A quiet rural town until World War I Zaporizhzhia exploded into a major industrial centre in
the 1920s following construction of the Dnipro Hydroelectric Station. This book looks at a
later period in the history of what is now one of the largest cities in Ukraine the 1950s to
1980s when the focus in Soviet policy shifted from industrialisation to welfare and from
production to consumption. In this respect Zaporizhzhia may be seen as 'a local model of the
birth of a modern society' - Soviet consumer society. Historian Pavlo Kravchuk and historian
and graphic designer Mykhailo Mordovskoi skilfully combine text and images to show how this
shift played out in urban planning architecture and more importantly the lives of ordinary
Soviet citizens. Prefabricated construction techniques enabled the rapid erection of districts
of mass housing giving ordinary people a small apartment of their own for the first time. With
this came a need for consumer goods. At the same time sitting in their new kitchens people
gained a modicum of privacy and a space in which to meet and discuss away from the controlling
eye of the state. The new Soviet apartment was 'a place of leisure' but also of dissidence -
the beginning of the end of the regime.
