RUSSIA: Soviet-era housing demolished in Moscow in effort to improve living quarters

Record ID: 755296

  • Title: RUSSIA: Soviet-era housing demolished in Moscow in effort to improve living quarters
  • Date: 6th December 2006
  • Summary: BUILDING COLLAPSING/ POLICEMEN WATCHING AND PEOPLE RUNNING AWAY FROM DUST POLICE STANDING BY SITE AS DUST RISES IN THE AIR
  • Embargoed: 21st December 2006 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: Industry
  • Reuters ID: LVA5Q7WP3P33DH1DYKXP2KY1J3PR
  • Story Text: City authorities demolished a block of Soviet-era flats in east Moscow on Monday (December 4) to make way for better living quarters. The sprawling nine-storey pre-fabricated house was deemed a health threat to residents.
    The state-owned house, widely ridiculed by residents for being flimsy and having paper-thin walls, vexed demolishers and failed to entirely collapse on the first explosion. It took minutes for parts of the house to collapse, and on Tuesday (December 5), a day after the demolition about one-third of the building remains standing. Officials have been left scratching their heads over how to tear the building down.
    The demolition was the result of several years of protests. Residents have demanded the city find them new housing, claiming that the presence of phenol in the walls and floors was making them sick.
    A Russian newspaper reported that the presence of phenol, used to strengthen the joints holding the pre-fabricated panels together, resulted in high levels of respiratory problems among residents.
    Phenol has a notorious history as a poison. It was used as a means of extermination by the Nazis during World War Two, when inmates at concentration camps were given injections and left to die.
    That it came to be used by the Soviets for housing is not a surprise. Since the state was unaccountable to the public it often made decisions that adversely affected the population.
    As the Soviet Union recovered from the Second World War, housing problems became more pressing. The city's populations grew rapidly, and most people lived in communal apartments, where several families shared one kitchen and bathroom, in rundown houses. The regime's legitimacy was under threat, especially after the hardships endured by the people during World War II had failed to lead to improvements. There was a desperate need for more houses, cheap and plentiful, even if primitive and of low quality. Therefore architecture, aesthetics, and health concerns were sacrificed.
    In 1952 Moscow had the first experimental district with five-story prefabricated concrete houses, later dubbed "Khrushchevki" after the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, who launched this type of construction. For the next 20 years, Khrushchevki-style houses, cheerless and boring, dominated the new districts in the city and throughout the country. While the quality was dubious, it eased the housing problem.
    In 2000, the Moscow city government began a programme to eliminate the so-called `Khrushchevki' block of flats.
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