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This project is about KHRUSCHEVKA's - low cost 1960's apartment buildings, once a break-through, now the least desired urban housing.
Rapid industrialization and urbanization that followed communist Revolution lead to a massive lack of urban housing, which could not be solved by Stalin-era construction of luxury buildings for the elite. The majority of urban population was living in “communal” apartments, often with several families crammed into one room and having to share the utilities with families crammed into other rooms. It was only in the fifties during the period of Khrushchev’s Thaw that Soviet government finally acknowledged the existence of the problem and launched a countrywide construction program with the declared goal of providing every Soviet family with a private apartment. The low-cost no-frills housing was nicknamed Khruschevka's after then Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev. The uniformly designed five storied buildings (the limit for a building without an elevator by Soviet standards) made of pre-fabricated panels provided minimal comfort, however people who were moving out of communal flats recollect that having an apartment all to themselves appeared an improbable luxury. Although the housing problem was not completely solved the situation changed dramatically. As the standards of new housing were rising while successive generations were unable to move out of their parent's flats, ageing khruschevka's earned a new name - khruschoba, a combination of Nikita Khruschev's name and “truschoba”, Russian for “slum”. In the nineties the decision was made to demolish a large part of 1960-s housing and replace it with modern high-rise buildings. Cheremushki, then a village to the South West of Moscow became country's first construction site for Khruschev's mass housing project in 1958. The impact on the society was such that Dmitry Shostakovich composed an opera titled Cheremushki, Moscow with an eponymous film following shortly after, while Cheremushki district became strongly associated with Khruschev’s housing program. Although the photos here were made in various parts of Moscow, I thought this would be a good name for my project. Me and my parents moved to Cheremushki when I was 10, and even though I never actually lived in a khruschovka, as a child I was spending plenty of time at my grandparents' who lived in khruschovkas, and that was where my parents had grown up. This is what connects me with my project.
Michael Regnier about this assignment Thanks a lot for the excellent introduction to your project. It's very good - and very important - to have a proper background for people looking at your images and you have really explained this very well! I think here in the UK there is a similar (if very different) phenomenon of also a building project throughout the country to give people social housing, partly to make up for housing lost during the war and partly because of the growth of the "social welfare state" in post-war UK so these images, and these stories, have a parallel here with his very interesting and I wish some of our UK photographers would do stories like you have done about housing projects or Khrushchevki like yours! This is a particularly interesting story because, as you say, these may not be very nice places but they are places that hold a lot of memory for people and have a lot of history invested in them - not just secular history but also ideological history! I think You've shot this very nicely as well - I like the details of aerial view, housing facades, interior and portraits... That's a very good and broad coverage of the subject. All the images tell a nice story and are very documentary in this way so well done on this front. One aspect of this life which would interest me as well would be the "communal" aspect and commercial aspect of life in a Khrushchevka for example: where do people do the shopping (small Produktiy selling basic articles), transport (buses, metro, marshrutki??), you have one picture of people in the park - this is nice. Showing the interaction between different people! Maybe people on the hallways of the blocks where they sometimes meet? Do you sometimes have notice boards where people put small adverts like "bed for sale" or something like this? Otherwise this is a very nice piece of work.
Petr Antonov about this assignment What probably makes Khruschev's housing project different from similar projects in the West is that privately owned urban apartments were non-existent in Russia until late 50-s. That was when first housing cooperatives began to emerge, more or less the same time as Khruschevkas. I'm not sure if this makes a whole lot of difference in this project, but I should probably add something to that effect in the project description too. As to the pictures, I had a pretty limited time to produce something to post here, as the project I initially intended to shoot did not work out, so some things you mentioned I had (have) in mind too. The communal aspect was something I was definitely trying to get into the story. Many of these housing complexes once had a very special atmosphere where everyone new their neighbors, people gathered to celebrate national holidays, etc. And I really want to try and find traces of that if they still exist. This is something that was pretty much lost as Russia was trying to rid of all traces of the Soviet past, so finding traces may be hard. Shopping, transport - I agree on that too. I had long contemplated to start with this project so now that I have, I will most likely carry on with it throughout 2009. |
 Petr Antonov
Petr Antonov, b. 1977, a freelance photographer from Moscow, Russia. In 1999 Petr Antonov graduated from Moscow Linguistic University and became interested in photography shortly after. Petr is a member of Russian Union of Art Photographers since 200 ...
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