Description
Book SynopsisA study of one of the major social reforms of 20th-century European history that presents an analysis built on hundreds of sources that include papers from state and municipal archives, material from the popular and professional press, legal tracts, films, novels, and personal accounts.
Trade ReviewThis sharp study of the urban housing program in the USSR after 1945 is of broad interest to those working in Russian and Soviet studies. Amidst a growing collection of new urban research in Slavic and East European studies, Property of Communists is an indispensable work.
* Slavonic and East European Review *
[R]eaders will find in the densely constructed narrative, from materials as diverse as official archival documents, reports, and policies, citizens' complaint letters, and occasionally literary accounts, a wide range of inspiring stories that offer fresh perspectives on this key episode in modern European welfare policy.
-- Torsten Lange * EAST CENTRAL EUROPE *
Smith puts the mass-housing campaign into a pan-European/North American context by evaluating the adequacy of the term "welfare state"for the Soviet Union. His cardinal achievement is the opening of an entirely new topic of analysis—Soviet property relations. Smith deserves a great deal of credit for questioning what had long gone unquestioned.
-- Stephen Bittner, Sonoma State University
Makes a signal contribution to the rapidly evolving historiography of the postwar Soviet decades. Smith's arguments are substantiated by an impressive repertoire of sources. Indeed, in both qualitative and quantitative senses, the research base is truly phenomenal. Written in a style that is not only accessible but occasionally rises to the level of elegance.
-- Lewis Siegelbaum, Michigan State University
