Soviet housing: Who built what and when? The case of Daugavpils, Latvia

Journal of Historical Geography

Volumn 36, Issue 4, 2010, Pages 453-465

  Gentile, Michael ^a,b   Sjöberg, Örjan ^c  

^a UMEÅ UNIVERSITY   (Sweden)

^b SÖDERTÖRN UNIVERSITY   (Sweden)

^c STOCKHOLM SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS   (Sweden)

Author keywords

Housing; Latvia; Socialist enterprises; Soviet Union

Indexed keywords

CONSTRUCTION; EMPLOYMENT; RESIDENTIAL DEVELOPMENT; URBAN HOUSING;

LATVIA; USSR;

EID: 78149380330     PISSN: 03057488     EISSN: 10958614     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/j.jhg.2010.01.001     Document Type: Article

References (85)

1. E.g., T. Tammaru, K. Leetmaa, S. Silm and R. Ahas, Temporal and spatial dynamics of the new residential areas around Tallinn, European Planning Studies 17, 3 (2009) 423-439.
2. In a rapidly growing body of literature, see e.g., H. Kok and Z. Kovács, The process of suburbanization in the agglomeration of Budapest, Netherlands Journal of Housing and the Built Environment 14, 2 (1999) 119-141
3. J. Timár and M.M. Váradi, The uneven development of suburbanization during transition in Hungary, European Urban and Regional Studies 8, 4 (2001) 349-360
4. T. Ott, From concentration to de-concentration - migration patterns in the post-socialist city, Cities 18, 6 (2001) 403-412
5. A. Lisowski, Social aspects of the suburbanisation stage in the agglomeration of Warsaw, Dela 21 (2004) 531-541
6. H. Nuissl and D. Rink, The 'production' of urban sprawl in eastern Germany as a phenomenon of post-socialist transformation, Cities 22, 2 (2005) 123-134
7. Y. Valkanov, Suburbanisation in Sofia: changing spatial structure of post-communist city, in: F. Eckardt (Ed.), Paths of Urban Transforamtion, The European City in Transition, Vol. 5, Frankfurt/Main, 2006, 175-194
8. K. Leetmaa and T. Tammaru, Suburbanization in countries in transition: destination of suburbanizers in the Tallinn Metropolitan Area, Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 89, 2 (2007) 127-146
9. J. Novák and L. Sýkora, A city in motion: the timespace activity and mobility patterns of the suburban inhabitants and the structuration of the spatial organization of the Prague Metropolitan Area, Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 89, 2 (2007) 147-168
10. M. Ouředníček, Differential suburban development in the Prague urban region, Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 89, 2 (2007) 111-126
11. S. Hirt, Suburbanizing Sofia: characteristics of post-socialist peri-urban change, Urban Geography 28, 8 (2007) 755-780
12. K. Leetmaa, T. Tammaru and K. Anniste, From priority-led to market-led suburbanisation in a post-communist metropolis, Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 100, 4 (2009) 436-453.
13. For a review of social differentiation and segregation, see S. Ruoppila, Processes of residential differentiation in socialist cities: literature review on the cases of Budapest, Prague, Tallinn and Warsaw, European Journal of Spatial Development (February 2004), refereed article no. 9.,
14. R.J. Struyk, Housing privatisation in the former Soviet bloc to 1995, in: G. Andrusz, M. Harloe and I. Szelényi (Eds), Cities After Socialism, Oxford, 1996, 192-213.
15. Helpful accounts of how the centrally planned economy worked can be found in A. Nove, The Soviet Economic System, Boston, MA, 3rd Edition, 1986; J. Kornai, The Socialist System: the Political Economy of Socialism, Princeton, NJ, 1992.
16. T. Sosnovy, The Soviet housing situation today, Soviet Studies 11, 1 (1959) 1-21; L.M. Herman, Urbanization and new housing construction in the Soviet Union, American Journal of Economics and Sociology 30, 2 (1971) 203-219; H.W. Morton, Who gets what, when and how? Housing in the Soviet Union, Soviet Studies 32, 2 (1980) 235-259; H.W. Morton, The contemporary Soviet city, in: H.W. Morton and R.C. Stuart (Eds), The Contemporary Soviet City, London, 1984, 3-24; G.D. Andrusz, Housing and Urban Development in the USSR, Albany, NY, 1984; G.D. Andrusz, A note on the financing of housing in the Soviet Union, Soviet Studies 42, 3 (1990) 555-570; French, Plans, Pragmatism and People (note 2).
17. P. Gregory and M. Harrison, Allocation under dictatorship: research in Stalin's archives, Journal of Economic Literature 43, 3 (2005) 721-761; M. Ellman, The political economy of Stalinism in the light of the archival revolution, Journal of Institutional Economics 4, 1 (2008) 99-125.
18. Bertaud and Renaud, Socialist cities without land markets (note 6), 138-139.
19. A. Block, Soviet housing - the historical aspect, Soviet Studies 5, 3 (1954) 246-277; A.J. DiMaio, Soviet Urban Housing: Problems and Policies, New York, 1974; Morton, Who gets what, when and how? (note 15); Morton, The contemporary Soviet city (note 15); Szelényi, Urban Inequalities under State Socialism (note 7); A. Martiny, Bauen und Wohnen in der Sowjetunion nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg: Bauarbeiterschaft, Architektur und Wohnverhältnisse im sozialen Wandel, Osteuropa-Forschung, Vol. 11, Berlin, 1983; Andrusz, Housing and Urban Development in the USSR (note 15); Andrusz, A note on the financing of housing in the Soviet Union (note 15); also J.A.A. Sillince (Ed), Housing Policy in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, London, 1990; B. Turner, J. Hegedüs and I. Tosics (Eds), The Reform of Housing in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, London, 1992.
20. D.L. Hoffmann, Peasant Metropolis: Social Identities in Moscow, 1929-1941, Ithaca, NY, 1994, 136-142; T.J. Colton, Moscow: Governing the Socialist Metropolis, Cambridge, MA, 1995, chapter 6; S. Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as Civilization, Berkeley, CA, 1995, chapter 4; also J. Obertreis, Tränen des Sozialismus: Wohnen in Leningrad zwischen Alltag und Utopie 1917-1937, Cologne, 2004. In Central and South-eastern Europe, where Stalinist era industrialization was confined to a short period during the late-1940s, early 1950s, somewhat similar conditions did apply; see e.g., A. Stenning, Placing (post-)socialism: the making and remaking of Nowa Huta, Poland, European Urban and Regional Studies 7, 2 (2000) 99-118; S. Horváth, Remaking working-class life in Hungary's first socialist city, Journal of International Labor and Working-Class History 68 (2005) 24-46.
21. On which see, e.g., M.F. Parkins, City Planning in Soviet Russia, Chicago, 1953; R.A. French and F.E.I. Hamilton (Eds), The Socialist City: Spatial Structure and Urban Policy, Chichester, 1979; J.H. Bater, The Soviet City: Ideal and Reality, London, 1980; F. Werner, Stadt, Städtebau, Architektur in der DDR. Aspekte der Stadtgeographie, Stadtplanung und Forschungspolitik, Erlangen, 1981; A. Karger and F. Werner, Die sozialistische Stadt, Geographische Rundschau 34, 11 (1982) 519-523 & 526-528; T.H. Elkins and B. Hoffmeister, Berlin: the Spatial Structure of a Divided City, London, 1988; H.-J. Kadatz, Städtebauliche Entwicklungslinien in Mittel-und Osteuropa. DDR, Tschechoslowakei und Ungarn nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, REGIO Beiträge des IRS, 12. Erkner b. Berlin, 1997; R.A. French, Plans, Pragmatism and People: the Legacy of Soviet Planning for Today's Cities, London, 1995; A. Bertaud, The spatial structures of Central and Eastern European cities, in: S. Tsenkova and Z. Nedović-Budić (Eds), The Urban Mosaic of Post-socialist Europe, Heidelberg, 2006, 91-110.
22. P. Murray and I. Szelényi, The city in the transition to socialism, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 8, 1 (1984) 90-107.
23. Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain (note 19), 162.
24. In an extensive body of literature, see, inter alia, Szelényi, Urban Inequalities under State Socialism (note 7); K.J. Zaniewski, Housing inequalities under socialism: the case of Poland, Geoforum 22, 1 (1991) 39-53; French, Plans, Pragmatism and People (note 2), 97-103. The resulting pattern of suburban settlements under Soviet-type socialism as 'a stepping stone to the city, not out of it', as G. Ioffe and T. Nefedova, Environs of Russian cities: a case study of Moscow, Europe-Asia Studies 50, 8 (1998) 1325-1356, put it (quote from p. 1325), is discussed at some length by, e.g., Z. Rykiel, Intra-metropolitan migration in the Warsaw agglomeration, Economic Geography 60, 1 (1984) 55-70; Ö. Sjöberg, Underurbanisation and the zero urban growth hypothesis: diverted migration in Albania, Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 74, 1 (1992) 3-19; D. Mezga, Polish para-urbanisation: residential sprawl in the urban-rural fringe, Town Planning Review 64, 1 (1993) 23-65; T. Tammaru, Suburban growth and suburbanisation under central planning: the case of Soviet Estonia, Urban Studies 38, 8 (2001) 1341-1357; and others.
25. E.g., Szelényi, Urban Inequalities under State Socialism (note 7); I. Szelényi, Housing inequalities and occupational segregation in state socialist cities, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 11, 1 (1987) 1-8; Z. Dániel, The effects of housing allocation on social inequality in Hungary, Journal of Comparative Economics 9, 4 (1985) 391-409; D.M. Smith, Urban Inequality under Socialism: Case Studies on Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, Cambridge, 1989; D. Crowley, Warsaw interiors: the public life of private spaces, 1949-65, in: D. Crowley and S.E. Reid (Eds), Socialist Spaces: Sites of Everyday Life in the Eastern Bloc, Oxford, 2002, 181-206, and not least the rich discussion of panel housing contained in C. Hannemann, Die Platte. Industrialisierter Wohnungsbau in der DDR, Berlin, 3rd Edition, 2005, especially chapters 4-6. By adding empirical input, Hannemann by and large substantiates the early conception, put forth in Werner, Stadt, Städtebau, Architektur in der DDR (note 2), of a distinct socialist pattern of housing segregation that tallies with Szelényi's observations.
26. D.J.B. Shaw, Spatial dimensions in Soviet central planning, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers NS 10, 4 (1985) 401-412; E.S. Shomina, Enterprises and the urban environment in the USSR, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 16, 2 (1992) 222-233; French, Plans, Pragmatism and People (note 2), 108; B. Domański, Industrial Control over the Socialist Town: Benevolence or Exploitation?, Westport, CT, 1997.
27. A useful study on these ministries can be found in S. Whitefield, Industrial Power and the Soviet State, Oxford, 1993.
28. J. Winiecki, CPEs' structural change and world market performance: a permanently developing country (PDC) status?, Soviet Studies 41, 3 (1989) 365-381 (quote from p. 366).
29. Herman, Urbanization and new housing construction in the Soviet Union (note 15).
30. E.g., J. Kornai, Resource-constrained versus demand-constrained systems, Econometrica 47, 4 (1979) 801-819; J. Kornai, The soft budget constraint, Kyklos 39, 1 (1986) 3-30.
31. S. Malle, Employment Planning in the Soviet Union, Basingstoke, 1990; S. Oxenstierna, From Labour Shortage to Unemployment? The Soviet Labour Market in the 1980s, Stockholm, 1990.
32. K. Stanilov, Taking stock of post-socialist urban development: a recapitulation, in: K. Stanilov (Ed), The Post-socialist City: Urban Form and Space Transformations in Central and Eastern Europe after Socialism, GeoJournal Library, Vol. 92, New York, 2007, 3-17 (quote from p. 8).
33. Kornai, The Socialist System (note 14); and more specifically C. Davis, Priority and the shortage model: the medical system in the socialist economy, in: C. Davis and W. Charemza (Eds), Models of Disequilibrium and Shortage in Centrally Planned Economies, London, 1989, 427-459; C. Davis, The high-priority military sector in a shortage economy, in: H.S. Rowen and C. Wolf, Jr. (Eds), The Impoverished Superpower: Perestroika and the Soviet Military Burden, San Fransisco, CA, 1990, 155-184, 325-333; Oxenstierna, From Labour Shortage to Unemployment? (note 29). The classic study on how company managers cope under such circumstances is J.S. Berliner, Factory and Manager in the USSR, Cambridge, MA, 1957; as Ellman, The political economy of Stalinism in the light of the archival revolution (note 16), 101, notes, 'access to the archives has largely confirmed Berliner's picture of enterprise level decision making', as is also the case with the work of Kornai, the insights of whom appear to have weathered the test very well. As for the level of expenditure for housing directly made available from the center, R. Hutchings, The Soviet Budget, London, 1983, 100 (and table p. 99), notes that during much of the period in focus here, that expenditure was well below 10% of the total; the 'communal economy (at times linked with housing)' during the Brezhnev years was 'rather stable at just over 6%.' On budgets and the role of local party apparatchiki in it, see e.g., J.F. Hough, The Soviet Prefects: the Local Party Organs in Industrial Decision-making, Cambridge, MA, 1969; D. Bahry, Outside Moscow: Power, Politics, and Budgetary Policy in the Soviet Republics, New York, 1987.
34. Ö. Sjöberg, Shortage, priority and urban growth: towards a theory of urbanisation under central planning, Urban Studies 36, 13 (1999) 2217-2236; M. Gentile, Urban residential preferences and satisfaction in the former Soviet Union: results from a survey in Ust'-Kamenogorsk, Kazakhstan, Urban Geography 26, 4 (2005) 296-327; M. Gentile and Ö. Sjöberg, Intra-urban landscapes of priority: the Soviet legacy, Europe-Asia Studies 58, 5 (2006) 701-729; M. Gentile and Ö. Sjöberg, Spaces of priority: the geography of Soviet housing construction in Daugavpils, Latvia, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 100, 1 (2010) 112-136; Leetmaa, Tammaru and Anniste, From priority-led to market-led suburbanisation in a post-communist metropolis (note 11).
35. B.A. Ruble, Leningrad: Shaping a Soviet City, Berkeley, CA, 1990, 10, 188-189; B. Domański, Social control over the milltown: industrial paternalism under socialism and capitalism, Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 83, 5 (1992) 353-60; Domański, Industrial Control over the Socialist Town (note 24).
36. H.W. Morton, Housing problems and policies of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, Studies in Comparative Communism 12, 4 (1979) 300-321; Martiny, Bauen und Wohnen in der Sowjetunion nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg (note 18), 91ff; B.A. Ruble, From khrushcheby to korobki, in: W.C. Brumfield and B.A. Ruble (Eds), Russian Housing in the Modern Age: Design and Social History, Cambridge, 1993, 232-279; K. Dörhöfer (Ed), Wohnkultur und Plattenbau. Beispiele aus Berlin und Budapest, Berlin, 1994; Hannemann, Die Platte (note 23), 23-25; S.E. Reid, Khrushchev modern: agency and modernization in the Soviet home, Cahiers du monde russe 47, 1-2 (2006) 227-268.
37. Covered by a diverse literature, including relatively recent works such as H. Engel and W. Ribbe (Eds), Karl-Marx-Allee, Magistrale in Berlin. Die Wandlung der sozialistischen Prachtstraße zur Hauptstraße des Berliner Ostens, Berlin, 1996; H. Niclaus and A. Obeth, Die Stalinalle. Geschichte einer deutschen Straße, Berlin, 1997; C. Cooke, Beauty as a route to 'the Radiant Future': responses of Soviet architecture, Journal of Design History 10, 2 (1997) 137-160; A.H. Dawson, From glittering icon to, Geographical Journal 165, 2 (1999) 154-160; T. Book, Symbolskiften i det politiska landskapet. Namn - heraldik - monument, Växjö, 2000; D. Light, I. Nicolae and B. Suditu, Toponymy and the communist city: street names in Bucharest, 1948-1965, GeoJournal 56, 2 (2002) 135-144; P. Stangl, Restoring Berlin's Unter den Linden: ideology, world view, place and space, Journal of Historical Geography 32 (2006) 352-376; M. Czepczyński, Cultural Landscapes of Post-Socialist Cities: Representation of Powers and Needs, Aldershot, 2008, chapter 3 on 'landscaping socialist cities'.
38. Post-socialist work on socialist capital cities include D. Danta, Ceausescu's Bucharest, Geographical Review 83 (1993) 170-183; M. de Betânia Uchôa Cavalcanti, Urban reconstruction and autocratic regimes: Ceausescu's Bucharest in its historic context, Planning Perspectives 12 (1997) 71-109; D.S. Pensley, The socialist city? A critical analysis of Neubaugebiet Hellersdorf, Journal of Urban History 24, 5 (1998) 563-602; S.V. Bittner, Green cities and orderly streets: space and culture in Moscow, 1928-1933, Journal of Urban History 25, 1 (1998) 22-56; B. Ladd, Socialist planning and the rediscovery of the Old City in the German Democratic Republic, Journal of Urban History 27, 5 (2001) 584-603; B. Le Normand, Make no little plan: modernist projects and spontaneous growth in Belgrade, 1945-1967, East Central Europe/L'Europe du Centre-Est 33, I-II (2006) 241-264; S. Hirt, The compact versus the dispersed city: history of planning ideas on Sofia's urban form, Journal of Planning History 6, 2 (2007) 138-165. Meanwhile, socialist new towns have been the subject of e.g., G. Hausladen, Planning the development of the socialist city: the case of Dubna new town, Geoforum 18, 1 (1987) 103-115; P. Springer, Leben im Unfertigen. Die "dritte sozialistische Stadt" Schwedt, in: H. Barth (Ed), Grammatik sozialistischer Architekturen. Lesarten historischer Städtebauforschung zur DDR, Berlin, 2001, 67-81; C. Bernhardt, Planning urbanization and urban growth in the socialist period: the case of East German new towns, 1945-1989, Journal of Urban History 32, 1 (2005) 104-119; P. Germunska, Between theory and practice: planning socialist cities in Hungary, in: M. Hård and T.J. Misa (Eds), Urban Machinery: Inside Modern European Cities, Cambridge, MA, 2008, 235-255. Even so, as noted by C. Benke, Ludwigsfelde, Stadt der Automobilbauer, in: H. Barth (Ed), Grammatik sozialistischer Architekturen, 83-97, this literature tends to leave out towns and villages that expanded thanks to socialist industrialization but that were not included (as a pawn of propaganda or otherwise) in the ranks of new socialist towns as they are normally understood.
39. Ruble, Leningrad (note 32), 7-11.
40. C. Nechemias, The impact of Soviet housing policy on housing conditions in Soviet cities: the uneven push from Moscow, Urban Studies 18, 1 (1981) 1-8. It should be noted that with respect to per capita dwelling space, those at the very bottom of the settlement hierarchy, the rural residents, were often better off than their urban counterparts; however, this is not necessarily true in terms of quality and costs.
41. E.g., P. Schöller, Stalinstadt/Oder - Strukturtyp der neuen Stadt des Ostens, Informationen, Institut für Raumforschung [Bonn] 3, 25-26 (1953) 255-261; Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain (note 19); R. May, Planstadt Stalinstadt. Ein Grundriß der frühen DDR - aufgesucht in Eisenhüttenstadt, Dortmund, 1999; R. May, Planned city Stalinstadt, a manifesto of the early German Democratic Republic, Planning Perspectives 18, 1 (2003) 47-78; Stenning, Placing (post-)socialism (note 19); I. Apolinarski and C. Bernhardt, Entwicklungslogiken sozialistischer Planstädte am Beispiel von Eisenhüttenstadt und Nova Huta, in: H. Barth, Grammatik sozialistischer Architekturen, 51-66; D. Jajeśniak-Quast, In the shadow of the factory: steel towns in postwar Europe, in: M. Hård and T.J. Misa, Urban Machinery: Inside Modern European Cities, Cambridge, MA, 2008, 187-210.
42. On migration control in the Soviet Union, see e.g., M. Matthews, The Passport Society: Controlling Movements in Russia and the USSR, Boulder, CO, 1993
43. C. Buckley, The myth of managed migration: migration control and market in the Soviet period, Slavic Review 54, 4 (1995) 896-916.
44. See T. Borén and M. Gentile, Metropolitan processes in post-communist states: an introduction, Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 89, 2 (2007) 95-110.
45. A further advantage of using Daugavpils as a case is the fact that access is available to the genplan, the local land use and zoning document that was to guide the allocation of land.
46. Sosnovy, The Soviet housing situation today (note 15); Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain (note 19), 473.
47. Statistics Latvia, Results of Population Census, Riga, 2006, at, refereed article no. 9. (accessed 13 February 2006).
48. During the Nazi occupation, at the end of July 1941, a ghetto was established in the fortress in Griva. About 14,000 men, women and children were kept there before being exterminated in May 1942; see D. Bleiere, I. Butulis, I. Feldmanis, A. Stranga and A. Zunda, History of Latvia: the 20th Century, Riga, 2006, 279. Else, G. Swain, Between Stalin and Hitler: Class War and Race War on the Dvina, 1940-46, London, 2004, is the major work on war-time Daugavpils and the very beginnings of Stalinist rule there.
49. R.A. Lewis and R.H. Rowland, Population Redistribution in the USSR: Its Impact on Society, New York, 1979.
50. Daugavpils zonalais valsts arhivs, 57 [fonda lieta], 853 [fonda lieta], 866 [fonda lieta], 992 [fonda lieta]; [fund/category/volumes] 57.1.14. A 1973 archive document from the fund of the regional branch of the Central Statistical Authority of the Latvian SSR reveals that there would have been an additional large enterprise with a staff of over 3000 in Daugavpils at this time. The address of this enterprise is a mailbox, likely that of the industrial organization and ministry that it was subordinated to, meaning that it certainly was connected to the military-industrial complex (Daugavpils zonalais valsts arhivs, 34.4.56: 17). However, given that no one in Daugavpils seems to have even heard of this enterprise and that it does not appear in any other studied document for the other years, as well as that the particular mailbox numbers never existed (Daugavpils central post office, personal telephone communication, June 2006), we are convinced that the enterprise in question was located elsewhere, perhaps in Riga or in the Byelorussian SSR.
51. The actual physical condition of the documents, the documents' degree of coverage of specific issues in terms of both time and space, the accuracy of the work carried out by the state and individual organizations' archivists, the latter being those who submitted the materials to the state archive.
52. That is, whether or not the information might have been intentionally falsified or distorted - for example, by purposely making use of crucial omissions rather than outright falsification.
53. Daugavpils zonalais valsts arhivs, 202.1.73.
54. An akt was also created on the occasion of the construction of piping systems, power lines and other forms of vital urban infrastructure. However, this article only deals with new buildings.
55. On path dependence as a place-dependent process, see R. Martin and P. Sunley, Path dependence and regional economic evolution, Journal of Economic Geography 6, 4 (2006) 395-437; see also D. MacKinnon, Evolution, path dependence and economic geography, Geography Compass 2, 5 (2008) 1449-1463, in which institutional and political economy factors including structures of power are brought into view. For a discussion of path dependence and urban history, primarily working from studies on technical systems and urban utilities, see e.g., M.V. Melosi, Path dependence and urban history: is a marriage possible?, in: D. Schott, B. Luckin and G. Massard-Guilbaud (Eds), Resources of the City: Contributions to an Environmental History of Modern Europe, Aldershot, 2005, 262-275.
56. Szelényi, Urban Inequalities under State Socialism (note 7); R. Wießner, Urban development in East Germany - specific features of urban transformation processes, GeoJournal 49, 1 (1999) 43-51; M. Gentile and T. Tammaru, Ethnicity and housing in Ust'-Kamenogorsk, Kazakhstan, Urban Studies 43, 10 (2006) 1757-1778.
57. There is no archival information in Latvia about the closed-off militarized zones of the Latvian cities. Such materials might exist in Russia, but the authors have not been able to find out where.
58. More information on the materials and methods used in this article is available as supplementary materials at doi:10.1016/j.jhg.2010.01.001.
59. Daugavpils zonalais valsts arhivs, 992 [fonda lieta].
60. A. Åman, Arkitektur och ideologi i stalintidens Östeuropa. Ur det kalla krigets historia, Stockholm, 1987.
61. Sosnovy, The Soviet housing situation today (note 15), tells us that the average per capita floor space in select major cities of the Soviet Union in 1956 - that is, before the Khrushchevian wave of mass housing construction - varied from 3.76 in Frunze (Bishkek) to 5.78m2 in Odessa. Cramped living space was decidedly the fate of the great majority and thus stands in stark contrast to the size of state and private sector dwellings built in Daugavpils during the first few years immediately following the war. As for private building activity, contemporary evidence from elsewhere in the Soviet Union indicates that workers (industrial labor, civil servants) employed by enterprises and organizations with extensive material means and financial resources were the only ones with any realistic possibility of constructing private housing. See A. Nikolaev, Vsemernoe razvitie zhilishchnogo stroitel'stva - vazhneyshaya obshchenarodnaya zadacha [All-encompassing development of housing construction - the most important national task], Planovoe chozyaystvo 4 (1958) 23-33.
62. Murray and Szelényi, The city in the transition to socialism (note 20).
63. This is a tendency that was also noted in a national-level study on neighboring Estonia; see T. Tammaru, The Soviet Union as a deviant case? Underurbanization in Estonia, Urban Geography 22, 6 (2001) 584-604.
64. Grayish-white bricks were most commonplace in the Baltics. Other constructions materials, often of inferior quality, were used in other parts of the Soviet Union.
65. The classification of the organizations involved in housing construction is largely based on their level of administrative subordination (i.e., their distance from Moscow in hierarchic terms) and the character of their main produce, i.e., defence and light or heavy industry. The rationale is that this subdivision reflects the overall status of the organizations within the Soviet command economy. The public services category includes, among others, the Municipal Service Combine, which had over 1500 employees in 1979 (Daugavpils zonalais valsts arhivs, 626.4.56: 14). The republic-level (i.e., Riga-controlled) light industry sector includes various food processing enterprises, some of which were rather large (in 1979, the dairy combine employed over 1100 and the meat-processing plant over 1150); some parts of the footwear industry (780 employees in the Daugava combine); and the production of construction materials destined for housing (over 700 employees) (Daugavpils zonalais valsts arhivs, 626.4.56: 13). The republic- and union-republic-level enterprises within heavy industry included the aforementioned Chemical Fiber Plant and Elektroinstrument (formally under Moscow control for long periods, but with a mostly regional market for its produce), as well as the Baltic Railways (thousands of employees) and the region's energy network (700 employees in 1979) (Daugavpils zonalais valsts arhivs, 626.4.56: 13). The heavy industrial sector under Moscow's direct control (union-level subordination) includes Lokomotiv, Zavod Privodnykh Tsepey (ZPTs) and the planned hydroelectric power-generation facility (1980s only). Broadly speaking, the two latter groups include the city's key industrial enterprises.
66. A. Åslund, Building Capitalism: the Transformation of the Former Soviet Bloc, Cambridge, 2002, 38. See further A. Bertaud and B.M. Renaud, Socialist cities without land markets, Journal of Urban Economics 41 (1997) 137-151; J. Salukvadze, Spatial structure of Tbilisi: Soviet legacy and ongoing change, paper presented at the Inaugural Nordic Geographers' Meeting, Lund, 10-15 May 2005; on densification and infills see I. Szelényi, Cities under socialism - and after, in: G. Andrusz, M. Harloe and I. Szelényi (Eds), Cities After Socialism, Oxford, 1996, 286-317; A. Ivanou, Infill development in Moscow and its social implications, paper presented at the 2nd International Urban Geographies of Post-communist States workshop, Stockholm, 7-10 December 2007.
67. As argued, e.g., Bater, The Soviet City (note 2), 194; Andrusz, Housing and Urban Development in the USSR (note 15); French, Plans, Pragmatism and People (note 2), 136-137; for an example referring to Latvia, see Sigurd Grava, The urban heritage of the Soviet regime, Journal of the American Planning Association 59, 1 (1993) 9-31. As to the market properties of housing and the housing allocation system, please refer to M. Alexeev, Markets vs. rationing: the case of Soviet housing, Review of Economics and Statistics 70, 3 (1988) 414-420.
68. We would like to thank one of the anonymous referees for pointing this out to us.
69. The name given to the rapid expansion of housing made a political priority under Khruchshev and possible by new construction techniques. See further Herman, Urbanization and new housing construction in the Soviet Union (note 15).
70. Expressed in terms of the standard model series numbers of the Soviet housing construction industry: three 103s, two 467s, three Khrushchevki and one 'special project' (i.e., not a standard design, but not necessarily one implying a substantial difference from the standard designs).
71. Daugavpils zonalais vasts arhivs, 202.1.74: 48.
72. Druzhba cooperative, Daugavpils, personal communication, January 2006.
73. As described by Domański, Industrial Control over the Socialist Town (note 24), 88-91.
74. At a trade-union meeting in 1970, in fact, one member regretted the passivity of the ZPTs with regard to housing matters and referred to the ZPTs as 'standing alone', in contrast to the case of the ZKhV, which was supported by 'the whole city' from the very beginning (Daugavpils zonalais valsts arhivs, 853.1.298: 19-20).
75. Daugavpils zonalais vasts arhivs, 853.1.298.
76. At the all-Union level, the share of private housing construction declined from 33.6% during the 1956-1960 period to 13.6% during the 1971-1975 period. However, it was always lower in urban areas, both within Latvia and across the Soviet Union (see Andrusz, Housing and Urban Development in the USSR (note 15), 101).
77. I. Szelényi, Urban Inequalities under State Socialism, Oxford, 1983; J. Musil, City development in Central and Eastern Europe before 1990: historical context and socialist legacies, in: F.E.I. Hamilton, K.D. Andrews and N. Pichler-Milanovic (Eds), Transformation of Cities in Central and Eastern Europe: Towards Globalization, Tokyo, 2005, 22-43.
78. Ģertrude Kudiņa, former Chief Architect of the city of Daugavpils, personal communication, December 2005.
79. See Andrusz, A note on the financing of housing in the Soviet Union (note 15).
80. On the former, see e.g., K. Gerasimova, The Soviet communal apartment, in: J. Smith (Ed.), Beyond the Limits: the Concept of Space in Russian History and Culture, Studia Historica, Vol. 62, Helsinki, 1999, 107-131; K. Gerasimova, Privacy in the Soviet communal apartment, in: D. Crowley and S.E. Reid (Eds), Socialist Spaces: Sites of Everyday Life in the Eastern Bloc, Oxford, 2002, 207-230; I. Utekhin, Filling dwelling place with history: communal apartments in St. Petersburg, in: J.J. Czaplicka, B.A. Ruble and L. Crabtree (Eds), Composing Urban History and the Constitution of Civic Identities, Washington, DC, 2003, 86-109. On the communal hostels, C. Humphrey, Ideology in infrastructure: architecture and Soviet imagination, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Society 11, 1 (2005) 39-58.
81. Recent work that has been able to verify this contention through access to previously inaccessible material that has long been known to exist include Tammaru, The Soviet Union as a deviant case? (note 57); D. Filtzer, Standard of Living versus Quality of Life: Struggling with the Urban Environment in Russia During the Early Years of Postwar Reconstruction, PERSA Working Paper 44, Warwick, 2005, at, (accessed 20 February 2006) .
82. Domański, Industrial Control over the Socialist Town (note 24).
83. E.g., Domański Industrial Control over the Socialist Town (note 24); Gentile and Sjöberg, Intra-urban landscapes of priority (note 31).
84. L. Sýkora, Economic and social restructuring and gentrification in Prague, Acta Facultatis Rerum Naturalium Universitatis Comenianae, Geographica 37 (1996) 71-81; L. Sýkora, Gentrification in post-communist cities, in: R. Atkinson and G. Bridge (Eds), Gentrification in Global Context: the New Urban Colonialism, Routledge, London, 2005, 90-105; Z. Kovács, Ghettoization or gentrification? Post-socialist scenarios for Budapest, Journal of Housing and the Built Environment 13, 1 (1998) 63-81; A. Badyina and O. Golubchikov, Gentrification in Central Moscow - a market process or a deliberate policy? Money, power and people in housing regeneration in Ostozhenka, Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 87, 2 (2005) 113-129.
85. E. Kiss, Restructuring in the industrial areas of Budapest in the period of transition, Urban Studies 39, 1 (2000) 69-84; E. Kiss, Spatial impacts of post-socialist industrial transformation in the major Hungarian cities, European Urban and Regional Studies 11, 1 (2004) 81-87; J. Temelová, Flagship developments and the physical upgrading of the post-socialist inner city: the Golden Angel project in Prague, Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 89, 2 (2007) 169-181.