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Spaces of Priority: The Geography of Soviet Housing Construction in Daugavpils, Latvia

2009; American Association of Geographers; Volume: 100; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/00045600903378994

1467-8306

Michael Gentile, Örjan Sjöberg,

Urban Planning and Governance

Abstract As a result of the absence of a land market, socialist-era cities tended to look different from their market-economy equivalents. The difference was made more pronounced by the fact that the command economy also favored industrial investment over infrastructure and housing. Yet, with an increasing appetite for additional labor, needed by production units to ensure plan fulfillment, housing became a means to recruit and retain employees. Not all employers could afford to put resources into such "nonproductive" investment, however, and the literature suggests that the notion of priorities allows for discriminating between those enterprises that enjoyed soft budget constraints, and therefore could afford to spend money on worker welfare, and those that could not. As a heuristic framework based on the economics of shortage, the priority model is compelling, but as yet it lacks empirical substantiation. Setting out to test the landscapes of priority model of urban development, this article details the developments of housing construction in Daugavpils, Latvia, during the Soviet period. Based on extensive archive and field research covering all newly constructed or converted housing projects over the period from 1951 to 1991, it yields considerable, if not unqualified, support for the model that until now has not been made subject to systematic empirical tests. Como resultado de la inexistencia de un mercado de la tierra, las ciudades de la era socialista tendían a lucir diferentes de sus equivalentes de las economías de mercado. La diferencia se hacía más pronunciada por el hecho de que la economía dirigida también privilegiaba la inversión industrial sobre la inversión en infraestructura y vivienda. Sin embargo, el creciente apetito por mano de obra adicional, requerida por las unidades de producción para asegurar el cumplimiento de los planes, convirtió la construcción de vivienda en el medio para reclutar y retener empleados. Sin embargo, no todos los empleadores se podían dar el lujo de destinar recursos para tales inversiones "improductivas," y la literatura sugiere que la noción de prioridad permite discriminar entre empresas libres de preocupaciones presupuestales, y que por tanto podían gastar dinero en el bienestar de los trabajadores, y las que no podían hacerlo. Como marco heurístico basado en la economía de la escasez, el modelo de prioridad es apremiante, pero hasta el momento carece de sustanciación empírica. Con la intención de probar los paisajes del modelo de prioridad en desarrollo urbano, este artículo detalla los desarrollos de construcción de vivienda en Daugavpils, Letonia [Latvia], durante el período soviético. Con base en amplia investigación de archivos y de campo relacionada con todos los proyectos de vivienda nueva, o convertidos, de 1951 a 1991, el estudio da apoyo considerable aunque no calificado al modelo que, hasta ahora, no había sido sometido a pruebas sistemáticas empíricas. Key Words: housinglandscapes of priorityLatviashortage economicsSoviet Union关键词: 住房景观的优先配给拉脱维亚短缺经济苏联Palabras clave: viviendapaisajes de prioridadesLetoniaeconomía de escasezUnión Soviética Acknowledgments The authors wish to thank three anonymous reviewers for their very useful comments. The authors also thank Ilga Peipiņa for her excellent help at the archive in Daugavpils, Arvils Pundurs for providing access to the Daugavpils General Plan documents from the Soviet period, and Ģertrude Kudiņa for sharing her knowledge and experience of urban planning during the Soviet period. Michael Gentile is grateful to the Wallander-Hedelius Research Foundation of Svenska Handelsbanken for its generous financial support for this research in the form of a Wallander bursary. Notes 1. However, when housing markets do not exist on the surface they tend to reemerge in the shadow economy, gradually reducing the gap between supply and demand (Morton 1984 Morton, H. W. 1984. "The contemporary Soviet city". In The contemporary Soviet city, Edited by: Morton, H. W. and Stuart, R. C. 3–24. London: Macmillan. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]; Hamilton 1993 Hamilton, E. 1993. "Social areas under state socialism: The case of Moscow". In Beyond Sovietology—Essays in politics and history, Edited by: Solomon, S. G. 192–225. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. [Google Scholar]; Borén and Gentile 2007 Borén, T. and Gentile, M. 2007. Metropolitan processes in post-communist states: An introduction. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 89(2): 95–110. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). 2. It should be noted that this must not be construed to imply an ambiguous top-down power relation or that it was transparent and orderly. As Domański (1997) Domański, B. 1997. Industrial control over the socialist town: Benevolence or exploitation?, Westport, CT: Praeger. [Google Scholar] noted, struggles could also be lateral in nature, but irrespective of whether they were horizontal or vertical they did not take place against a background of well-established rules. As such, this is very much in line with the care that several observers (e.g., Hewett 1988 Hewett, E. A. 1988. Reforming the Soviet economy, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. [Google Scholar]) have taken in distinguishing between the formal and the de facto economic system. This may, of course, allow for opportunities for local officials, and early on it was shown by Hough (1969) Hough, J. F. 1969. The Soviet prefects: The local party organs in industrial decision-making, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar] that local interests could come out on top if conflict with the center occurred. Bahry (1987) Bahry, D. 1987. Outside Moscow, New York: Columbia University Press. [Google Scholar] similarly showed that local levels of authority could wield some influence over central budgetary allocations. In the case of city planning, however, it appears that for the most part and despite efforts to increase their power during the late Soviet period, city soviets had little chance to set the agenda and the genplan (the main urban master plan) was often overruled (French 1995 French, R. A. 1995. Plans, pragmatism and people, London: UCL Press. [Google Scholar]). Slider (1986) Slider, D. 1986. More power to the soviets? Reform and local government in the Soviet Union. British Journal of Political Science, 16(4): 495–511. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar] thus suggested that "the chief emphasis of Soviet legislation on urban administration has been to expand the rights and responsibilities of city government in planning and co-ordinating economic activities within their territory. Very little has been done, however, to enhance the power of the city soviets so that they might actually carry out these new responsibilities. The same problems that historically have plagued local soviets continue to undermine their capabilities," the main difficulty being their inability to set anything against the actions of all-union and republic-level ministries. As French (1995 French, R. A. 1995. Plans, pragmatism and people, London: UCL Press. [Google Scholar], 67) put it, "In a conflict of interest it was 'no contest."' One of the few attempts to put numbers on these matters (Morton 1984 Morton, H. W. 1984. "The contemporary Soviet city". In The contemporary Soviet city, Edited by: Morton, H. W. and Stuart, R. C. 3–24. London: Macmillan. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) indicated that ministries by the mid-1970s financed as much as 70 percent of all housing construction and almost as great a share (or 65 percent) of all new kindergartens and day care centers. However, the share of municipal housing was much higher in larger cities and particularly in Moscow (Hamilton 1993 Hamilton, E. 1993. "Social areas under state socialism: The case of Moscow". In Beyond Sovietology—Essays in politics and history, Edited by: Solomon, S. G. 192–225. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. [Google Scholar]). 3. The propiska system was the main way by which the Soviet authorities tried to control the movement of population inside the USSR. It was based on the citizens being issued an internal passport to which a propiska was attached. In practice this mandatory permit stated and regulated their legal place of residence. It was easier to obtain a propiska for living in some cities, whereas others (Moscow, Leningrad, most republic capitals, and many other large or medium-sized cities) restricted spontaneous migration to a bare minimum. Until the 1970s, kolkhoz workers were not issued internal passports, thereby excluding them from urban life. In practice, as Zaslavsky (1982) Zaslavsky, V. 1982. The Neo-stalinist state: Class, ethnicity and consensus in Soviet society, New York: M. E. Sharpe. [Google Scholar] and Buckley (1995) Buckley, C. 1995. The myth of managed migration: Migration control and market in the Soviet period. Slavic Review, 54(4): 896–916. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] have emphasized, there were ways to circumvent the propiska regulations, but such opportunities were asymmetrically available to the population (for more on the propiskasystem in general, see Matthews 1993 Matthews, M. 1993. The passport society: Controlling movement in Russia and the USSR, Boulder, CO: Westview. [Google Scholar]; Moine 1997 Moine, N. 1997. Passeportisation, statistique des migrations et contrôle de l'identité sociale [Passportization, migration statistics and control of social identity]. Cahiers du Monde Russe, 38(4): 587–600. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]; for more on its introduction and logic during the Stalin era, see Kessler 2001 Kessler, G. 2001. The passport system and state control over population flows in the Soviet Union 1932–1940. Cahiers du Monde Russe, 42(2–4): 477–504. [PubMed] , [Google Scholar]). 4. However, Hamilton (1993 Hamilton, E. 1993. "Social areas under state socialism: The case of Moscow". In Beyond Sovietology—Essays in politics and history, Edited by: Solomon, S. G. 192–225. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. [Google Scholar], citing Zhelezko 1986 Zhelezko, S. N. 1986. Naselenie krupnogo goroda [The population of the large city], Moscow: Mysl. [Google Scholar]) took a step in this direction by reporting figures relating to the housing assigned by the city administration to various locally controlled entities, revealing, for example, that eighteen times more housing was made available for the workers of the Moscow Water and Sewerage Administration than for the employees of the Moscow Main Repair Administration. 5. In 1935, the share of Poles (18.2 percent) and Jews (24.6 percent) was higher than that of the Russians (Daugavpils pilsetas plans 2005). The Jewish population—the ghetto of Daugavpils was home to about 14,000 in mid-1941—was heavily decimated during the Holocaust, and the Poles as an ethnic group were subject to purges (e.g., Bleiere et al. 2005 Bleiere, D., Butulis, I., Zunda, A., Stranga, A. and Feldmanis, I. 2005. Istoriya Latvii. XX vek [History of Latvia: The 20th century], Riga, , Latvia: Jumava. [Google Scholar]). 6. According to the model, and in line with the previous research (e.g., Murray and Szelényi 1984 Murray, P. and Szelényi, I. 1984. The city in the transition to socialism. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 8(1): 90–107. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Sjöberg 1992 Sjöberg, Ö. 1992. Underurbanisation and the zero urban growth hypothesis: Diverted migration in Albania. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 74(1): 3–19. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]), the population development of these settlements generally depended on the extent and enforcement of the administrative restrictions imposed on in-migration to the central city, combined with the demand for labor and extent of the housing shortage within it. The higher the demand for labor within the (restricted) central city, the greater the number of commuters from settlements located outside of the administrative boundaries of the city. 7. Our work in the archive revealed that such total renovation projects were rare. After all, the priority given to quantitative increases in housing supply, at the expense of statistically timid qualitative improvements, is a well-known characteristic of socialist urban growth (Szelényi 1983 Szelényi, I. 1983. Urban inequalities under state socialism, Oxford, , UK: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar]; Wieβner 1999 Wießner, R. 1999. Urban development in East Germany—Specific features of urban transformation processes. GeoJournal, 49(1): 43–51. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]; Gentile and Tammaru 2006 Gentile, M. and Tammaru, T. 2006. Ethnicity and housing in Ust'-Kamenogorsk, Kazakhstan. Urban Studies, 43(10): 1757–78. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). 8. Most of the archive volumes produced during part of the 1950s and the entire 1960s included a useful yearly summary that systematized the akty information needed for this study. Unfortunately, this practice no longer took place by around 1970, and each akt produced during the subsequent two decades had to be examined individually along with those not covered by the yearly summaries created earlier. 9. The authors' main impression after several rounds of archive work is that the akty were seldom subject to falsification. Instead, when deemed necessary, the amount of information contained in them was simply reduced. 10. The post-1960 mass housing construction program implied considerable standardization. By the end of the Soviet period, very few design types appeared, and these were accorded series numbers. During the 1970s and 1980s, the Daugavpils housing construction scene was dominated by the (generally) five-story 467s and 103s. Combining prefabricated concrete panels and red brick, the 103s are considered aesthetically more appealing than the 467s, which were composed entirely of prefabricated panels. 11. It was not unusual for the administrative subordination of economic organizations to change over time. Generally, however, these changes were horizontal rather than vertical, meaning that the organizations tended to retain the same level of subordination even after having been put under the authority of a new ministry. 12. The short-lived Sovnarkhoz reform (1957–1964) involved a temporary abolishment of the economic ministries and of the autarkic structures that they created, replacing them with regional organs (the Sovnarkhozy) whose task was to oversee the fulfillment of the centrally drafted plans. As ministerialism quickly turned into regionalism, the experiment failed (see Nove 1986 Nove, A. 1986. The Soviet economic system, , 3rd ed., Boston: Allen & Unwin. [Google Scholar]). 13. The Ministry of Construction and Ministry of Construction, Roadworks and Communal Tool Manufacturing were two separate coexisting entities, despite the name. 14. The cartographic study is based on the following archive materials, unless otherwise noted: Daugavpils zonalais valsts arhivs, 907.1.2–10, 16, 18, 20, 23, 26, 30, 34, 38, 44, 50, 57, 64, 71, 84, 87, 91, 93, 99, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 134, n.a., n.a., n.a., n.a., 161, 165, 166, 180–85, 187, 188, 192 (copies of the volumes for which the exact number is unknown are available from the corresponding author upon request). 15. Of course, it is possible that the apartments were supposed to be used as communal, but it is rather unlikely given the preferences of the time, which was characterized by the construction of high-quality self-contained apartments. 16. In Daugavpils, as elsewhere, there were exceptions to the general tendency of men being employed in high-priority enterprises and women in low-priority organizations. The large ZKhV Chemical Fibre Plant (P4), in fact, employed more women than men, meaning that access to the housing stock it controlled was frequently made possible thanks to the employment status of the female adult household member.