Seizing the Means of Domesticity: Mass-Housing Spaces, Objects and Relationships in Soviet Everyday Life

The Soviet state created mass-housing to reshape the city and everyday life itself. This paper examines the spaces and objects of mass-housing to examine the relationship between residents, the state and objects within Soviet everyday life. Approaching the study of everyday life in the Soviet Union from the early 1920s to the late 1980s via the spaces of mass-housing can offer a tangible approach to a way of life that might otherwise seem strange or uncanny. This paper uses ethnographic analysis by drawing on scholarly sources along with five historical photographs. The mass housing spaces of the kommunalka and later khrushchyovka served as places of push and pull. The state attempted to expand the public realm while residents simultaneously tried to create privacy and individuality. Within the interior, the Red Corner and the commode were embodiments of contradictions between modernization and tradition. Despite the state’s efforts, commodity fetishism lingered at the core of everyday life. Within Soviet everyday life, mass-housing spaces and objects can be useful to illustrate the changing yet stagnant relationship between residents and the state.