“Living the Project of a Century”: The Space of Everyday Life and Housing Mobility of the Builders of the Baikal-Amur Railway (1970–1980s)

Abstract

The housing problem was common to all socialist construction projects in Siberia, including the largest project of the late Soviet period: the building of the Baikal-Amur Railway (BAR). The forced pace of construction at the facility, as well as privileges and benefits for working in hard northern conditions, led to uncontrolled migration into the BAR zone. The housing shortage made people look for new forms of “living”: tents, trailers, barracks, self-made houses, workplaces, and operational buildings. A whole network of cities and towns with a heterogeneous settlement structure around BAR developed. It consisted of comfortable urban areas for the accommodation of future railway workers, temporary housing complexes for transport builders, and “nakhalovki,” squatting housing for people arriving spontaneously. The ousing experience of BARers differed from that of the late Soviet standards in the organization of everyday life and special practices. In solving housing problems in BAR settlements, people showed greater initiative and independence. There was a wide range of formal and informal practices of housing mobility, and most depended on how one arrived to BAR. Organized arrivals of builders had more common and stable mobility lines. People, who came on their own initiative, had more diverse and multidirectional ways of housing and rehousing. The predominant factors of housing mobility in Soviet times were housing quality and changing one’s place of work. In contemporary conditions, the role of economic factors, such as the cost of maintaining housing, the size of housing plots, and the possibility of farming were increasing. Temporary and illegally erected dwellings in this situation had a number of competitive advantages, which made them in demand despite risks associated with a high degree of wear.