''Trialling… and erring'': a historical overview of housing in Petrograd, Leningrad, and Saint Petersburg

Abstract

This article provides a historical overview of housing in Saint Petersburg from the late Tsarist Empire, to the Soviet Union, and the successor Russian Federation. It is divided into five parts: an introduction, three sections that treat the distinct housing models enacted by the three political entities which have handled the city of Petrograd, then Leningrad, and lastly, Saint Petersburg, and a conclusion. These three entities are, respectively, the Russian empire, the Soviet Union, and the Russian Federation. In this manner, the first part gives insight into Petrograd’s housing before the First World War and throughout the 1917 and 1918 Revolutions and the Russian Civil War, treating the deterioration of the housing stock. The second section looks at the housing situation in more generally the Soviet Union but also Leningrad, examining the housing policies carried out in times of Josef Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, and Mikhail Gorbachev. The third one assesses the process of housing privatisation in the Russian Federation, dissecting the reasons for its imperfect development. Finally, the conclusion suggests that none of the tree housing models mentioned above has been able to successfully cope with the housing shortage and points out Nikita Khrushchev as the leader who did the most to relieve the housing shortage.