Apartments as an Instrument of Power
Soviet Apartment Policy 1921–41
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
The myth persists even after the collapse of the Soviet Union: In the first two decades after the October Revolution, the Bol'sheviks pursued an apartment policy oriented along the lines of the population's needs. In fact, however, the highest principle was the rational organisation of society according to technical administrative principles that aimed to strengthen the power of the state. Whatever the upheavals of domestic policy – War Communism (1917–1921), the New Economic Policy (1921–1928), industrialisation and collectivisation (1928–1941) – the basic relationship between state power and the population as well as the organisation and content of apartment policy did not change.
(Osteuropa 3/2008, pp. 49–64)