WI: Khrushchev not replaced by Brezhnev

The main principles had been (a) cheap materials and (b) easy to construct. However, what most people are referencing as “Khruschevka” are actually the houses built during Brezhnev years. The first Khruschevkas (I lived in one for few decades) had been built from the relatively small and rather thick (important during both winter and summer) concrete blocks while those of Brezhnev period had been made out of the bigger and thin concrete panels (window being a part of a prefabricated panel). They were easier to construct and probably cheaper but termoisolation was much inferior and, IIRC, the cellings were lower. Cracks of the panels were known problems for some of the models.

I didn't know about the change to the wall thickness. Very interesting. And I am totally unsurprised that they cut back...

fasquardon
 
I didn't know about the change to the wall thickness. Very interesting. And I am totally unsurprised that they cut back...

fasquardon

Of course, this is not surprising because, AFAIK, the volume (and resulting cost ) of the construction had been picking up during Brezhnev rule. Of course, what I’m going to say is just a personal observation but in 1960 construction in the North-Eastern area of Moscow (Izmailovo - Preobrazenskoe) only started: most of the area had been either occupied by villages or simply empty by the end of Nikita’s rule. In the 1960’s the adjustment areas had been formally incorporated into Moscow and by the late 1970s all the empty spaces and villages had been gone (and so were their product on the farmer markets) and construction had been spreading all the way to the Moscow Ring Road (only relatively small Galianovo area has population over 150K). And this is only one sector of the construction.

Small wonder that the cost became a factor.
 
Probably there's more liberals in the politburo, relations with China are even worse, relations with the West are even worse (no Brezhnev thaw here), Soviet R&D is a bit better funded (Khrushchev was a technophile, but the Soviet system was inherently technophilic so the top boss being super keen on the latest whizzbangs isn't a huge change from the top boss being a stolid conservative - the system is still the system) and the Soviet economy likely follows a path closer to those followed by their European Satellites. Hard to say if the Prague Spring is butterflied or not by Khrushchev in charge... It could easily be even worse under him.

Theoretically technophilliac in reality technophobic. The problem was, like many of the problems of the USSR, central planning. The USSR did not move far past ww2 in the vast majority of its technology. Outside weapons and space technology the USSR was almost hopelessly backward.

The problem was that everything had to be planned five years in advance and everyone had quotas to meet. The thing about new technology is that it is a change and when you have technological change it changes everything, including the long worked out five-year plan.

It takes a lot of effort to make up a five-year plan which now has to be changed, with cascading effects, because of new technology. The new technology likely needs different raw materials, different machinery, and retrained workers. This all throws the five-year plan off, so now it has to be reworked which takes a lot of effort. Until all the bugs are worked production is likely to go down, not up in the short run. That means that the enterprise is likely to be well under its quota for at least six months to a year. Even then it can't exceed its quota unless the amount of raw materials and/or parts is also increased. This is something handled much easier in a market economy, just look at prices.
 
The Khrushchevskas I've seen have been very much like the cheap mass-built housing I've seen in the UK and Finland from the same period, with similar problems and similar advantages. I've met Russians and Ukrainians who are proud to live in Khrushchevskas, and seen some cheap 60s housing in the UK that was very good to live in as well. And equally, the 50s, 60s and 70s mass-produced apartments in both countries could get downright ghastly too (some of Trainspotting features what this species could look like in Britain with a decade or two of poor maintenance). So while I can think of ways to improve the massive expansion of the Soviet housing stock that occurred under Khrushchev, the scale of the problem (with a massive influx of people to the cities, prioritization of industry under Stalin, then the devastation of the country by German invasion) I think means that however things are done, to come close to addressing the urgent need for ANY housing RIGHT NOW requires the mass building of compromise designs by people with poor building skills... So some of the resulting houses are (charitably) only gonna be good for a few years. On balance, given where the Soviet housing stock started when Stalin died, and where it had ended up by 1964, Khrushchev's housing policies were one of his more successful efforts.

fasquardon

Although no fan of the Communist system I agree with a lot of this. The great demand for housing post-war necessitated cheaply and quickly made apartments. A market system would have done it better but it still would have been mostly second or third rate, just slightly better.
 
After all, if Krushev remains in power, it may butterfly on the future of the Soviet Union: openness to the market economy, a little more freedom for the Soviet people, less money spent in the armament, more in consumer products instead, but it is possible that the non-Russian Soviet RSS declares their independence (the Baltic countries). Otherwise, with all these butterflies with Krushev, the USSR could perhaps survive nowadays.
 
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