Privatisation of Housing in Post-Soviet Russia: A New Understanding of Home?

This article is concerned with the attitudes of the nascent Russian 'middle class' towards the privatisation of housing. It focuses on the questions of whether private ownership had an impact on these people's understanding of 'home', whether it resulted in greater satisfaction with their housing, and whether it gave them the sense of being 'stakeholders' in Russian society. The principal research method was a questionnaire emailed to people in Moscow, St Petersburg and three provincial cities. A history of housing in Soviet Russia is also provided, along with an overview of research on housing and the home in other industrialised countries.