Individual Forms of Ownership in the Urban Housing Fund of the USSR, 1944-64

Author: Smith, Mark B.

Source: The Slavonic and East European Review, Volume 86, Number 2, 1 April 2008 , pp. 283-305(23)

Publisher: Modern Humanities Research Association

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Abstract:

Private property was abolished in the Soviet Union between 1917 and 1922, but identifiable forms of individual ownership of urban housing persisted. Several tenures were always present in the urban housing fund — but each contained a varying component of individual ownership. Late Stalinist reconstruction and then the Khrushchev-era mass housing programme decisively intensified the strength and reach of these components, in de facto and de jure terms. Although historians have largely neglected the existence of these possibilities of individual ownership, they acted as an essential driver of post-war housing construction and were a defining feature of people's experience of their urban housing.

Document Type: Research article

Affiliations: 1: The UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies

Publication date: 2008-04-01

More about this publication?

The Review is the oldest British journal in the field, having been in existence since 1922. Edited and managed by the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, it covers not only the modern and medieval languages and literatures of the Slavonic and East European area, but also history, culture, and political studies.