Late-Soviet Collective Housing: Self-Help Construction and Self-Management in Youth Residential Complex Housing Movement

Abstract

In the Soviet era, a long-lasting idea of collective housing was implemented in various forms, most notably, constructivist “house-communes” (doma-kommuny) of the 1920s. This article considers less-known realization of collective housing in late-Soviet Russia, by focusing on the project of “Youth Residential Complex” (MZhK). Starting in 1968, this project was declared as an experiment, in which residents had to participate in the process of design, organization, and management of their housing complexes. Future residents also had to work on the construction site for several years, building housing with their labor and earning, in such a way, the right to live in it. Based on this case, this article re-emphasizes the agency of residents’ collectives and grassroot organization as an essential but neglected part of late-Soviet urban development. In contrast to the common narrative of the top-down provision of apartments by the state, it demonstrates that bottom-up collective practices were behind a major housing project, with ample consequences for both people concerned and urban development. While the history of self-help housing construction is firmly embedded within the context of crises and austerity, in the Soviet context, participation in self-help project was regarded as a privilege, leading to a single-family apartment ownership and exclusive urban services, otherwise unavailable in residential districts.