dimitrij Zadorin, Towards a Typology of Soviet Mass Housing: Prefabrication in the USSR 1955-199, trans. by Clarice Knowles (Berlin: DOM Publishers, 2015), p.210

Figure 17 – 10/1 project by Bogdan Garbovan <https://www.demilked.com/ten-floorsidentical-apartments-neighbors-bogdan-girbovan-romania/> [accessed 10 November 2023]

Figure 18 - 10/1 project by Bogdan Garbovan <https://www.demilked.com/ten-floorsidentical-apartments-neighbors-bogdan-girbovan-romania/> [accessed 10 November 2023]

Figure 19 - 10/1 project by Bogdan Garbovan <https://www.demilked.com/ten-floorsidentical-apartments-neighbors-bogdan-girbovan-romania/> [accessed 10 November 2023]

Figure 20 - 10/1 project by Bogdan Garbovan <https://www.demilked.com/ten-floorsidentical-apartments-neighbors-bogdan-girbovan-romania/> [accessed 10 November 2023]

Figure 21 - 10/1 project by Bogdan Garbovan <https://www.demilked.com/ten-floorsidentical-apartments-neighbors-bogdan-girbovan-romania/> [accessed 10 November 2023]

Figure 22 – 10/1 project by Bogdan Garbovan <https://www.demilked.com/ten-floorsidentical-apartments-neighbors-bogdan-girbovan-romania/> [accessed 10 November 2023]

Figure 23 – 10/1 project by Bogdan Garbovan <https://www.demilked.com/ten-floorsidentical-apartments-neighbors-bogdan-girbovan-romania/> [accessed 10 November 2023]

Figure 24 - 10/1 project by Bogdan Garbovan <https://www.demilked.com/ten-floorsidentical-apartments-neighbors-bogdan-girbovan-romania/> [accessed 10 November 2023]

Figure 25 – 10/1 project by Bogdan Garbovan <https://www.demilked.com/ten-floorsidentical-apartments-neighbors-bogdan-girbovan-romania/> [accessed 10 November 2023]

Figure 26 – 10/1 project by Bogdan Garbovan <https://www.demilked.com/ten-floorsidentical-apartments-neighbors-bogdan-girbovan-romania/> [accessed 10 November 2023]

Figure 27 - 10/1 project by Bogdan Garbovan <https://www.demilked.com/ten-floorsidentical-apartments-neighbors-bogdan-girbovan-romania/> [accessed 10 November 2023]

Figure 28 - Moscow’s Cheryomushki district <https://russiainphoto.ru/search/ photo/?index=8&query=%D1%87%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BC%D1%83%D1%88%D0%BA%D0%B8&paginate_page=1&page=1> [accessed 19 December 2023]

Figure 29 – Housing block in Chisinau, Republic of Moldova, author’s own work

Figure 30 – Housing reality in Chisinau, Republic of Moldova, author’s own work

Figure 31 - Housing reality in Chisinau, Republic of Moldova, author’s own work

Figure 32 - Housing reality in Chisinau, Republic of Moldova <https://amp.kp.md/ daily/26741.5/378908/> [accessed 19 December 2023]

Figure 33 - Housing reality in Chisinau, Republic of Moldova, <https://www.kp.md/ daily/27458.5/4662698/> [accessed 19 December 2023]

Figure 34 - Housing reality in Chisinau, Republic of Moldova, author’s own work

Figure 35 – Plan of the apartment before redevelopment, authors’s own work

Figure 36 - Plan of the apartment after redevelopment, authors’s own work

Figure 37 - Plan of the apartment after redevelopment, authors’s own work

Figure 38 - Plan of the apartment after redevelopment, authors’s own work

Figure 39 - Plan of the apartment after redevelopment, authors’s own work

Figure 40 -Photograph of the corridor, authors’s own work

Figure 41 – Photograph of the kitchen, author’s own work

Figure 42 - Photograph of the apartment, author’s own work

Figure 43 – Photograph of the kitchen, author’s own work

Table 1 - Construction of Housing in the Soviet Union,1917-65, sourced from Steven E. Harris, Communism on Tomorrow Street (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 2013), p.90