The housing question has always been topical in Russia. Over the past 30 years since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russia has developed a functioning real estate and construction sector in a market economy. The tenure structure of the Russian housing stock should be analyzed in relation to the ownership structure. The contemporary tenure structure in Russia has been largely determined by the mass giveaway privatization of public (state and municipal) housing following the demise of the Soviet Union. The social housing sector in Russia is rather small and based on the non-privatized portion of Soviet-era public housing. The historical evolution of the housing regime in contemporary Russia has been determined by the legacy of the 70-year period of state socialism, a decade of socio-economic turbulence following the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the transition to a market economy, as well as the economic rebound in the 2000s.

Did the socialist experiment disrupt continuity in Russian urban housing? Based on a unique collection of urban data covering several hundred Russian cities and spanning three regimes across more than a century, this paper gives a nuanced account of continuities and discontinuities of housing in post-Soviet cities. Three main housing characteristics are analysed: urban density (persons per building and living space per capita), ownership structure and the modernisation of stock (building material and provision with amenities). Although all Russian cities underwent a number of major shocks and regime changes during the course of the 20th century, their rankings with regard to these three key housing characteristics are still significantly correlated over time, whereas living space per capita is largely uncorrelated over time. This holds true despite significant convergence processes in almost all dimensions and also when including contemporary control variables. We hypothesise that local or regional building traditions, regional differentiation in Soviet urban planning as well as Soviet land use specificities could explain differential growth across cities. Going beyond existing late-Soviet-legacy timeframes, the long-term perspective reveals that even major regime shocks did not completely erase regionally shaped patterns in housing conditions.

Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, public spaces in Moscow and in other post-socialist cities underwent dramatic changes in line with the wider adaptation to the market economy, epitomized in processes of privatization and commercialization. Most recently, however, these processes have been overshadowed by a “second generation” of post-socialist change that entails the recasting of the very conception of the public and public space. In this paper, we analyze these transformations in Moscow through a case study of the reconstruction of Gorky Park. The case study builds upon extensive empirical material collected through qualitative interviews, document and media studies, and on-site observations. It is shown that despite appealing to ideas of openness, livability and the public good, the park reconstruction in fact entails the production of socially divisive urban space that prioritizes consumerism at the cost of less-scripted and diverse public life.