Khrushchev's program of providing individual apartments for millions of Soviet families form the late 1950s onwards has held a certain fascination for scholars and the public for several years. The ubiquitous four-storey Khrushchevki are a familiar sight to inhabitants of and visitors to most towns and cities across the former Soviet Union. They still serve as homes to millions of post-Soviet families. While parallels in terms of mass housing programs can be seen across Europe, nothing on this scale was attempted elsewhere. The housing program represented some things about the Khrushchev era that were absent from late Stalinism: a concern for the well-being of Soviet citizens, the application of new technologies to improve the lives of citizens, optimism and hope for the future, evidence of the Soviet Union's efforts to catch up with the west, and an earthbound reflection of the superpower's achievements in space.
In the latest of at least four recent large-scale studies of the program, this optimism and idealism shines through. Christine Varga-Harris concentrates on Leningrad, which allows for a focused depiction of the achievements, setbacks, and reception of the program. There is something refreshing in Varga-Harris' approach, which accepts the values and aims of the program at face value, refrains from cynicism about its utopian basis, and does not gloat over the setbacks in construction and completion (that are described in full), which in other hands are forefronted as evidence of the failings of the planned economy and, therefore, of the whole program. While there were many complaints—about waiting lists, construction delays, and poor workmanship in the apartments themselves—the predominant mood was one of enthusiasm, which this book captures well.
Of particular interest is Varga-Harris' focus on what happened around the new apartment blocks—the commitment to “Green Spaces” as part of the planning, and the active cooperation of new residents in kitting out these shared areas by planting trees and flowers, providing or making outside furniture and playground equipment, and often correcting or completing the shoddy work of building workers. The commitment to a rounded and healthy life that the green spaces reflect, and the continuation of at least part of the tradition of collective living for a group of residents, is seen as characteristic of the ideological basis for the program. Housing was a gift of the collective effort going into it.
It is always tempting to see something as extraordinary as the Khrushchev housing programs as linked to the promotion of a mentality and way of life that is peculiar to communist societies. Certainly, Khrushchev saw this as a central plank of his goal to prove the superiority of communism over capitalism (which, he was disturbed to observe on his visit to the US, provided not just separate apartments but separate houses for many working class families). But the idea of green spaces linked to apartment living had originated in central Europe much earlier, and was well advanced in the social-democratic countries of the European north long before Khrushchev's program was launched.
While housing was an integral part of the new post-war welfare state order across Europe, Varga-Harris shows how, in practice as well as rhetoric, Khrushchev's housing program went further, providing “the foundation of byt” (214). Building on Mark Smith's demonstration of how the housing program tuned into a notion of individual rights which had emerged from the suffering of the Great Patriotic War, Varga-Harris shows how citizens engaged in the housing program as an expected benefit of communism.
Dwelling less on the quantitative data which shows the scale of the project, Varga-Harris concentrates on individual stories of a range of house movers—from those who were ecstatic about the results, those who were disappointed with their new housing, to those who failed to get a new apartment allocated. What all of these categories shared was an understanding that a new apartment was a right they had earned as workers and a sign of the achievements of socialism. The communist context is never far away, informing the plans and methods of construction, furnishings and decoration, and the way that new apartment complexes were sites of collective living and endeavor as well as of individual fulfilment. These stories are illustrated through memoirs, petitions, letters to newspapers, backed up by references to popular culture in the form of the satirical magazine Krokodil, cinema, and literature.
This book neither idealizes nor ridicules Khrushchev's housing program. By examining it in a detached way through the eyes of those who were affected by the program, Varga-Harris provides a keen insight into how post-Stalinism represented a real departure from Stalinism, not just in rhetoric, but in its aims for a better society which, for all its shortcomings, had genuine impact on daily lives.
