“No Free Apartments at All”: Housing Conditions of Residents of Kurgan During Interwar Decades of 20th Century

Abstract. The analysis of historical sources allows us to reveal the peculiarities of the housing development in the provincial town of Kurgan. A significant part of these sources is being introduced into scientific discourse for the first time. Housing deficit reached Kurgan a bit later than the center regions, in the mid-1920s due to the arrival of rural residents. The growth of the urban population lead to the economic measures to mitigate the housing crisis: encouragement of individual construction, housing cooperatives and private renting. At the same time, the state regulated housing costs according to housing conveniences and population paying capacity. In addition, the state tightened measures of influence on the “non-working elements”. The local budget did not have funds for housing construction. The examples of the construction of department housing in Kurgan were also rare. In the 1920–1930s Kurgan grew as a result of constructing private houses – wooden log houses of small floor space. During the period of collectivization and “dekulakization”, a significant number of rural residents moved to Kurgan, the poorest settled in dugouts in the suburbs. Flat sharing by different families became common. Kurgan communal apartments differed from the “classic” Leningrad ones. So did their tenants, people from the countryside, accustomed to being in the public eye. Lack of personal space and conveniences remained daily realities of most Soviet citizens. The city of Kurgan was no exception.

Keywords: Soviet daily life, housing policy, housing crisis, housing cooperation, municipalization of housing fund, housing demunicipalization, private housing development.

For citation: Kladova K.Yu. “No Free Apartments at All”: Housing Conditions of Residents of Kurgan During Interwar Decades of 20th Century, in Novoe Proshloe / The New Past. 2021. No. 4. Pp. 22–37. DOI 10.18522/2500‑3224‑2021‑4-22-37.

The article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).