Housing and welfare organization of the proletariat in the conditions of forced modernization. Challenges and implementation (on the materials of Moscow)

Abstract

The paper analyzes the socio-political tasks that challenged the implementation of the housing organization project in the USSR in the early 1930s, and their realization on the example of the housing arrangement for Moscow workers. In the conditions of forced industrialization, the transformation in housing and life of the working class takes on the significance of the struggle for the successes of the Five-Year Plan: it was necessary to provide such living conditions for workers that would make it possible to stop the labor fluctuation at enterprises and to cultivate ideological consciousness in the working class emerging from the peasantry. The implementation of such a task confronted a number of issues: it was necessary to determine the architectural form of the housing and communal facilities, to draw the public in the actualization of the objectives set, to find material resources for realizing the project. But it was not possible to achieve any significant results due to the lack of actual interest, both from the public and from the authorities themselves. The lack of enthusiasm of the workers, focused on solving more pressing difficulties, led to the passivity of workers’ participation in the implementation of the housing reconstruction project. As a result, the authorities, not having the proper material resources that they would be ready to use to improve the living conditions of the workers, used repressive methods, solving the original task – to stop the labor force fluctuation.