State housing policies in the USSR from the first days of its existence were based on the use
of living space as a powerful and effective means to make people work for the state or to
punish them for not doing so.Transforming individual apartments into municipal and communal
ones (instead of pokomnatno-posemeinogo settling) they used housing as a means of compulsion
to labour - only those who were workers or employees of the state factories and establishments
received living space. Workers who were dismissed or independently abandoned their work place
also lost the living space occupied by them.The book is based on official decrees of the Soviet
authorities. It describes the process of transformation of flats and rooms from spheres of
private life into instruments of control of the people in the USSR. The basic patterns of
housing ownership during 1917-1941 are detailed - state vedomstvenno-state state-cooperative
and privatel-state.
