Continuities and discontinuities of Russian urban housing: The Soviet housing experiment in historical long-term perspective

Abstract

Did the socialist experiment disrupt continuity in Russian urban housing? Based on a unique collection of urban data covering several hundred Russian cities and spanning three regimes across more than a century, this paper gives a nuanced account of continuities and discontinuities of housing in post-Soviet cities. Three main housing characteristics are analysed: urban density (persons per building and living space per capita), ownership structure and the modernisation of stock (building material and provision with amenities). Although all Russian cities underwent a number of major shocks and regime changes during the course of the 20th century, their rankings with regard to these three key housing characteristics are still significantly correlated over time, whereas living space per capita is largely uncorrelated over time. This holds true despite significant convergence processes in almost all dimensions and also when including contemporary control variables. We hypothesise that local or regional building traditions, regional differentiation in Soviet urban planning as well as Soviet land use specificities could explain differential growth across cities. Going beyond existing late-Soviet-legacy timeframes, the long-term perspective reveals that even major regime shocks did not completely erase regionally shaped patterns in housing conditions.

Housing Status in Post-Soviet Contexts: A Multi-dimensional Measurement Approach

“…Soviet allocation systems, housing privatization, persistent barriers to housing market development, and normative expectations all contribute to a distinctive stratification order. A growing literature examines the contours and determinants of post-communist housing stratification, primarily in new member states of the European Union (Lux et al 2013;Mandič and Cirman 2012;Soaita and Dewilde 2019;Stephens et al 2015), with fewer studies in other countries such as Kazakhstan (Gentile 2005), Russia (Alexeev 1999;Kalyukin and Kohl 2020;Zavisca 2012), and Ukraine (Gentile 2015a). This literature, as well as focus groups we conducted in our four focal countries (further described in Sect.…”

Housing stratification in Romania: mapping a decade of change

“…Over 30 years ago, Kemeny (1981) signalled the link between ideology, institutions and the housing forms of houses and flats, his argument being recently applied to the postcommunist space (Kalyukin and Kohl 2019). These housing forms encapsulate nonetheless very different economic practices in the post-communist societies than those of advanced capitalism.…”

“…The second axis aims to connect housing to economies of place. We contend that the unbalanced distribution of economic growth across cities, towns and villages has historically privileged cities-historic hierarchies being broadly maintained (Kalyukin and Kohl 2019;Kornai 1992). With reference to Romania, Popescu (2019) proposed a similar distinction between economically successful cities vs. stagnant small town and villages, suggesting that (sub)urban residents were more likely to benefit from economic growth.…”