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Journal of Historical Geography 36 (2010) 453–465

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Journal of Historical Geography

journal homepage: www.elsevier .com/locate/ jhg

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

Michael Gentile a,b,* and Orjan Sjoberg c

a Umeå University, Department of Social and Economic Geography, SE-90187 Umeå, Swedenb Sodertorn University, Stockholm Centre on Health of Societies in Transition, SE-14189 Huddinge, Swedenc Stockholm School of Economics, P.O. Box 6501, SE-113 83 Stockholm, Sweden

Abstract

Throughout much of the Soviet period, access to housing was a major consideration, both for individual citizens and employers intent on increasing theirnumber of employees. Because of the heavy emphasis on industry, and despite the progress made within the area since the late 1950s, Soviet urbanresidential provision never managed to fully recover from the acute housing shortage that characterized the Stalin years. In this paper, we address thequantitative side of housing construction during the socialist era. Using the mid-sized diversified industrial town of Daugavpils (Latvia) as a case study, weset out to investigate the extent to which employers were involved in decisions concerning housing provision. To do this, we consult a large volume ofarchival records, our focus being on documents tracing entries indicating that new living quarters were ready and could be allocated to employees ofsponsoring organizations and enterprises.� 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Housing; Latvia; Soviet Union; Socialist enterprises

‘Let us face the truth, state allocation [of housing]

* CorE-m

1 O.Equote fr

2 OnChichesForschuBerlin: tdem Zw1995; AHeidelb

3 K. Sand Eas

0305-74doi:10.1

which dominates in our country differentiatesthe population not by a family’s ability to pay,nor by the work effort or by its need for living space,but by one’s position in the state and party structures.’1

Introduction

Two decades of post-socialist reform and transformation have hada visible effect on urban areas across the former Soviet bloc. With fewexceptions, the socialist city has ceased to exist. The urban economyhas witnessed a sea-change, and the commitment to social andspatial equality (to the extent that it did exist) has disappeared. In

responding author. Umeå University, Department of Social and Economic Geograail addresses: michael.gentile@geography.umu.se (M. Gentile), orjan.sjoberg@hhs

. Bessonova, Zhilishchnaya strategiya: kak uyti ot gorodov-‘‘khrushchob’’ [Housinom p. 53. Khrushchoba is a compound of the words Khrushchev and trushchobawhich see, e.g., M.F. Parkins, City Planning in Soviet Russia, Chicago, 1953; R.A. Frter, 1979; J.H. Bater, The Soviet City: Ideal and Reality, London, 1980; F. Werner, Stangspolitik, Erlangen, 1981; A. Karger and F. Werner, Die sozialistische Stadt, Geograhe Spatial Structure of a Divided City, London, 1988; H.-J. Kadatz, Stadtebauliche Eeiten Weltkrieg, REGIO Beitrage des IRS, 12. Erkner b. Berlin, 1997; R.A. French, P. Bertaud, The spatial structures of Central and Eastern European cities, in: Serg, 2006, 91–110.tanilov, Taking stock of post-socialist urban development: a recapitulation, in: K.tern Europe after Socialism, GeoJournal Library, Vol. 92, New York, 2007, 3–17 (qu

88/$ – see front matter � 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.016/j.jhg.2010.01.001

one respect, however, it is premature to proclaim the socialist city’sdeath: the built environment and, concomitantly, the socialistspatial structures2 inherited by today’s post-socialist cities have byno means been squeezed out by the market. Nor is it the case thatdevelopments simply, and in a very spatial sense, leapfrog over thesocialist urban fallout. Although there is something to be said infavor of Kiril Stanilov’s suggestion that ‘most of the energy of thepost-socialist growth has been channeled to the suburban outskirts,where new shopping centers, office parks and clusters of single-family residences have popped up, leaping over the belt of socialisthousing estates’, this view is an exaggeration.3 The pre-transitionurban fabric represents at once both an obstacle and an opportunity.

In fact, we propose that the market squeezes into the existingsocialist spatial structure and that there is strong spatial path

phy, SE-90187 Umeå, Sweden..se (O. Sjoberg).

g strategy: how to depart from the Khrushchevite slum cities], EKO 5 (1991) 52–59,(slum).

ench and F.E.I. Hamilton (Eds), The Socialist City: Spatial Structure and Urban Policy,dt, Stadtebau, Architektur in der DDR. Aspekte der Stadtgeographie, Stadtplanung undphische Rundschau 34, 11 (1982) 519–523 & 526–528; T.H. Elkins and B. Hoffmeister,ntwicklungslinien in Mittel-und Osteuropa. DDR, Tschechoslowakei und Ungarn nach

lans, Pragmatism and People: the Legacy of Soviet Planning for Today’s Cities, London,. Tsenkova and Z. Nedovic-Budic (Eds), The Urban Mosaic of Post-socialist Europe,

Stanilov (Ed), The Post-socialist City: Urban Form and Space Transformations in Centralote from p. 8).

M. Gentile, O. Sjoberg / Journal of Historical Geography 36 (2010) 453–465454

dependency leading from socialism to post-socialism.4 It is this issuethat the present paper addresses. Toward this end, we need toexamine what has come before. Merely using as a benchmark the finalyear of socialism in its Soviet guise is neither likely to allow a fullunderstanding of why the post-Soviet city looks the way it does nor isit likely to help us see why developments take the form they do. To theextent that path dependence is a place-dependent process, our abilityto understand the forces that shaped that context will be of someconsequence, as will any insight into processes such as lock-in, pathdestruction, shifting trajectories and ab initio developmentsdboth(potential) processes of path creationdas might subsequently occur.5

More concretely, our point is this. Squeezing in is not just a meta-phor but also an expression of local path creation, a process thatpredates the demise of the socialist economy. Just as the existing builtenvironment may reduce the flexibility of (or sets limits on) processesof adjustment and change, other traits typical of the centrally plannedeconomy may similarly provide opportunities. Thus, the existence oflarge surfaces of vacant land within socialist cities, often in theircentral areas, was a direct precondition for the densification or infilldevelopments that have characterized the past two decades. Indeed,as Åslund astutely notes, ‘Socialist economies had no exit mechanism,so factories remained where they had once been built and werehardly ever closed down. . Consequently a big old power stationfaces even the Kremlin.’6 Likewise, because inner-city regenerationand the modernization of existing industrial facilities were not givenpriority over the outward quantitative expansion of these functionsunder socialism,7 we now witness a process of gentrification8 andinner-city brownfield regeneration9 that would not have been likelyor even possible if history had taken a different route. As for the

4 See T. Boren and M. Gentile, Metropolitan processes in post-communist states: an i5 On path dependence as a place-dependent process, see R. Martin and P. Sunley, Pat

(2006) 395–437; see also D. MacKinnon, Evolution, path dependence and economic geogreconomy factors including structures of power are brought into view. For a discussion osystems and urban utilities, see e.g., M.V. Melosi, Path dependence and urban historyResources of the City: Contributions to an Environmental History of Modern Europe, Alders

6 A. Åslund, Building Capitalism: the Transformation of the Former Soviet Bloc, Cambridmarkets, Journal of Urban Economics 41 (1997) 137–151; J. Salukvadze, Spatial structure oGeographers’ Meeting, Lund, 10–15 May 2005; on densification and infills see I. SzelenyCities After Socialism, Oxford, 1996, 286–317; A. Ivanou, Infill development in Moscow andof Post-communist States workshop, Stockholm, 7–10 December 2007.

7 I. Szelenyi, Urban Inequalities under State Socialism, Oxford, 1983; J. Musil, City devellegacies, in: F.E.I. Hamilton, K.D. Andrews and N. Pichler-Milanovic (Eds), Transformation

8 L. Sykora, Economic and social restructuring and gentrification in Prague, Acta FaL. Sykora, Gentrification in post-communist cities, in: R. Atkinson and G. Bridge (Eds), G90–105; Z. Kovacs, Ghettoization or gentrification? Post-socialist scenarios for BudapesO. Golubchikov, Gentrification in Central Moscow – a market process or a deliberate poAnnaler: Series B, Human Geography 87, 2 (2005) 113–129.

9 E. Kiss, Restructuring in the industrial areas of Budapest in the period of transition, Utransformation in the major Hungarian cities, European Urban and Regional Studies 11, 1 (post-socialist inner city: the Golden Angel project in Prague, Geografiska Annaler: Series

10 E.g., T. Tammaru, K. Leetmaa, S. Silm and R. Ahas, Temporal and spatial dynamics o423–439.

11 In a rapidly growing body of literature, see e.g., H. Kok and Z. Kovacs, The process of sthe Built Environment 14, 2 (1999) 119–141; J. Timar and M.M. Varadi, The uneven developStudies 8, 4 (2001) 349–360; T. Ott, From concentration to de-concentration – migratioaspects of the suburbanisation stage in the agglomeration of Warsaw, Dela 21 (2004) 531a phenomenon of post-socialist transformation, Cities 22, 2 (2005) 123–134; Y. ValkanoF. Eckardt (Ed.), Paths of Urban Transforamtion, The European City in Transition, Vol. 5, Frankin transition: destination of suburbanizers in the Tallinn Metropolitan Area, Geografiskacity in motion: the timespace activity and mobility patterns of the suburban inhabitantsGeografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 89, 2 (2007) 147–168; M. Ourednıcek, DSeries B, Human Geography 89, 2 (2007) 111–126; S. Hirt, Suburbanizing Sofia: characteriLeetmaa, T. Tammaru and K. Anniste, From priority-led to market-led suburbanisation in(2009) 436–453.

12 For a review of social differentiation and segregation, see S. Ruoppila, Processes of resPrague, Tallinn and Warsaw, European Journal of Spatial Development (February 2004), <

13 R.J. Struyk, Housing privatisation in the former Soviet bloc to 1995, in: G. Andrusz,14 Helpful accounts of how the centrally planned economy worked can be found in A. No

System: the Political Economy of Socialism, Princeton, NJ, 1992.

suburban zones, without the formation of the typically socialistpattern of concentrated satellite towns coupled with a strong legacyof military land ‘freezing’ in near-metropolitan areas,10 there wouldnever have been enough land to accommodate the dramatic expan-sion of mainly low-rise residential suburbanization that has becomeevident during the past ten years or so.11 In short, current spatialdevelopments in the post-socialist city cannot adequately be assessedwithout an appropriate understanding of its past.

The reasons for this are manifold. In addition to the generalpatterns noted above, there are at least three other features whoselegacy is important for today’s cities. First, socialist-era dwellingsstill house the majority of the population of post-socialist cities andare arguably the main ‘building block’ of the post-Soviet (and else-where, post-socialist) city. To a considerable extent, this means thatthese dwellings replicate the late Soviet socio-spatial differentia-tion, albeit with inhabitants who are twenty years older.12 Second,the way housing was allocated has a strong indirect impact ontoday’s socio-spatial landscape: as Raymond Struyk pointed outa decade and a half ago, those occupying better-quality centrallylocated dwellingsdoften a privileged groupdenjoyed a betterinitial endowment.13 Third, and most fundamentally, the manner inwhich the Soviet system of central planning encouraged actionamong economic agents at various levels of decision-making is likelyto prove an important explanation for the allocation of resources,including land and housing finance.14 A lack of adequate pricing,long recognized by students of the Soviet system, may also explainthe low intensity of land use in central locations, which would havetranslated into the vacant lots and brownfields that are a prominentcharacteristic of the post-socialist city. However, the finer detail

ntroduction, Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 89, 2 (2007) 95–110.h dependence and regional economic evolution, Journal of Economic Geography 6, 4aphy, Geography Compass 2, 5 (2008) 1449–1463, in which institutional and politicalf path dependence and urban history, primarily working from studies on technical: is a marriage possible?, in: D. Schott, B. Luckin and G. Massard-Guilbaud (Eds),hot, 2005, 262–275.ge, 2002, 38. See further A. Bertaud and B.M. Renaud, Socialist cities without landf Tbilisi: Soviet legacy and ongoing change, paper presented at the Inaugural Nordici, Cities under socialism – and after, in: G. Andrusz, M. Harloe and I. Szelenyi (Eds),its social implications, paper presented at the 2nd International Urban Geographies

opment in Central and Eastern Europe before 1990: historical context and socialistof Cities in Central and Eastern Europe: Towards Globalization, Tokyo, 2005, 22–43.

cultatis Rerum Naturalium Universitatis Comenianae, Geographica 37 (1996) 71–81;entrification in Global Context: the New Urban Colonialism, Routledge, London, 2005,t, Journal of Housing and the Built Environment 13, 1 (1998) 63–81; A. Badyina andlicy? Money, power and people in housing regeneration in Ostozhenka, Geografiska

rban Studies 39, 1 (2000) 69–84; E. Kiss, Spatial impacts of post-socialist industrial2004) 81–87; J. Temelova, Flagship developments and the physical upgrading of theB, Human Geography 89, 2 (2007) 169–181.f the new residential areas around Tallinn, European Planning Studies 17, 3 (2009)

uburbanization in the agglomeration of Budapest, Netherlands Journal of Housing andment of suburbanization during transition in Hungary, European Urban and Regional

n patterns in the post-socialist city, Cities 18, 6 (2001) 403–412; A. Lisowski, Social–541; H. Nuissl and D. Rink, The ‘production’ of urban sprawl in eastern Germany asv, Suburbanisation in Sofia: changing spatial structure of post-communist city, in:furt/Main, 2006, 175–194; K. Leetmaa and T. Tammaru, Suburbanization in countriesAnnaler: Series B, Human Geography 89, 2 (2007) 127–146; J. Novak and L. Sykora, A

and the structuration of the spatial organization of the Prague Metropolitan Area,ifferential suburban development in the Prague urban region, Geografiska Annaler:

stics of post-socialist peri-urban change, Urban Geography 28, 8 (2007) 755–780; K.a post-communist metropolis, Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 100, 4

idential differentiation in socialist cities: literature review on the cases of Budapest,http://www.nordregio.se/EJSD/>, refereed article no. 9.

M. Harloe and I. Szelenyi (Eds), Cities After Socialism, Oxford, 1996, 192–213.ve, The Soviet Economic System, Boston, MA, 3rd Edition, 1986; J. Kornai, The Socialist

M. Gentile, O. Sjoberg / Journal of Historical Geography 36 (2010) 453–465 455

regarding how this non-market system of allocation operated and itsspatial implications has not been firmly established.

As a matter of fact, it can be argued that despite having been thesubject of a large volume of literature,15 the Soviet system of housingconstruction and allocation is still not fully understood. Importantly,the connection between the above features, the three latter of whichare still likely to wield a combined influence on the character of post-socialist urban areas, has not been established at the level of detail thatwould appear necessary for this purpose. One reason for this gap in theliterature, no doubt, is the lack of empirical material allowing for in-depth analysis. It goes without saying that during the Soviet period,access to information on the nuts and bolts of the systemdand espe-cially information that might address our presumptions regarding thefiner points of the systemdseldom allowed for systematic assessment.

More surprising, perhaps, is that the transition period itself andthe highly helpful ‘archival revolution’ have not yet allowed us fill inall the blanks.16 There are a large number of observations on land usepatterns and the consequences of the Soviet-era absence of a marketallowing for the ‘recycling of land’17; these texts have certainlyincreased our understanding of what came before. Town plannersand investors have all had to contend with this legacy or, indeed, haveseen opportunities arise as a result, but the question of why the Sovietlegacy looked the way it did has not been resolved yet. This neglect isof some consequence because it may also prevent us from fullyappreciating the role of history in shaping today’s patterns, includingthe trajectory of adjustment to a market-based system. The builtenvironment, after all, sets rather strict limits onwhat can and cannotbe done. From this perspective, twenty years or so have allowed forquite a change but seldom have allowed for large-scale alterations, letalone full adjustments, to a new set of economic incentives.

To fill some of these voids, this paper provides a comprehensiveanalysis of Soviet housing construction at the local level. Theempirical substance is provided by data collected in Daugavpils, the

15 T. Sosnovy, The Soviet housing situation today, Soviet Studies 11, 1 (1959) 1–21; L.M.Journal of Economics and Sociology 30, 2 (1971) 203–219; H.W. Morton, Who gets what, whMorton, The contemporary Soviet city, in: H.W. Morton and R.C. Stuart (Eds), The Contempin the USSR, Albany, NY, 1984; G.D. Andrusz, A note on the financing of housing in the Sov(note 2).

16 P. Gregory and M. Harrison, Allocation under dictatorship: research in Stalin’s archeconomy of Stalinism in the light of the archival revolution, Journal of Institutional Econ

17 Bertaud and Renaud, Socialist cities without land markets (note 6), 138–139.18 A. Block, Soviet housing – the historical aspect, Soviet Studies 5, 3 (1954) 246–277; A.

gets what, when and how? (note 15); Morton, The contemporary Soviet city (note 15)Wohnen in der Sowjetunion nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg: Bauarbeiterschaft, Architektur uAndrusz, Housing and Urban Development in the USSR (note 15); Andrusz, A note on thePolicy in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, London, 1990; B. Turner, J. Hegedus and I. Tos

19 D.L. Hoffmann, Peasant Metropolis: Social Identities in Moscow, 1929–1941, Ithaca, NY, 11995, chapter 6; S. Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as Civilization, Berkeley, CA, 199Alltag und Utopie 1917–1937, Cologne, 2004. In Central and South-eastern Europe, whereearly 1950s, somewhat similar conditions did apply; see e.g., A. Stenning, Placing (postRegional Studies 7, 2 (2000) 99–118; S. Horvath, Remaking working-class life in Hungary’s24–46.

20 P. Murray and I. Szelenyi, The city in the transition to socialism, International Journa21 Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain (note 19), 162.22 In an extensive body of literature, see, inter alia, Szelenyi, Urban Inequalities under Stat

Poland, Geoforum 22, 1 (1991) 39–53; French, Plans, Pragmatism and People (note 2), 97–1stepping stone to the city, not out of it’, as G. Ioffe and T. Nefedova, Environs of Russian(quote from p. 1325), is discussed at some length by, e.g., Z. Rykiel, Intra-metropolitanO. Sjoberg, Underurbanisation and the zero urban growth hypothesis: diverted migratioMezga, Polish para-urbanisation: residential sprawl in the urban-rural fringe, Town Plannunder central planning: the case of Soviet Estonia, Urban Studies 38, 8 (2001) 1341–135

23 E.g., Szelenyi, Urban Inequalities under State Socialism (note 7); I. Szelenyi, Housing ineUrban and Regional Research 11, 1 (1987) 1–8; Z. Daniel, The effects of housing allocat391–409; D.M. Smith, Urban Inequality under Socialism: Case Studies on Eastern Europe anprivate spaces, 1949–65, in: D. Crowley and S.E. Reid (Eds), Socialist Spaces: Sites of Everydpanel housing contained in C. Hannemann, Die Platte. Industrialisierter Wohnungsbau in dHannemann by and large substantiates the early conception, put forth in Werner, Stadt,segregation that tallies with Szelenyi’s observations.

second-largest city of what used to be the Latvian Soviet SocialistRepublic, which in turn will help us to shed considerable light onwhat was builtdor, rather, commissioneddand by whom.

Urban development, housing and the organizationof Soviet-type societies

It has long been recognized that the provision of housing wasa major headache for both Soviet local officials and the population atlarge.18 It comes as no surprise, therefore, that the extent and natureof this problem figure quite prominently in some of the mainhistorical monographs published since the dissolution of the SovietUnion and the collapse of socialism elsewhere.19 Much of what hascome to light regarding housing as a social issue and as a pawn inthe designs of various actors within the centrally planned economyhas focused on the period of the first five-year plansdthat is, the1930s. However, the problem was not solved once the first wave ofindustrialization was complete. An influential paper argued that thesingle most important urban characteristic throughout the socialistperiod was that society was ‘under-urbanized’, which in turn couldbe attributed to ‘productive’ investment’s being favored over‘unproductive’ investment, with housing decidedly belonging to thelatter category.20 ‘Housing in the USSR may have been a publicgood,’ Stephen Kotkin notes, ‘but public goods were considerablylower priorities than state imperatives, such as steelmaking.’21

The result was a housing shortage of significant magnitude thatmade many workers employed in urban industry face the ratherstark choice between commuting in from under-serviced extra-urban settlements ordto the extent that they were not preventedfrom doing so by administrative restrictions on urban in-migra-tiondaccepting the appalling living conditions of communalapartments, crowded barracks and ill-maintained pre-socialiststructures.22 Given that other work, including that by German andHungarian social scientists,23 established that better housing,

Herman, Urbanization and new housing construction in the Soviet Union, Americanen and how? Housing in the Soviet Union, Soviet Studies 32, 2 (1980) 235–259; H.W.orary Soviet City, London, 1984, 3–24; G.D. Andrusz, Housing and Urban Developmentiet Union, Soviet Studies 42, 3 (1990) 555–570; French, Plans, Pragmatism and People

ives, Journal of Economic Literature 43, 3 (2005) 721–761; M. Ellman, The politicalomics 4, 1 (2008) 99–125.

J. DiMaio, Soviet Urban Housing: Problems and Policies, New York, 1974; Morton, Who; Szelenyi, Urban Inequalities under State Socialism (note 7); A. Martiny, Bauen undnd Wohnverhaltnisse im sozialen Wandel, Osteuropa-Forschung, Vol. 11, Berlin, 1983;financing of housing in the Soviet Union (note 15); also J.A.A. Sillince (Ed), Housingics (Eds), The Reform of Housing in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, London, 1992.994, 136–142; T.J. Colton, Moscow: Governing the Socialist Metropolis, Cambridge, MA,5, chapter 4; also J. Obertreis, Tranen des Sozialismus: Wohnen in Leningrad zwischenStalinist era industrialization was confined to a short period during the late-1940s,-)socialism: the making and remaking of Nowa Huta, Poland, European Urban andfirst socialist city, Journal of International Labor and Working-Class History 68 (2005)

l of Urban and Regional Research 8, 1 (1984) 90–107.

e Socialism (note 7); K.J. Zaniewski, Housing inequalities under socialism: the case of03. The resulting pattern of suburban settlements under Soviet-type socialism as ‘acities: a case study of Moscow, Europe-Asia Studies 50, 8 (1998) 1325–1356, put itmigration in the Warsaw agglomeration, Economic Geography 60, 1 (1984) 55–70;n in Albania, Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography 74, 1 (1992) 3–19; D.ing Review 64, 1 (1993) 23–65; T. Tammaru, Suburban growth and suburbanisation

7; and others.qualities and occupational segregation in state socialist cities, International Journal ofion on social inequality in Hungary, Journal of Comparative Economics 9, 4 (1985)d the Soviet Union, Cambridge, 1989; D. Crowley, Warsaw interiors: the public life ofay Life in the Eastern Bloc, Oxford, 2002, 181–206, and not least the rich discussion ofer DDR, Berlin, 3rd Edition, 2005, especially chapters 4–6. By adding empirical input,Stadtebau, Architektur in der DDR (note 2), of a distinct socialist pattern of housing

M. Gentile, O. Sjoberg / Journal of Historical Geography 36 (2010) 453–465456

complete with a modicum of modern conveniences and floor spaceallowing for less cramped living, was often allocated to profes-sionals and, if we may, the ‘prolelitariat’ rather than the averagecitizen, the impact on the socialist cityscape must have transcendedthe immediately visible.

It therefore seems that a worthy task for the historically inclinedurban geographer would be to uncover the manner in which suchskewed allocation of housingdand indeed, of the very land uponwhich housing was constructeddinfluenced the developmenttrajectory of the socialist urban environment. This is particularlyworthwhile in view of the possibility that strong industrial inter-ests might overrule the orderly procedures guarded by socialist-eratown planners. Indeed, it is an often-acknowledged fact that otherconsiderations than aesthetics and rational town planning princi-ples may have taken the upper hand as socialist society embarkedon a process of rapid industrialization.24

The core agents that were involved in producing, reproducingand amplifying the latter state of affairs are the industrial branchministries, which unlike the functional ministries (within socialwelfare, health, etc.), were responsible for a wide range of tasksincluding meeting and, preferably, exceeding planned targets forthe economy’s material output.25 However, despite these originalintentions, the branch ministries and the enterprises producingunder their guidance often engaged in activities that were notdirectly related to their primary tasks. As Polish economist JanWiniecki once put it, the socialist enterprise often engaged in‘micro-level import substitution’.26

This followed from an essential shortcoming of central planningas we have come to know it: the presence of endemic shortages oflabor, producer and consumer goods, transportation capacity, andso on. Under such circumstances, to the extent that they were ableto do so given their limited resources, many ministries took mattersinto their own hands. This might have meant arranging forcomplementary freight (trucks) and passenger transportation(sluzhebnyi, or employee, bus services) or replacing inputs in shortsupply with goods produced at the facilities of the enterprisessubject to the ministry. It also meant dealing with the housingshortage in a more direct manner than was initially envisagedd

that is, by assuming responsibility for housing construction. TheSoviet factory managers (that is, those ultimately responsible forreaching the plan targets), were quick to realize that housing was

24 D.J.B. Shaw, Spatial dimensions in Soviet central planning, Transactions of the Instituturban environment in the USSR, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 16,Industrial Control over the Socialist Town: Benevolence or Exploitation?, Westport, CT, 199

25 A useful study on these ministries can be found in S. Whitefield, Industrial Power an26 J. Winiecki, CPEs’ structural change and world market performance: a permanently

p. 366).27 Herman, Urbanization and new housing construction in the Soviet Union (note 15).28 E.g., J. Kornai, Resource-constrained versus demand-constrained systems, Economet

3–30.29 S. Malle, Employment Planning in the Soviet Union, Basingstoke, 1990; S. Oxenstiern

Stockholm, 1990.30 Kornai, The Socialist System (note 14); and more specifically C. Davis, Priority and th

Charemza (Eds), Models of Disequilibrium and Shortage in Centrally Planned Economies,economy, in: H.S. Rowen and C. Wolf, Jr. (Eds), The Impoverished Superpower: Perestroikstierna, From Labour Shortage to Unemployment? (note 29). The classic study on how compthe USSR, Cambridge, MA, 1957; as Ellman, The political economy of Stalinism in the lighconfirmed Berliner’s picture of enterprise level decision making’, as is also the case withwell. As for the level of expenditure for housing directly made available from the center, Rmuch of the period in focus here, that expenditure was well below 10% of the total; the‘rather stable at just over 6%.’ On budgets and the role of local party apparatchiki in ision-making, Cambridge, MA, 1969; D. Bahry, Outside Moscow: Power, Politics, and Budge

31 O. Sjoberg, Shortage, priority and urban growth: towards a theory of urbM. Gentile, Urban residential preferences and satisfaction in the former Soviet Union: res296–327; M. Gentile and O. Sjoberg, Intra-urban landscapes of priority: the Soviet legapriority: the geography of Soviet housing construction in Daugavpils, Latvia, Annals of theAnniste, From priority-led to market-led suburbanisation in a post-communist metropo

the best inducement that an employer could offer in order to attractand retain his (or, very occasionally, her) staff. ‘By reason of itsscarcity’, Herman explains,

e of Brit2 (19927.d the Sodevelop

rica 47,

a, From

e shortaLondon

a and thany mat of thethe wo

. Hutch‘commut, see e.tary Polanisatioults frocy, EuroAssocia

lis (note

housing has always been considered in the Soviet Union asan important fringe benefit for industrial and otheremployees of the State. Today, good housing continues to beregarded as a prime factor in helping enterprises to attractand maintain a stable labor force. Hence, important indus-tries, research organizations and administrative agenciesengaged in high priority projects are often allocated largerbuilding funds in order to help them provide a better housingstandard for their personnel.27

This dynamic is of some consequence, as housing makes upa substantial portion of any urban environmentdincluding where it isperceived to be in short supply.

Thus, although a good case could be made for gathering addi-tional empirical examples, we aim to move a step further, system-atizing and explaining findings as they accumulate. In particular, byintroducing notions such as unequal influence and differentialability to sustain financial commitments in the face of nominalbudgetary restrictionsdnot least of which by recourse to the softbudget constraint, the existence of which Janos Kornai alerted us toearly on28dwe add to existing work not only by providing additionalempirical detail but also byexplicitly acknowledging the importanceof inter-organizational power relations. Some actors within thesocialist economy were simply more equal than others, which gavethem greater freedom to develop their own strategies to securethose resources that were deemed essential to their meeting theirproduction targets or otherwise furthering their interests. Critically,this included the ability to attract, hire and retain labor, a problemthat became increasingly acute as time went on.29

Using the ‘landscapes of priorities’ approach to urban develop-ment under central planning, we have access to a framework inwhich the essential features of the shortage economy, plus theunequal negotiation power of different actors within this, aresystematically taken into account.30 First developed by Sjoberg witha view to understanding differential growth rates across the urbansystem, this framework has subsequently been put to use in studiesat the intra-urban scale.31 It posits that the dynamics of the shortageeconomy had an impact on urban development, and that in order to

ish Geographers NS 10, 4 (1985) 401–412; E.S. Shomina, Enterprises and the) 222–233; French, Plans, Pragmatism and People (note 2), 108; B. Domanski,

viet State, Oxford, 1993.ing country (PDC) status?, Soviet Studies 41, 3 (1989) 365–381 (quote from

4 (1979) 801–819; J. Kornai, The soft budget constraint, Kyklos 39, 1 (1986)

Labour Shortage to Unemployment? The Soviet Labour Market in the 1980s,

ge model: the medical system in the socialist economy, in: C. Davis and W., 1989, 427–459; C. Davis, The high-priority military sector in a shortagee Soviet Military Burden, San Fransisco, CA, 1990, 155–184, 325–333; Oxen-nagers cope under such circumstances is J.S. Berliner, Factory and Manager inarchival revolution (note 16), 101, notes, ‘access to the archives has largelyrk of Kornai, the insights of whom appear to have weathered the test very

ings, The Soviet Budget, London, 1983, 100 (and table p. 99), notes that duringnal economy (at times linked with housing)’ during the Brezhnev years wasg., J.F. Hough, The Soviet Prefects: the Local Party Organs in Industrial Deci-icy in the Soviet Republics, New York, 1987.n under central planning, Urban Studies 36, 13 (1999) 2217–2236;m a survey in Ust’-Kamenogorsk, Kazakhstan, Urban Geography 26, 4 (2005)pe-Asia Studies 58, 5 (2006) 701–729; M. Gentile and O. Sjoberg, Spaces oftion of American Geographers 100, 1 (2010) 112–136; Leetmaa, Tammaru and

11).

M. Gentile, O. Sjoberg / Journal of Historical Geography 36 (2010) 453–465 457

understand the sources and consequences of the unequal distribu-tion of power across sections and actors within the centrally plannedeconomy, there is a need to think in terms of priority versus non-priority sectors. This perspective is used to outline a typology ofenterprises enjoying differential access to resources in the form ofboth financial means and political clout. This is not to suggest thatthe insights provided by this literature are entirely novel, but theintroduction of a coherent theoretical framework based on the twinnotions of the economics of shortage and priority is.32

In sum, focusing on a resource of importance to the well-being ofthe population, we address the quantitative side of housingconstruction during the socialist era. Using a mid-sized, diversifiedindustrial town as our case study that allows us to take priorities intoaccount, we set out to investigate the extent to which employerswere involved in decisions regarding housing provision. Becauselittle is known on variations across the socialist period, change overtime will also be assessed. Stalin-era housing clearly looks differentfrom its Khrushchevite and late Soviet counterparts, and across theSoviet bloc, the volume increased with the introduction of prefab-rication techniques,33 but who built what and when?

The setting

A feature of the literature on socialist-era urban developments, inaddition to its focus on singular and often visual character traits,34

is its principal concern with two classes of urban environments.These are the capital cities of the then-socialist polities and the (notvery surprising) curiosity about socialist new towns.35 As BlairRuble points out in his study on Leningrad, however, urbandevelopment in top-tier cities, while still subject to the dualstructure of local government and ministerial control of enterprisespresent in the territory under its municipal jurisdiction, was

32 B.A. Ruble, Leningrad: Shaping a Soviet City, Berkeley, CA, 1990, 10, 188–189; B. Domacapitalism, Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 83, 5 (1992) 353–60; Doman

33 H.W. Morton, Housing problems and policies of Eastern Europe and the Soviet UniWohnen in der Sowjetunion nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg (note 18), 91ff; B.A. Ruble, From khModern Age: Design and Social History, Cambridge, 1993, 232–279; K. Dorhofer (Ed), WohDie Platte (note 23), 23–25; S.E. Reid, Khrushchev modern: agency and modernization i

34 Covered by a diverse literature, including relatively recent works such as H. Engel andPrachtstraße zur Hauptstraße des Berliner Ostens, Berlin, 1996; H. Niclaus and A. Obeth, Dieto ‘the Radiant Future’: responses of Soviet architecture, Journal of Design History 10, 2 ((1999) 154–160; T. Book, Symbolskiften i det politiska landskapet. Namn – heraldik – monucity: street names in Bucharest, 1948–1965, GeoJournal 56, 2 (2002) 135–144; P. Stangl, RHistorical Geography 32 (2006) 352–376; M. Czepczynski, Cultural Landscapes of Post-S‘landscaping socialist cities’.

35 Post-socialist work on socialist capital cities include D. Danta, Ceausescu’s Bucharereconstruction and autocratic regimes: Ceausescu’s Bucharest in its historic context, Plannof Neubaugebiet Hellersdorf, Journal of Urban History 24, 5 (1998) 563–602; S.V. Bittner, GUrban History 25, 1 (1998) 22–56; B. Ladd, Socialist planning and the rediscovery of the584–603; B. Le Normand, Make no little plan: modernist projects and spontaneous grow241–264; S. Hirt, The compact versus the dispersed city: history of planning ideas on Sofinew towns have been the subject of e.g., G. Hausladen, Planning the development ofP. Springer, Leben im Unfertigen. Die ‘‘dritte sozialistische Stadt’’ Schwedt, in: H. Barth (zur DDR, Berlin, 2001, 67–81; C. Bernhardt, Planning urbanization and urban growth in thHistory 32, 1 (2005) 104–119; P. Germunska, Between theory and practice: planning sociaEuropean Cities, Cambridge, MA, 2008, 235–255. Even so, as noted by C. Benke, Ludwigtekturen, 83–97, this literature tends to leave out towns and villages that expanded thankor otherwise) in the ranks of new socialist towns as they are normally understood.

36 Ruble, Leningrad (note 32), 7–11.37 C. Nechemias, The impact of Soviet housing policy on housing conditions in Soviet

noted that with respect to per capita dwelling space, those at the very bottom of thecounterparts; however, this is not necessarily true in terms of quality and costs.

38 E.g., P. Scholler, Stalinstadt/Oder – Strukturtyp der neuen Stadt des Ostens, InformatiMountain (note 19); R. May, Planstadt Stalinstadt. Ein Grundriß der fruhen DDR – aufgesuchtthe early German Democratic Republic, Planning Perspectives 18, 1 (2003) 47–78; Stenlungslogiken sozialistischer Planstadte am Beispiel von Eisenhuttenstadt und Nova Huta,shadow of the factory: steel towns in postwar Europe, in: M. Hård and T.J. Misa, Urban

39 On migration control in the Soviet Union, see e.g., M. Matthews, The Passport Societmyth of managed migration: migration control and market in the Soviet period, Slavic

characterized by a more equal distribution of power between thoseentities than was the typically the case elsewhere in the urbansystem.36 This also translated, as Carol Nechemias was able to show,into the uneven provision of housing space with large andadministratively high-ranking cities. Also, those that enjoyedpriority on the grounds of their being focal points for majorindustrial investments were better provided for under a system inwhich funds for housing investment were selectively allocated bothto municipal and to ministerial or enterprise budgets.37

This implies that conflict over land allocation and the respon-sibility of providing workers with living quarters looked different inthese more prominent locations than what one would haveexpected. Something similar can be said about the new towns,often built around a high-profile industrial project, where theenterprise in charge could often dominate the municipality. Notonly were few contenders present in the form of other enterprises,but the strength of the enterprise management relative to themunicipal government can often be seen as having been biased infavor of the former. Examples abounddStalinstadt in the GDR,Nowa Huta in Poland and Magnitogorsk in the USSR are just a fewof them, albeit those prominently analyzed in the literature.38

For these reasons, we focus on a medium-sized town that was thehome to several different types of industrial enterprises and thatexperienced considerable urban growth during the Soviet period.Our choice of case study is predicated precisely on the existence ofa growing and diversified economy, with actors representing all-union, republic-level and local interests, but where few attemptswere made to control immigration (as was often the case in large orstrategically importantdincluding so-called secretdcities and one-company towns).39 Furthermore, the documentation should beeasily accessible and reasonably complete with respect to housingconstruction, enterprise development and other dimensions of

nski, Social control over the milltown: industrial paternalism under socialism and´ ski, Industrial Control over the Socialist Town (note 24).on, Studies in Comparative Communism 12, 4 (1979) 300–321; Martiny, Bauen undrushcheby to korobki, in: W.C. Brumfield and B.A. Ruble (Eds), Russian Housing in the

nkultur und Plattenbau. Beispiele aus Berlin und Budapest, Berlin, 1994; Hannemann,n the Soviet home, Cahiers du monde russe 47, 1–2 (2006) 227–268.W. Ribbe (Eds), Karl-Marx-Allee, Magistrale in Berlin. Die Wandlung der sozialistischenStalinalle. Geschichte einer deutschen Straße, Berlin, 1997; C. Cooke, Beauty as a route1997) 137–160; A.H. Dawson, From glittering icon to., Geographical Journal 165, 2ment, Vaxjo, 2000; D. Light, I. Nicolae and B. Suditu, Toponymy and the communistestoring Berlin’s Unter den Linden: ideology, world view, place and space, Journal ofocialist Cities: Representation of Powers and Needs, Aldershot, 2008, chapter 3 on

st, Geographical Review 83 (1993) 170–183; M. de Betania Uchoa Cavalcanti, Urbaning Perspectives 12 (1997) 71–109; D.S. Pensley, The socialist city? A critical analysisreen cities and orderly streets: space and culture in Moscow, 1928–1933, Journal ofOld City in the German Democratic Republic, Journal of Urban History 27, 5 (2001)th in Belgrade, 1945–1967, East Central Europe/L’Europe du Centre-Est 33, I–II (2006)a’s urban form, Journal of Planning History 6, 2 (2007) 138–165. Meanwhile, socialistthe socialist city: the case of Dubna new town, Geoforum 18, 1 (1987) 103–115;

Ed), Grammatik sozialistischer Architekturen. Lesarten historischer Stadtebauforschunge socialist period: the case of East German new towns, 1945–1989, Journal of Urban

list cities in Hungary, in: M. Hård and T.J. Misa (Eds), Urban Machinery: Inside Modernsfelde, Stadt der Automobilbauer, in: H. Barth (Ed), Grammatik sozialistischer Archi-s to socialist industrialization but that were not included (as a pawn of propaganda

cities: the uneven push from Moscow, Urban Studies 18, 1 (1981) 1–8. It should besettlement hierarchy, the rural residents, were often better off than their urban

onen, Institut fur Raumforschung [Bonn] 3, 25–26 (1953) 255–261; Kotkin, Magneticin Eisenhuttenstadt, Dortmund, 1999; R. May, Planned city Stalinstadt, a manifesto of

ning, Placing (post-)socialism (note 19); I. Apolinarski and C. Bernhardt, Entwick-in: H. Barth, Grammatik sozialistischer Architekturen, 51–66; D. Jaje�sniak-Quast, In theMachinery: Inside Modern European Cities, Cambridge, MA, 2008, 187–210.y: Controlling Movements in Russia and the USSR, Boulder, CO, 1993; C. Buckley, TheReview 54, 4 (1995) 896–916.

M. Gentile, O. Sjoberg / Journal of Historical Geography 36 (2010) 453–465458

urban construction. If we are to allow for a proper assessment ofdevelopments over time, it is also important that major policy shiftsand the introduction of industrialized building techniques,including that of constructing housing estates using prefabricatedpanels, filter down to the location selected for further analysis. Ourchoice is Daugavpils in Latvia, which fulfills all these requirements.40

Clearly, these assets were instrumental in determining the city’sadministrative status as one of republican significance.

Republic-level statistics for the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic,to the extent that they can be trusted, unambiguously suggestconsiderable variation in housing construction over time (Table 1).With the priorities and approaches characteristic of the Stalin years(in Latvia, 1944–1953) being replaced by new sentiments and newbuilding techniques, the growth of the state housing stock accel-erated rapidly from the mid- to late-1950s. The arrival of cheapprefabricated housing construction technology obviously had animpact on both the number of units built and the improvement ofhousing standards for those who gained access to the new apart-ments. Concomitantly, the prefabricated units built between thelate-1950s and the early 1990s were made to significantly lowerquality standards as measured against the more solid and betterinsulated apartment blocks built during the Stalin era and in thefew years that followed. This happened in parallel to the processwhereby the Soviet Union as a whole slowly approached the level ofliving space per person that the authorities had already set asa target during the early phases of rapid industrialization andurbanization. Certainly, it improved upon the situation prevailingbefore the Second World War, when a mere 3 m2 of living spacewere available to the urban inhabitant.41 This is not to imply,however, that communal apartments (kommunalki), hostel-typedwellings (obshchezhitia) or barracks (baraki) were no longerconsidered fit for residential usedor, for that matter, that othercategories of Stalin-era housing as provided were necessarilysubstandard. Quite the opposite is true, in fact.

The Latvian town of Daugavpils illustrates this point nicely.Today a predominantly Russian-speaking urban center witha population of approximately 106,000 inhabitants (2008), downfrom 127,000 in 1991, Daugavpils was Soviet Latvia’s second-largestcity, with an ethnically mixed population in which the titularnationality, the Latvians, made up a mere 13%. Russians, in additionto Byelorussians, Poles and Ukrainians, made up the bulk of thepopulation.42 It should be pointed out, however, that unlike manyother ‘Sovietized’ cities in the Baltic States and elsewhere withinthe Soviet Union, Daugavpils as a multiethnic city has a history thatpredates the Soviet period. Located in the southeastern part ofLatvia, close to the borders of Lithuania and Byelorussia, it also hadsome regional administrative functions during the Soviet period (asit still does today) and hosted important educational facilities suchas the Daugavpils Pedagogical Institute (now Daugavpils Univer-sity), as well as health facilities of significance to the Soviet

40 A further advantage of using Daugavpils as a case is the fact that access is available toof land.

41 Sosnovy, The Soviet housing situation today (note 15); Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain (42 Statistics Latvia, Results of Population Census, Riga, 2006, at <http://data.csb.lv/EN/43 During the Nazi occupation, at the end of July 1941, a ghetto was established in the for

exterminated in May 1942; see D. Bleiere, I. Butulis, I. Feldmanis, A. Stranga and A. Zunda,Hitler: Class War and Race War on the Dvina, 1940–46, London, 2004, is the major work44 R.A. Lewis and R.H. Rowland, Population Redistribution in the USSR: Its Impact on Soc45 Daugavpils zon�alais valsts arh�ıvs, 57 [fonda lieta], 853 [fonda lieta], 866 [fonda lieta]

the fund of the regional branch of the Central Statistical Authority of the Latvian SSR re3000 in Daugavpils at this time. The address of this enterprise is a mailbox, likely that ofcertainly was connected to the military-industrial complex (Daugavpils zon�alais valstsheard of this enterprise and that it does not appear in any other studied document f(Daugavpils central post office, personal telephone communication, June 2006), we are cothe Byelorussian SSR.

republic. To add to the city’s historical role as a principal railwayjunction, the Soviet period also saw the city become an importantcenter for the chemical and transportation industry.

Economically, Daugavpils has experienced a number of ups anddowns that are reflected in its population size. Before the GreatWar, in 1913–1914, the city’s population was greater than it is today.At this point, Daugavpils counted 126,000 inhabitants, a figure thatincluded Gr�ıva, which was incorporated during the 1950s. A fewyears later, it had decreased to a quarter of what it was before thewar (31,000 inhabitants). The population temporarily rose again to56,000 by 1935 but then dropped yet again to about 40,000inhabitants in the aftermath of WWII, during which much of thecity was destroyed and its large Jewish population (about onequarter of the total in 1935) was decimated.43

Despite considerable physical destruction during the war,Daugavpils grew againdand conspicuously sodfollowing the Soviettakeover. This growth was fuelled by industrial expansion anda (related) sustained flow of migrants from the other republics of theSoviet Union, and particularly from the Byelorussian SSR. In thiscontext it is relevant to note that unlike the capital of the Latvian SSR,Riga, Daugavpils was not subject to administrative restrictions onimmigration during the Soviet period.44 Industrial growth initially tookplace through the reconstruction and expansion of the Daugavpils trainrepair workshops (Lokomotiv) and the establishment of the Daugavpilselectric tool factory (Elektroinstrument). A motor/bicycle and, even-tually, automobile component factory was subsequently added; thiswas the Motovelotsep works, later renamed Zavod Privodnykh Tsepey(ZPTs). By the late-1950s, Latvia’s largest chemical factorydthechemical fiber plant (Zavod Khimicheskogo Volokna, ZKhV)dhad beenestablished in the city as well (Fig. 1). Each one of these enterprisesemployed well over 2000 persons during mostof the Soviet period, andthe chemical fiber plant already employed 6350 in 1965.45

By the last year of Soviet power, the total population of the city hadrisen to about 127,000, a figure that probably excludes much, if not all,of the significant military presence in the city. In order to accommo-date the post-war increase in population, major housing constructionprograms were begun between the early 1960s and 1991. As a result,the bulk of the housing stock currently present in Daugavpils is ofSoviet origin. The ethnic composition of the city was also influencedby the post-war migration flows from the other Soviet republics.

Material

With a view toward shedding light on urban development andhousing construction under central planning, we explore the docu-ment entries indicating that new living quarters were ready andcould be allocated to (employees of) sponsoring organizations andenterprises across the full spectrum of priority categories as awardedby state plans. The archival materials used for this purpose are kept atthe Daugavpils regional section of the Latvian State Archive. The

the genplan, the local land use and zoning document that was to guide the allocation

note 19), 473.dialog/statfile1.asp?xu¼&yp¼&lang¼1> (accessed 13 February 2006).tress in Gr�ıva. About 14,000 men, women and children were kept there before beingHistory of Latvia: the 20th Century, Riga, 2006, 279. Else, G. Swain, Between Stalin andon war-time Daugavpils and the very beginnings of Stalinist rule there.iety, New York, 1979., 992 [fonda lieta]; [fund/category/volumes] 57.1.14. A 1973 archive document from

veals that there would have been an additional large enterprise with a staff of overthe industrial organization and ministry that it was subordinated to, meaning that itarh�ıvs, 34.4.56: 17). However, given that no one in Daugavpils seems to have evenor the other years, as well as that the particular mailbox numbers never existednvinced that the enterprise in question was located elsewhere, perhaps in Riga or in

Table 1Production of housing space in the Latvian SSR, 1956–1987 (thousands of square meters of total floor space, yearly average by four-year periods). Source: calculated fromLatvijas PSR Centr�al�a Statistikas P�arvalde, Latvijas PSR Tautas Saimniec�ıba – Statistikas Gadagr�amata ’87 (R�ıga, 1988): 254; Narodnoye khozyaystvo SSSR, various years.

Period Total (yearly average) Built by state sector Built by cooperatives Privately built Built by kolkhoz Population at end of period (thousands)

1956–1960 572.8 370.4 – 202.4 – 21151961–1965 729.4 539 29.8 145.2 45.2 22541966–1970 878.8 723.6 83.2 90.6 64.6 23421971–1975 1108.6 872.2 82.8 124.4 112 24621976–1980 1069.4 842.4 80.8 117.4 109.6 25251981–1984 1104.5 849.7 110.5 105.5 149.3 25881985–1987 1271.3 941.7 136 173 156.7 2649

M. Gentile, O. Sjoberg / Journal of Historical Geography 36 (2010) 453–465 459

language of most Soviet archive documents kept in Daugavpils isRussian, with the use of Latvian having been more exceptional.Documents in Latvian appear sporadically and increasingly amidstthe materials from the last two years of Soviet power (1990 and 1991).

The use of Soviet archival materials inevitably involves bothgeneral and case-specific problems, with real consequences for theclassification and systematization strategies implemented in orderto manage the material, as well as for the subsequent analyticalstages. The main point is that the archival materials were notdesigned to be used by scholars at some future point in time. Thegeneral problems that are visible have to do with the overall reli-ability of the materials in light of the socio-political and economiccontext within which they were created. The most importantgeneral issues concern the overall quality of the materials,46 thereliability of the information that they contain,47 and the poorcomparability of the documents produced by different organiza-tions during the same period or within the same unit at differenttimes. The implication is that the Soviet archive sources tend tooffer fragmentary information that can be quite tricky to interpret.

The issue of reliability must be subject to scrutiny based on thenature of the information that is studied. Following several roundsof archive work, our main impression in this regard is that omis-sions were more common than outright falsification, at least withregard to the akty (see below) and to other documents concerningconstruction and land use issues. For example, during the course ofresearch, the authors encountered various ‘citizen statements’(zayavleniya grazhdan) from the early 1950s directed toward thecity council to request that the city council kindly seize (confiscate)part of their property because ‘we don’t need that much land..’48

The main omission here concerns the entire process that led thecitizens to feel the need to compose such seemingly absurd state-ments at a time of acute food shortages. The focus here should beon (a) the atmosphere of the late-Stalin USSR, with its deportationsand historical proximity to the great terror of the late-1930s (whichdid not directly concern then-independent Latvia) and the multiplemass deportations of the 1940s; (b) the tax burden on privatelyused land and the 600 m2 (six sotki) ceiling; and, last but not least,(c) the impact of ideological warfare against ‘bourgeois’ behavior,a policy clearly connected with (a). Nevertheless, the zayavleniyawere probably voluntary, were certainly real, and most likelyresulted in ‘positive’ action by the city executive committee. Whatthis means is that documents referring to land use transactions

46 The actual physical condition of the documents, the documents’ degree of coverage ofby the state and individual organizations’ archivists, the latter being those who submitt

47 That is, whether or not the information might have been intentionally falsified oroutright falsification.

48 Daugavpils zon�alais valsts arh�ıvs, 202.1.73.49 An akt was also created on the occasion of the construction of piping systems, power

with new buildings.50 Szelenyi, Urban Inequalities under State Socialism (note 7); R. Wießner, Urban dev

GeoJournal 49, 1 (1999) 43–51; M. Gentile and T. Tammaru, Ethnicity and housing in Us51 There is no archival information in Latvia about the closed-off militarized zones of th

able to find out where.

were probably truthful and relatively straightforward in terms oftheir material content and consequences. However, understandingthe structures and context underlying them is an entirely differentintellectual exercise that requires the use of theory and archive ina mutually enriching dialogue. This also provides the rationale forusing the ‘landscapes of priority’ approach, which highlights thedifferential power of the economic agents concerned.

Using a loose translation of an otherwise rather bureaucraticconcept, this paper locates its principal sources of archival infor-mation in the ‘documents concerning the finalization of theconstruction of housing and other civilian objects’ (akty priemki vekspluatatsiyu zakonchennykh stroitel’stvom ob’yektov zhilishchno-grazhdanskogo stroitel’stva, here referred to as akty). This is paper-work that was compiled on the occasion of the (purely formal)‘acceptance’ of a new building by the city architect bureau, whichsignified that it was ready for use. It implies that the apartmentswere ready for allocation or that the hospital was prepared to acceptits first patients.49 Total renovation projects also required an akt, butthose are excluded from this study unless they resulted in a func-tional conversion (for example, from industrial to residential).However, the ratio of renovation projects to new constructionappears to be very small, which is consistent with the establishedassumption that quantitative increases in the supply of indoor spacetook precedence over qualitative improvements to existing stock.50

Although the akty varied in terms of time and content, there wasgenerally a core of minimum information about the particularobjects that they covered, including data on location, size andfunction. The akty were supposed to be accompanied by a fewattachments describing the buildings in greater detail. However, thiswas a rule with exceptions, and in some cases, the level of infor-mation was kept to a bare minimum, especially when the object wasbuilt under the auspices of the military apparatus. Therefore, theakty are used as the source for the location, size and function of thebuildings constructed during the Soviet period in Daugavpilsoutside of the closed-off military enclave that dominated thenorthwestern sector of the city and that was subject to a decidedlydifferent legal procedure with regard to construction.51 During partof the 1950s and the entirety of the 1960s, the akty were accompa-nied by a yearly document that systematized the minimum infor-mation required for this study. This practice stopped byaround 1970,meaning that each individual akt (in over half of the total number ofcases) had to be studied for all of the subsequent years.

specific issues in terms of both time and space, the accuracy of the work carried outed the materials to the state archive.distorteddfor example, by purposely making use of crucial omissions rather than

lines and other forms of vital urban infrastructure. However, this article only deals

elopment in East Germany – specific features of urban transformation processes,t’-Kamenogorsk, Kazakhstan, Urban Studies 43, 10 (2006) 1757–1778.e Latvian cities. Such materials might exist in Russia, but the authors have not been

Fig. 1. Map of Daugavpils and of its main industrial enterprises.

M. Gentile, O. Sjoberg / Journal of Historical Geography 36 (2010) 453–465460

All in all, the akty for buildings, the handing over of which wassubject to approval of the City Executive Committee and the CityArchitect Bureau, usually indicate the year of construction, the addressof the building, the name of the organization under the auspices ofwhich it was built (i.e., the name of the object’s zakazchik), the totalfloor space of the building (forobjects constructed before 1972) and theexact function of the building (residential, commercial, hospitals,childcare facilities, etc.). In the case of residential buildings, the numberof apartments, or places in the case of hostel-type accommodation(obshchezhitie), is also typicallydbut not invariablydincluded.

On a less systematic basis, this article also makes use of some‘protocols and resolutions from the meetings of the trade-unioncommittees, with attachments’ (protokoly i postanovleniya zasedaniiprofkoma i materialy k nim) from select industrial enterprises, as well asconsidering some documents concerning the allocation of apartmentscontained in the ‘protocols of the meetings of the executive committeeof the Daugavpils city soviet’ (protokoly zasedanii ispolkoma Dau-gavpilsskogo gorsoveta). Although these documents contain informa-tion of a fragmentary character, they do provide qualitative insightsthat complement the more ‘static’ data obtained from the akty.52

Housing construction in the mid-sized industrial town

According to the archive data, 902 civilian residential objects wereconstructed between 1948 and 1991, each with its own akt. They

52 More information on the materials and methods used in this article is available as53 Daugavpils zon�alais valsts arh�ıvs, 992 [fonda lieta].

were allocated across uses and zakazchiki in a fashion that can bedescribed as neither equitable nor random. The question is ratheron what grounds the allocation of land was made and who madethe decision to build on that land. Before we can examine questionssuch as these, answers to which are critical if we are interested inthe allocation of housing as it became available, we need to knowwhat the distribution looked like. This is the issue that the empir-ical part of this paper addresses.

In the aftermath of WWII, Daugavpils faced the triple challengeof post-war reconstruction, the nationalization of private assets,and the transition of control from an authoritarian nationalist late-1930s regime to a late Soviet-Stalinist one. This triple transition hadimplications for the development of the supply of housing inDaugavpils during the immediate post-war period. First of all,reconstruction targeted ‘productive’ functions at the expense of‘non-productive’ ones, and within the productive sector, it may besurmised that the high-priority activities took precedence over thelow-priority ones. In fact, the Lokomotiv factory, almost fullydestroyed by retreating Nazi troops during the war, employed 719workers as early as 1945 and already employed 1667 in 1950.53

Secondly, nationalization meant that a great deal of effort had to beshifted from construction to confiscation and redistribution; inmany cases, this process was ‘facilitated’ by several rounds of crueldeportations. Thirdly, the shift to Stalinist totalitarianism meantthat the Soviet housing construction paradigm that was prevalent

supplementary materials at doi:10.1016/j.jhg.2010.01.001.

Table 2Private and state housing construction in Daugavpils, 1945–1950. Source: Dau-gavpils zon�alais valsts arh�ıvs, 907.1.1.

Year Landlordtype

Number ofbuildings

Total surfacearea

Average dwellingsize (m2)

1945 State 1 307 n.a.Private 0 0 –

1946 State 10 3160 n.a.Private 10 615 61.5

1947 State 21 8331 n.a.Private 69 3591 52

1948 State 21 8296 n.a.Private 63 2205 35

1949a State 10 4278 n.a.Private 37 1337 36.1

1950 State 10 3417 n.a.Private 55 2768 50.3

a The year 1948 is stated in the archive document where one would haveexpected 1949; this was probably a typing mistake.

M. Gentile, O. Sjoberg / Journal of Historical Geography 36 (2010) 453–465 461

at the timedneo-classicism, with few but spacious dwellings andfaçadism54dwas imposed on the city.

Thus, the first post-war years were characterized by very limitednew housing construction. Moreover, the nationalization of theformerly private apartments that survived the war, and the prevalenceof their transformation into communal apartments, meant that thetotal supply of dwellings changed in character and went througha rapid process of qualitative decline. It is helpful to analyze the vari-ations in housing construction that are observable for this short period(1945–1950) with regard to the volume and commissioner of thehousing projects (Table 2). Unfortunately, figures regarding the exactnumber of dwellings built by the state sector are not available for thisperiod, which means that their average size cannot be calculated.

In 1945, only one new residential building of just over 300 m2

was completed within the state sector, whereas construction in theprivate sector was at a total standstill. During the following years,Daugavpils experienced an upsurge in housing construction withinboth sectors, but the additions to the housing stock resulting fromthis upward trend were rather modest in absolute terms. However,it is interesting to note that the average size of the dwellings(single-family houses) built by private persons fluctuated signifi-cantly. In 1946, the average newly built private dwelling was aslarge as 61.5 m2, which is very high by the standards of the time;equally surprisingly, the average size of dwellings built within thestate sector was not much different from the size of those of theprivate sector (Tables 2 and 3).55 It is likely that the small number ofprivate housing units built in 1946 was constructed by and for theelite, which at that time was mostly found among the ranks ofthe military. The figures for this indicator fell dramatically duringthe next few years, possibly as an effect of the ideological warfareagainst expressions of bourgeois values, which definitely wouldinclude living in a private detached house in urban surroundings.However, average size for new private dwellings recovered to about50 m2 in 1950. Unfortunately, not least of all because privatehousing as a share of the total fluctuates quite considerably acrossthese early years, the available sources do not provide any consis-tent insight into the social composition of the self-building fewduring the early years of Soviet power in Latvia.

The state sector accounted for most of the housing constructionin the Soviet Union and in Daugavpils. However, as Table 3demonstrates, the state sector’s engagement with the issue washighly irregular. Until 1956, the total number of dwellings built bythe state was modest, and, in line with the under-urbanization

54 A. Åman, Arkitektur och ideologi i stalintidens Osteuropa. Ur det kalla krigets historia,55 Sosnovy, The Soviet housing situation today (note 15), tells us that the average per ca

Khrushchevian wave of mass housing constructiondvaried from 3.76 in Frunze (Bishkemajority and thus stands in stark contrast to the size of state and private sector dwellingsprivate building activity, contemporary evidence from elsewhere in the Soviet Union inorganizations with extensive material means and financial resources were the only onVsemernoe razvitie zhilishchnogo stroitel’stva – vazhneyshaya obshchenarodnaya zadacnational task], Planovoe chozyaystvo 4 (1958) 23–33.

56 Murray and Szelenyi, The city in the transition to socialism (note 20).57 This is a tendency that was also noted in a national-level study on neighboring Es

Estonia, Urban Geography 22, 6 (2001) 584–604.58 Grayish-white bricks were most commonplace in the Baltics. Other constructions m59 The classification of the organizations involved in housing construction is largely base

hierarchic terms) and the character of their main produce, i.e., defence and light or heaorganizations within the Soviet command economy. The public services category include1979 (Daugavpils zon�alais valsts arh�ıvs, 626.4.56: 14). The republic-level (i.e., Riga-contwhich were rather large (in 1979, the dairy combine employed over 1100 and the meat-pthe Daugava combine); and the production of construction materials destined for hourepublic- and union-republic-level enterprises within heavy industry included the aforcontrol for long periods, but with a mostly regional market for its produce), as well as temployees in 1979) (Daugavpils zon�alais valsts arh�ıvs, 626.4.56: 13). The heavy induLokomotiv, Zavod Privodnykh Tsepey (ZPTs) and the planned hydroelectric power-generkey industrial enterprises.

thesis,56 the growth of industrial employment and of the urbanpopulation proceeded at a much faster pace than that of thehousing supply.57

The year 1957 marked the beginning of the era of mass housingconstruction. The total number of self-contained dwellings builtbetween 1957 and 1959 was more than six times greater than whathad been achieved during the previous three years. In terms of totalsurface area, the increase was only fourfold, suggesting a substantialdrop in the average size of the dwellings (from 72 to 46 m2dthelatter of which, it should be noted, is higher than in the late-1940s).The decrease in average apartment size continued into the early1960s, when it reached its (Soviet) historical minimum of 40.5 m2

and was subsequently replaced by a slow but constant increase insize. As average size decreased, so too did the overall quality of thedwellings in terms of construction materials and finishing. However,the subsequent size increases were not accompanied by commen-surate qualitative improvements. In fact, by 1974–1976, the averagesize had risen back to about 46.5 m2; meanwhile the traditionalKhrushchevian grayish-white bricks58 had been replaced withprefabricated concrete panels sometime in the late-1960s.

The city-wide figures conceal some interesting, if not particu-larly strong, differences between the size parameters of thedwellings built by organizations enjoying different levels of status(Table 3); the 35 different economic organizations found in thematerial represent the full administrative hierarchy, from all-unionto union-republic and republic to local (or city soviet) control.59 As

Stockholm, 1987.pita floor space in select major cities of the Soviet Union in 1956dthat is, before thek) to 5.78 m2 in Odessa. Cramped living space was decidedly the fate of the greatbuilt in Daugavpils during the first few years immediately following the war. As for

dicates that workers (industrial labor, civil servants) employed by enterprises andes with any realistic possibility of constructing private housing. See A. Nikolaev,ha [All-encompassing development of housing construction – the most important

tonia; see T. Tammaru, The Soviet Union as a deviant case? Underurbanization in

aterials, often of inferior quality, were used in other parts of the Soviet Union.d on their level of administrative subordination (i.e., their distance from Moscow invy industry. The rationale is that this subdivision reflects the overall status of the

s, among others, the Municipal Service Combine, which had over 1500 employees inrolled) light industry sector includes various food processing enterprises, some ofrocessing plant over 1150); some parts of the footwear industry (780 employees insing (over 700 employees) (Daugavpils zon�alais valsts arh�ıvs, 626.4.56: 13). The

ementioned Chemical Fiber Plant and Elektroinstrument (formally under Moscowhe Baltic Railways (thousands of employees) and the region’s energy network (700strial sector under Moscow’s direct control (union-level subordination) includes

ation facility (1980s only). Broadly speaking, the two latter groups include the city’s

Table 3State housing construction in Daugavpils by average dwelling size and housing zakazchik or sphere of operation thereof (1945–1971 and 1974–1976). Sources: Daugavpilszon�alais valsts arh�ıvs, 907.1.1–10, 16, 18, 20, 23, 26, 30, 34, 38, 44, 50, 57, 64, 71, 84, 87, 91, 127, 128, 129.

Period Apartments (total)

N m2 (P

) City-wide Public services(Daugavpils)

City administration(Daugavpils)

Cooperatives Light industry(Riga)

Heavy industry and transport(Riga and Riga-Moscow)

Heavy industry(Moscow)

Military

1945–1947 191 11,798 61.77 n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a.1948–1950 257 15,991 62.22 – 64.32 – 60.76 61.73 62.78 –1951–1953 275 16,054 58.38 54.85 51.82 – 60.39 60.31 60 61.221954–1956 298 21,549 72.31 54.71 75.48 – 60.69 102.3 57.76 62.651957–1959 1810 83,145.5 45.94 46.49 43.22 – 47.16 48.77 46.78 37.71960–1962 2687 109,077 40.59 46.03 40.45 – 42.84 38.71 44.01 37.461963–1965 2040 83,090 40.73 39.57 41 36.55 41.07 41.31 41.51 –1966–1968 2557 110,902 43.37 42.89 44.16 41.07 45.16 45.72 42.08 39.511969–1971 2460 112,942 45.91 42.47 45.97 45.62 43.26 45.7 42.32 48.251974–1976 1291 59,947 46.43 n.a. 44.26a 43.67 n.a. 44.85a n.a. n.a.1948–1971 11937 530,637 44.45 44.15 43.22 41.14 46.86 46.84 45.57 45.73

a Figure based on incomplete data (selection of cases for which data are available), n.a.: data not available.

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assessed over the entire 1948–1971 period, the dwellings built bythe military or the mainly Moscow-controlled key enterprises arelarger than average. This is entirely in keeping with what could beexpected given the weight attached both to the military-industrialcomplex and the producer goods industry.

Perhaps more surprisingly, the lowest average size (41 m2) isfound in cooperatives. This is surprising because cooperativeapartments have been widely regarded as the more prestigioussegment of the Soviet housing market.60 The reason may be thatcooperatives required private participation to cover constructioncosts, which might have resulted in affordability problems, andtherefore in smaller dwellings. Also unexpected is the fact thatdwellings built by light industry enterprises under republic-levelcontrol are substantially larger than average and marginally largerthan those built by the enterprises under Moscow control and bythe military. This is because the former type of enterprises wasresponsible for very little housing construction but quitea substantial volume of employment. This, in turn, implies that thedwellings built under the auspices of enterprises within locally (i.e.,Daugavpils) controlled public services or Riga-level light industrymay have been earmarked for the managers and key industrialworkers of those entities, leaving the rest of their employees totheir own resources. Indeed, this could quite possibly be a case offunds’ having been siphoned off by officials for private use.61 To putit differently, quantity matters.

The latter contention leads us tothe next step in this analysis,wherewe scrutinize the total volume of state and cooperative housingconstruction between 1951, the first year for which we have foundcomplete data, and 1991, the year the Soviet Union was dissolved.Again, the zakazchiki provide some clues as to the issues considered inmaking decisions on who had access to what in terms of housing.Fig. 2a, b shows the total volume of housing construction and, within it,the share borne by different types of organizations. Unfortunately,insufficiencies and discontinuities in the archival materials keep thesefigures from being compared with precision to those concerningemployment at the enterprise level. The relative ease with which

60 As argued, e.g., Bater, The Soviet City (note 2), 194; Andrusz, Housing and Urban Develofor an example referring to Latvia, see Sigurd Grava, The urban heritage of the Soviet regproperties of housing and the housing allocation system, please refer to M. Alexeev, Mark(1988) 414–420.

61 We would like to thank one of the anonymous referees for pointing this out to us.62 The name given to the rapid expansion of housing made a political priority unde

Urbanization and new housing construction in the Soviet Union (note 15).63 Expressed in terms of the standard model series numbers of the Soviet housing cons

(i.e., not a standard design, but not necessarily one implying a substantial difference fro64 Daugavpils zon�alais vasts arh�ıvs, 202.1.74: 48.

employees of different organizations could access housing built by or atthe behest of their employers cannot therefore be established.

However, there are sufficient fragments of information onemployment to allow us to identify a few broad tendencies. Fig. 2aeloquently reveals the extent of the housing construction boomthat took place starting in the late-1950s as a result of the‘Khrushchevka revolution’.62 The next two decades were charac-terized by a relatively stable output of new apartments, witha temporary dent in the mid-1970s, followed by a sustainedincrease in the 1980s. However, the relatively stable productionduring the 1960s and early 1970s conceals the moderate but steadyincreases that took place during this period in the size of theaverage dwelling (Table 3) and the number of rooms; these trendscontinued until the very end of the Soviet period. In total, 31,775new apartments were built in Daugavpils between 1945 and 1991,of which 3356 (10.6%) were built by cooperatives. Only 56.5% werebuilt by organizations that included housing provision among theirprimary responsibilities (i.e., the city administration and thecooperatives). To this one should add about 4400 private dwellingsand an indefinite number of apartments built within the closed-offterritory of Cietoksnis (the fortress on the right bank of theDaugava). Based on field observations of the number of entrances tothe buildings compared to the standard for these building series,63

that probably amounts to about 500–600 apartments.Status by zakazchik administrative branch was as follows

(Fig. 2b). In the early 1950s, excluding private sector production,almost half of the little that was built for the military, and almosttwo thirds of all new dwellings were connected with the keyeconomic industries (i.e., those subordinated to the heavy indus-trial and usually all-union ministries, or at least the union-republiclevel, and of course, the military). The city administration onlycommissioned about one quarter, and a random test of the gor-ispolkom archival materials suggests that the gorispolkom housingallocation procedure, in this case with regard to the nationalizedstock, favored the Soviet top management strongly and unabash-edly.64 Within a single gorispolkom ‘decision’ document, dated 5

pment in the USSR (note 15); French, Plans, Pragmatism and People (note 2), 136–137;ime, Journal of the American Planning Association 59, 1 (1993) 9–31. As to the marketets vs. rationing: the case of Soviet housing, Review of Economics and Statistics 70, 3

r Khruchshev and possible by new construction techniques. See further Herman,

truction industry: three 103s, two 467s, three Khrushchevki and one ‘special project’m the standard designs).

Fig. 2. a: Number of new dwellings built in Daugavpils (1951–1991) by housing zakazchik, or sphere of operation thereof, and aggregated into three-year periods (except 1990–1991). b: Share of new dwellings built in Daugavpils (1951–1991) by housing zakazchik, or sphere of operation thereof, and aggregated into three-year periods (except 1990–1991).Sources: Daugavpils zon�alais valsts arh�ıvs, 907.1.2–10, 16, 18, 20, 23, 26, 30, 34, 38, 44, 50, 57, 64, 71, 84, 87, 91, 93, 99, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 134, n.a., n.a., n.a., n.a., 161, 165, 166,180–185, 187, 188, 192 (copies of the volumes for which the exact number is unknown are available from the authors upon request). Note: The share of private dwellings builtbetween 1951 and 1953 is not known and, therefore, it does not appear in the figures relating to this period.

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M. Gentile, O. Sjoberg / Journal of Historical Geography 36 (2010) 453–465464

March 1953 (incidentally the same day Stalin died), four verydifferent standards of allocation were applied. The chairman of theBol’shevik artel’ (a crafts cooperative) and his family of threereceived three rooms of a suspiciously unspecified size ascompensation for their eviction from a dwelling in a building thatwas to be converted into a police station. An employee of the police,who had to be re-housed from the same building together with hisfamily of five, received two rooms at a total of 30 m2. And in themeantime, an employee of the tramway system received one roomof 12 m2 for his family of threedwhich was still not bad consid-ering that another ‘citizen’ (profession not specified) receiveda single 25 square meter room for his family of seven in ‘exchange’for his previous 12.8 (!) square meter residence, which was given tothe two-person household that occupied the same larger roombefore the exchange. The archive documents do not reveal theextent of the coercion involved in the enforcement of suchexchanges, but it is difficult to imagine a truly voluntary transactionof this kind on behalf of the losing household.

In the mid-1950s, de-stalinization was paralleled by a decreasein the share of new housing destined for the military. Meanwhile,the expansion of the key industrial enterprises only led to a feeblehousing effort on their behalf. With a share of one third of thelimited new housing supply, these enterprises were at best able tocater to the management and elite cadres of their organizations. Inthis sense, their behavior must have been similar to that of the low-priority enterprises, the difference being in the ratio between thevolume of construction and the workforce size.

The Khrushchevka revolution of the late-1950s and early 1960simplied increased city administration involvement and decreasedenterprise participation within a context of large-scale housingproduction. The trend then reversed until the early 1980s, when thehousing cooperatives start enjoying increased popularity, thusrelieving some pressure off of both enterprises and city adminis-tration through the partial transfer of housing provision costs tohousehold budgets. The cooperative movement had also experi-enced a more limited first wave during the mid- and late-1960s. Forindustrial enterprises, cooperative housing was convenient becauseit reduced the costs of employee housing and, in particular, spreadthe payment of those costs out over a longer period of timedforexample, in the form of mortgage payment contributions. Until theearly 1980s, the Druzhba (Friendship) cooperative was the only onein the city. Later on, a new cooperative (Pervomaika, or 1 May) splitoff from Druzhba,65 and a new but very small one was establishedby workers at Lokomotiv.

From the late-1960s until about 1980, the new housing share ofthe Riga and Riga-Moscow heavy industrial enterprises increasedsteadily. This is almost entirely the result of the delayed action ofthe chemical fiber plant, established in 1958. At the same time, andsomewhat surprisingly, enterprises controlled from Moscow andbelonging to the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of theAutomobile and Tractor Industry seem to have been rather inactive

65 Druzhba cooperative, Daugavpils, personal communication, January 2006.66 As described by Domanski, Industrial Control over the Socialist Town (note 24), 88–967 At a trade-union meeting in 1970, in fact, one member regretted the passivity of the

contrast to the case of the ZKhV, which was supported by ‘the whole city’ from the ver68 Daugavpils zon�alais vasts arh�ıvs, 853.1.298.69 At the all-Union level, the share of private housing construction declined from 33.6%

always lower in urban areas, both within Latvia and across the Soviet Union (see Andru70 Gxertrude Kudinxa, former Chief Architect of the city of Daugavpils, personal commun71 See Andrusz, A note on the financing of housing in the Soviet Union (note 15).72 On the former, see e.g., K. Gerasimova, The Soviet communal apartment, in: J. Smith

Historica, Vol. 62, Helsinki, 1999, 107–131; K. Gerasimova, Privacy in the Soviet communain the Eastern Bloc, Oxford, 2002, 207–230; I. Utekhin, Filling dwelling place with history:(Eds), Composing Urban History and the Constitution of Civic Identities, Washington, DC,architecture and Soviet imagination, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Society 11, 1 (20

during this period. This is especially surprising because this groupof companies was a high-priority set that included Lokomotiv andZPTs. However, this may also mean that these enterprises did notreally need to build new dwellings. Instead, if we permit ourselvesto draw parallels to the situation in Poland,66 we might suggest thatthey could have relied on city administration apartments that wereearmarked for them either directly (via an enterprise quota) orindirectly (via special housing waiting lists for prioritized groupssuch as ‘young specialists’). Even so, the passivity of ZPTs withrespect to housing was discussed at the enterprise’s trade-unionmeetings,67 and the chemical fiber plant emerged as a positivemodel of cooperation between the city administration and theenterprise.68

Beginning approximately in 1980, however, the Moscow-controlled sector accounted for an increasing share of the output ofnew housing, mostly because of the investments made by Loko-motiv. Also, in the 1980s a hydroelectric power plant that wasplanned but never built was preceded by a housing developmentthat was intended to host its employees (located in the eastern partof the city, in Rug‘ elxi). This highly unusual precedence of housingover production underscores the envisaged level of priority of thisproject.

The private sector, for its part, never constructed more than roughly20% of all dwellings erected between 1951 and 1991, with 1963–1965being the peak years (this is quite unlike in the case of the Latvian SSRtaken as a whole, where privately built dwellings represented 35.3% ofall housing construction in the 1956–1960 period, see Table 1).69

Starting in the mid-1960s, in fact, that figure’s share of the total declinedsteadily. By the early 1980s, it was below 10%, and the share decreasedfurther after that. This decline can be assumed to have been, at least inpart, a result of the total prohibition of private housing constructionthat was enacted by the Daugavpils municipal authorities in 1983, butwhich obviously did not cover the whole territory of the city.70 Thissudden change in municipal housing policy was probably precipitatedby the difficulties that the gorispolkom encountered during the devel-opment of a new housingestate in the Jaunb�uve district during the late-1970s and early 1980s. Then, and unlike during earlier years, whenmost new housing estates were established on greenfield sites, thegorispolkom was forced to clear numerous privately built dwellings(some of which were no more than a few years), while it was legallyobliged to resettle their inhabitants by providing themwith apartmentsfrom the municipal housing fund. The 1983 prohibition on privatehousing construction stands in stark contrast with the union-widepolicy priorities that were formulated a few years later and according towhich private housing construction was to be encouraged.71

Finally, a few lines should be devoted to what are probably theleast attractive segments of the Soviet housing (non-)market:the communal apartments and the obshchezhitia.72 The former, thekommunalki, typically belong to the pre-war housing stock that wassubsequently nationalized. Although these buildings were oftencentrally located, the exact extent to which people were reduced to

1.ZPTs with regard to housing matters and referred to the ZPTs as ‘standing alone’, iny beginning (Daugavpils zon�alais valsts arh�ıvs, 853.1.298: 19–20).

during the 1956–1960 period to 13.6% during the 1971–1975 period. However, it wassz, Housing and Urban Development in the USSR (note 15), 101).ication, December 2005.

(Ed.), Beyond the Limits: the Concept of Space in Russian History and Culture, Studial apartment, in: D. Crowley and S.E. Reid (Eds), Socialist Spaces: Sites of Everyday Lifecommunal apartments in St. Petersburg, in: J.J. Czaplicka, B.A. Ruble and L. Crabtree

2003, 86–109. On the communal hostels, C. Humphrey, Ideology in infrastructure:05) 39–58.

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living in the kommunalki is unknown. This is so because this housingdoes not turn up in the archival material, except under the ratherunusual circumstances in which non-residential buildings wereconverted to residential use during the immediate post-war years. Asfor the other patently unattractive category, the Soviet-eraobshchezhitia, these have at times been called ‘hotels’ but are moresuitably considered hostel-type accommodations. Assuming that thefacilities were not used at a level greater than their capacitydanassumption whose truth is far from assuredd8400 obshchezhitiaplaces were created in Daugavpils, of which 2659 were the respon-sibility of the city administration, 661 of republic-level light indus-trial enterprises, 2845 of Riga and Riga-Moscow heavy industrialenterprises and 2235 of enterprises fully controlled from Moscow.Over 2000 places were created by the ZKhV alone, reflecting its earlyneed to find an efficient housing solution for its growing number ofworkers. This means that at least one third of the enterprise’semployees were expected to live in shared dwellings. In addition, thecity hosted an (unknown) number of obshchezhitia places in non-traditional premises, such as converted railway cars, but they are notcovered by the akty because they did not involve the construction ofnew buildings. The obshchezhitie was a nearly compulsory step if onehoped to be assigned an apartment in the future, and it was thetypical long-term housing solution for single-person households anda short or medium-term solution for households of two (or more)persons.

Concluding discussion

Throughout much of the Soviet period, access to housing wasa major consideration, both for individual citizens and foremployers intent on increasing their number of employees. Withthe expansion of industry, the Soviet city experienced a well-documented widening of the gap between the growth of employ-ment and the growth of the housing supply, which exacerbated analready alarming housing shortage.73 A mid-size industrial townsuch as Daugavpils was no exception in this regard.

It is safe to infer that during the immediate post-war years, forwhich data is not complete, housing construction remained limiteddastate of affairs that can be said to characterize the entire Stalinistperiod. By virtue of these limitations on volume, the little new housingthat was ‘released onto the market’ appears to have been allocated ona very selective basis. Although only highly fragmentary informationexists on the social standing of those privileged enough to receivenewly constructed quarters, the evidence indicates that members ofthe new Soviet elite were over-represented amongst those who werefirst in line for housing. The extent to which others were reduced toaccepting communal and shared living quarters cannot be gauged infull, but again, existing evidence suggests that this was a rather morecommon route onto the Soviet-era housing market, with privatesingle-family houses as another (less common) option.

As society shifted gears and the first wave of mass housingconstruction gathered speed, the city administration emerged as animportant actor. However, simply because the extensive Khrush-chevka-based housing program was carried out under the auspices ofthe gorispolkom, we have no firm information on who benefited from

73 Recent work that has been able to verify this contention through access to previouSoviet Union as a deviant case? (note 57); D. Filtzer, Standard of Living versus Quality of LReconstruction, PERSA Working Paper 44, Warwick, 2005, at <http://www.warwick.ac.u

74 Domanski, Industrial Control over the Socialist Town (note 24).75 E.g., Domanski Industrial Control over the Socialist Town (note 24); Gentile and Sjobe

this construction boom. It has been suggested in the literature thatenterprises at times were able ‘to capture’ the municipal housing stockafter it was built.74 If this is so, in Daugavpils this must have happenedin more subtle ways than in Domanski’s Upper Silesian casedforexample, via the adjustment or manipulation of the city admin-istration’s housing queues to the needs of the enterprise. Moreresearch is necessary in this regard. Even so, evidence clearly indicatesthat employers within manufacturing and other industries did providehousing for their employees so as to alleviate housing shortages andthat high-priority enterprises contributed to the overall housing stockto a greater extent than did their low-priority counterparts. In thatsense, the landscape of priority approach has proved to be a useful toolfor understanding the processes at work.

Later, when the most pressing housing needs had been satisfied,the expansion of projects underwritten by the city administrationand cooperatives took place alongside those of established indus-trial employers. The pattern to emerge is one that is in line with thecontention that during the Soviet period housing was an importantfringe benefit, one that could be used to lure and retain labor attimes when labor was perceived to be in short supply. Here, higherpriority implied greater scope for action and high-priority enter-prises come across as more likely to make use of this strategy.However, although higher priority is useful in securing theresources needed to turn such a strategy into a feasible option, notall enterprises that presumably could draw on this to their advan-tage did in fact do so (the automobile component factory, ZPTs,being a case in point). In short, therefore, actions differ acrossenterprises and to shed light on how initiatives and strategies wereplayed out will require the collection of additional information.

In summary, what our research has shown is that the develop-ment of the Soviet housing supply, exemplified by the case of theLatvian city of Daugavpils, has been clearly marked by the prioritystatus of the city’s industrial magnates. Given that some previouswork suggests a ‘geographical qualitative turn’ in housingconstruction and allocation,75 implying that enterprises in priorityindustries could in effect control the allocation and location ofhousing projects, there is scope for more research aiming to shedlight on the spatial characteristics of the development of the statehousing supply.

Acknowledgements

Michael Gentile thanks the Wallander-Hedelius Research Founda-tion of the Svenska Handelsbanken for general financial support forthis research in the form of a Wallander scholarship. The authorsalso thank Ilga Peipinxa for her excellent help at the archive inDaugavpils, Arvils Pundurs for providing access to the General Plandocuments from the Soviet period for Daugavpils, and GxertrudeKudinxa for sharing her knowledge and experience of urban plan-ning during the Soviet period.

Supplementary data

Supplementary data associated with this article can be found in theonline version at doi:10.1016/j.jhg.2010.01.001.

sly inaccessible material that has long been known to exist include Tammaru, Theife: Struggling with the Urban Environment in Russia During the Early Years of Postwark/go/persa> (accessed 20 February 2006).

rg, Intra-urban landscapes of priority (note 31).