Khrushchevka: Soviet and non-Soviet in the space of everyday life

According to official Soviet statistics, 1,205.2 million square meters of housing were built in the USSR in the 1950s and 1960s: during this period, a new territorial and social organism was formed in the country. N. Lebina’s book is dedicated to the houses built during these years — the famous “Khrushchyovkas,” which still exist today. Considering this housing as a special cultural and everyday space of the Thaw era, the author studies the external appearance of these buildings, the forms of their internal structure, the subject saturation of the new living space and shows how the life of a Soviet person changed in the context of global trends in the modernization of everyday life. In this context, the “Khrushchyovka” appears as a unique thaw phenomenon, in which the absurd is mixed with the creative, the funny with the optimistic, and the “Soviet” with the “non-Soviet.” Natalia Lebina is a doctor of historical sciences, a researcher of Soviet everyday life, and the author of the books “Passengers of the Sausage Train,” “Soviet Everyday Life: Norms and Anomalies,” “Man and Woman,” and others, published by NLO.