Stalin

• Housing under Stalin overview

  • Kommunalka.
  • Factory Towns.
  • Housing, 1941-53.
• Kommunalka

  • Entire families would share a single small room.
  • Average family 'kommunalka' was 5.5 square metres in 1930.
  • By 1940, average kommunalka was only 4 square metres.
  • Rooms divided without being rewired, so one light switch controlled the lights of several apartments.
  • 650K people in Liubertsy District did not have a bathhouse.
  • Emergence of corner-dwellers; coal-sheds and cupboards converted into housing; one worker in Leningrad lived in a cupboard for over 5 years.
• Factory Towns

  • Worse conditions than Kommunalka; several families would occupy a barracks-style dormitory; best of these were built with timber and insulated with straw; no running water or bathrooms.
  • Factory Towns lacked paved streets and street lighting.
  • Model Towns; Magnitogorsk saw housing given no kitchens under the assumption that all workers would eat in factory canteens.
  • Majority of workers lived in barrack-style dormitories; around 20% lived in mud huts.
  • Dnipropetrovsk model towns had no electric lights despite being next to the Dnieper Hydroelectric Power Plant.
• Housing, 1941-53.

  • During WW2; 1/3 of urban housing was destroyed.
  • Moscow coalfields saw only 15,000 beds for 26,000 workers.
  • One table between every 10 workers, one wardrobe for every 27 workers and one wash basin for every 70 people.
  • Fourth Five Year Plan; housing was not a priority; in the first half of 1948, housebuilding projects spent 40% of their budget and were then suspended.
  • Collective farms; housing prioritised; between 1945-50, over 4500 farming villages built; 919k houses renovated.