The Emergence of Housing Regulations on the Territory of the Former Russian Empire during the Russian Civil War

Abstract

This paper analyzes governmental regulation of the rental housing market in countries that arose out of the ruins of the Russian Empire during the Russian Civil war in 1918–1922. Geographically it covers territories under control of the Province of the Armed Forces of South Russia, Crimean Regional Government, Don Cossack Host, Far Eastern Republic, Provisional government of the Northern region, Provisional government of Siberia, and Soviet Russia, as well as such national states as Azerbaijan, Armenia, Estonia, Finland, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, and Ukraine. The study compares three major tools for the restrictive housing policy: rent control, protection of tenants from eviction, and housing rationing. It shows the emergence, evolution, and continuity of housing legislation by these governments with respect to that of the All-Russian Provisional government and of the Bolsheviks. Despite sometimes radically opposite ideological attitudes, different governments reacted in a similar way to the acute housing shortage by intervening in the housing market. Finally, government regulations of the rental housing market on the territory of the former Russian Empire is put into the European context using the author’s regulation intensity indices. In Russia, governmental regulation emerged somewhat later than in Europe in general. However, in Soviet Russia it turned into a permanent regulation and remained in force until the early 1990s, while many European countries were deregulating already in the early 1920s.