Pilipenko, Igor V. (2023). The Main Stages of the Evolution of Housing Construction in the USSR in the 1920s – 1980s (Part III). Ekonomika i Upravlenie: Problemy, Resheniya (Economy and Governance: Problems, Solutions) (ISSN 2308-927X), March, Vol. 3, No. 3, pp. 40–59. (in Russian).

Abstract

According to the Rosstat, around six seventh of the population of the Russian Federation currently keep on living in houses built from 1920 to 1995. Nevertheless, such issues as macro-level housing construction trends in the USSR and the structure of housing construction by source of financing have often been overlooked in the contemporary Russian economic literature. In this article, we identify five stages of the development of housing construction in the USSR during the period from 1918 to 1990. Our analysis rests upon indicators on housing completions by five-year plan and the evolution of the legislation for the housing sector. In Part I of the article, we present our review of approaches to periodisation of housing construction in the USSR from the standpoint of different research disciplines. It contains also our analysis of the first stage from 1918 to 1928 based on a broad range of sources. Part II of the article examines the results of the second stage (from 1929 to 1941) and the third stage (from 1941 to 1955), whereas Part III of the article studies the evolution of housing construction during the fourth stage (from 1956 to 1975) and the fifth stage (from 1976 to 1990). Particular attention is paid to individual housing construction, housing construction cooperatives and housing construction in rural areas as factors that influenced substantially the overall dynamics of housing construction during most of the time of the USSR’s existence.