Taking the Soviet Union Apart Room by Room: Domestic Architecture before and after 1991

Taking the Soviet Union Apart Room by Room explores the transformation of domestic spaces, architecture, and urbanites' lives during a socioeconomic upheaval, focusing on the two decades after the collapse of the USSR. Kateryna Malaia analyzes how Soviet and post-Soviet city dwellers transformed their dwellings as their countries transformed around them, creating new lifestyles defined by increased spatial privacy. The book connects home improvement, self-reinvention, the end of state socialism, and the lived experience of change, based on interviews and fieldwork in Kyiv and Lviv, Ukraine. It also highlights the similarities throughout the former Soviet empire and the meaning of home in a dramatically changing world.

Format: Hardback
Length: 204 pages
Publication date: 15 August 2023
Publisher: Cornell University Press

Taking the Soviet Union Apart Room by Room is a book that explores the impact of socioeconomic upheaval on domestic spaces, architecture, and the lives of urbanites in the Soviet Union and post-Soviet era. Kateryna Malaia examines how Soviet and post-Soviet city dwellers, navigating a crisis of inadequate housing and extreme social disruption between the late 1980s and 2000s, transformed their dwellings as their countries transformed around them. The two decades after the collapse of the USSR witnessed a major urban apartment remodeling boom, with those remodeling and modifying their homes forming new lifestyles defined by increased spatial privacy. Remodeled interiors served as a material expression of a social identity above the poverty line, in place of the outdated Soviet signifiers of well-being. Malaia connects home improvement, self-reinvention, the end of state socialism, and the lived experience of change, putting together a comprehensive portrait of the era. The book makes the case for similarities throughout the former Soviet empire and is based on interviews and fieldwork done primarily in Kyiv and Lviv, Ukraine. Many of the buildings described are similar to those damaged or destroyed by Russian bombings or artillery fire following the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Taking the Soviet Union Apart Room by Room is a book about major historic events written through the lens of everyday life, exploring the meaning of home in a dramatically changing world.

Weight: 454g
Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781501771200