Total Modernism: Mass Housing and Urbanism in Soviet Zaporizhzhia

A quiet rural town until World War I, Zaporizhzhia exploded into a major industrial centre in the 1920s following con­struction of the Dnipro Hydroelectric Station. This book looks at a later period in the history of what is now one of the largest cities in Ukraine, the 1950s to 1980s, when the focus in Soviet policy shifted from industrialisation to welfare and from production to consumption. In this respect Zaporizhzhia may be seen as ‘a local model of the birth of a modern society’ – Soviet consumer society. Historian Pavlo Kravchuk and historian and graphic designer Mykhailo Mordovskoi skilfully combine text and images to show how this shift played out in urban planning, architecture, and, more importantly, the lives of ordinary Soviet citizens. Prefabricated construction techniques enabled the rapid erection of districts of mass housing, giving ordinary people a small apartment of their own for the first time. With this came a need for consumer goods. At the same time, sitting in their new kitchens, people gained a modicum of privacy and a space in which to meet and discuss, away from the controlling eye of the state. The new Soviet apartment was ‘a place of leisure’, but also of dissidence – the beginning of the end of the regime.