The struggle against the housing crisis in Kuzbass in 1920-1922

This article examines the situation with providing housing for the population in the coal districts of the Kuznetsk Basin in 19201922. The author singles out three reasons of the housing crisis in Kuzbass: housing shortage, surplus population in the mines and the lack of large-scale construction of new housing. He also highlights the link between bread supplies from Siberia to the European part of Russia and concentration of the workforce from different parts of the country in the coil mining industry of Kuzbass because of the fuel crisis. The article is concerned with the decisions and actions of both central authorities of the Soviet Republic and Siberian ones aimed at overcoming the housing crisis in Kuzbass. The main purpose of the activities undertaken by the authorities was not improvement of the living conditions of the coal mines population, but placement of miners and members of their families, coming from different regions of Siberia and the famine-stricken provinces of the Volga and the Urals, in already existing residential and non-residential premises. An acute shortage of housing made the local authorities forcibly move inoperable population, including children and the disabled, from the territory of the coal mines. Newly arrived workforce was resettled in emptied living spaces. Based on the compilation of the archival material of Kemerovo, Novosibirsk and Tomsk Oblasts, as well as the Russian State Military Archive, the article analyzes the existence of housing, the ability to provide the population of the mine towns of the Kuznetsk Basin with government-owned apartments. During the study, the most acute period of the housing crisis in the Kolchugino mine, 19211922, has been established. The most miserable housing situation was in the mines of the South Group where the majority of miners lived in railway wagons and dugouts. For improving the living conditions of miners in the South-Kuznetsk area in 1922, new housing units were built at the Prokopyevsky mine. Due to the lack of construction workers and building materials, as well as time pressures, there were built half-earthen, clay straw, clay brushwood barracks there. New temporary shelters covered 4998.1 m, which provided housing for 1100 people. In the paper, the proportion of the housing stock of each industrial area across the Kuznetsk Basin has been determined. There has been revealed a general tendency for the outflow of human resources from the industrial areas of Kuzbass in 1922. On the basis of the available information on housing, the number of population and parameters of minimum acceptable housing per person, it has been estimated that by 1 October 1922, 29,157 persons were provided with government-owned apartments, i.e. 78.2 % of the Kuzbass population. The author concludes that the measures taken by the authorities allowed accommodating the required number of the cheap workforce in the very cramped housing conditions due to the deterioration of the living conditions. The study results broaden the idea of the formation of Kuzbass as the industrial center of Siberia.

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