Navigating the Housing Bureaucracy in Late Soviet Moscow: A Housing Order as a Document of Socialist Desire

Many scholars have drawn attention to the large housing programme at play in the late Soviet period. However, this programme did not solve the housing shortage, and the housing order (zhilishchnyi order) remained an object of desire for Soviet citizens. This document was an official guarantee of accommodation in the USSR, where there was no housing market. Based on archival sources and interviews, this article focuses on the history of the housing order and people’s strategies for obtaining it. It reveals the specifics of the public housing delivery system and the means through which ordinary Soviet citizens navigated its bureaucracy.