Stories of House and Home - Soviet Apartment Life during the Khrushchev Years

Stories of House and Home: Soviet Apartment Life during the Khrushchev Years



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English | ISBN: 0801453070 | 2015 | 312 pages | PDF | 7 MB

Stories of House and Home is a social and cultural history of the massive construction campaign that Khrushchev instituted in 1957 to resolve the housing crisis in the Soviet Union and to provide each family its own apartment. Decent housing was deemed the key to a healthy, productive home life, which was essential to the realization of socialist collectivism. Drawing on archival materials, as well as memoirs, fiction, and the Soviet press, Christine Varga-Harris shows how the many aspects of this enormous state initiative―from neighborhood planning to interior design―sought to alleviate crowded, undignified living conditions and sculpt residents into ideal Soviet citizens. She also details how individual interests intersected with official objectives for Soviet society during the Thaw, a period characterized by both liberalization and vigilance in everyday life.
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