Housing Search Strategies of Workers in the 1920s (case of Kharkiv)

Abstract

This article addresses the study of the housing search strategies and tactics by Kharkiv workers in the 1920s. The author investigates the problem of implementation of the housing policy of the Soviet power on everyday level, analyses the distribution practices of departmental housing, as well as problems of interaction between NEPmen and factory workers. With the help of microhistory methods and cultural history of everyday life we have discovered workers’ strategies to find accommodationBased on the texts of statements, analysis and letters of the workers to Kharkiv local authorities, it was revealed that they were co-authors of the class discourse “from below”. The workers in their appeals to the authorities actively used Soviet rhetoric and, guided by their own interests, accused or defended NEPmen. The study of the workers as the subjects of Soviet politics is a possible way for further updating of national studies on labour history.It can be stated that during the 1920s, Kharkiv workers chose the following strategies while searching for housing: obtaining a room from the enterprise, searching for free living space, evicting the NEPmen or cooperating with them. Generally, factory workers combined these strategies, tried to use them comprehensively to achieve the goal: to obtain an apartment. Employees of enterprises were not passive observers of the departmental housing distribution. They actively participated in this process, defended their rights at trade union meetings, guided by their own ideas of justice. The Bolsheviks’ social initiatives to raise the living standards of the workers in their “everyday life” led to the emergence of new, unpredictable social practices. The introduction of benefits for workers in housing and communal services led to the increased interaction between social groups that were antagonistic from the point of view of the authorities. Workers were not only the object of the government’s social policy but also the entity that, on the one hand, ensured the implementation of this policy, and on the other hand, corrected and changed it.Manuscript received 18.03.2020