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]