8
The Housing Problem
Since we wanted to know how the Bolsheviks had tackled the various problems posed by economic and social life, we devoted ourselves to the difficult task of inquiring about everything that relates to these problems, starting with the housing question. Since this problem was a major issue in Europe and in Spain, we wanted to know how the revolution had addressed it.
The official reports we were able to obtain were not explicit enough. Although they spoke of a rigorous and mathematical distribution of housing, the people, the persons to whom we spoke to and to whom we revealed our interest in this issue, intimated a certain animosity towards the official position.
All sources agreed—official reports and first-hand accounts of individuals—that there was an equitable and rational distribution, at first sight. Once the question was subjected to closer analysis, however, one noticed that whereas the official reports depicted an optimal result, when we questioned individuals they maintained that the official intervention could not have had less fortunate results. Who was right? This is what we were most interested in discovering.
The official distribution assumed the mathematical principle for its point of departure, meaning that only one living space is granted per person, except for doctors and certain other technical operatives who needed another habitation for an office or consulting room. The strictness of the official regulations did not apply to those who enjoyed official favor. Influence was more effective than all government regulations. The reports we gathered from individuals explicitly mentioned the numerous exceptions in favor of influential persons or high-level Bolsheviks. This was the status of the housing problem as the inhabitants of Moscow saw it. Combined with the other problems, it made the situation of the people who had made the revolution more uncertain.
Two causes contributed to this aggravation: the fear of the official orders, which often exhibited the character of looting or partisan vengeance, and the scarcity, getting worse every day, of housing. The latter was especially alarming.
The number of habitable houses declined every day, many of them collapsing for a lack of repairs of the damage caused by time and the country’s weather. The concentration of government services in Moscow also contributed to the problem.
Rents were reduced, but this did not help much, since what really mattered was being able to find a place to live, which was impossible.
To carry out the distribution of housing the same procedure was followed that was implemented for the distribution of everything else; the Council of Peoples Commissars created a kind of Commissariat of Housing, in which everything that concerned this issue was centralized.
On each street or each group of streets, and sometimes for just one side of a street or for a group of houses, a neighborhood commission was formed. This commission was always presided over by a tried and true communist, by a man who enjoyed the confidence of the party, who was considered to be an employee of the State, and who received a wage as if he worked in a factory.
The task of the neighborhood commissions was to carry out statistical surveys of the houses under their jurisdiction. They were responsible for supervising the transfers of residents from one house or apartment to another; for hiring porters or superintendants for each house, and, finally, for investigating who, why and when anyone visited houses under their jurisdiction. They were like the watchdogs of every house, of each particular domicile. They could even arrest any callers who seemed to be acting suspiciously. Their prerogatives also included collecting the rents and arranging for repairs. The animosity with which each resident viewed the comrade president of the commission that had jurisdiction over the house he lived in bordered on hatred.
This is what the Government did. Now we shall see what the people did.
We owe the precious information we shall relate below to Kibalchich and to a former president of a Petrograd Neighborhood Commission.
The November revolution, which accelerated the course of events that had begun in the March revolution, made it possible, with the absolute dominance of the popular classes, to carry out the total and complete expropriation of the nobility and the capitalists.
The expulsion of the major landowners from their estates was followed by the expulsion of the industrialists from their factories, and then by the expropriation of the urban landlords and real estate interests.
The workers in the working class neighborhoods, the proletarians, who had lived up until then in pestilential pigsties, took their belongings and moved into the best houses they could find that were available.
Injustices and outrages, inevitable under such circumstances, made their appearance.
In some, although not many cases, the inhabitants of expensive houses were evicted, thrown into the gutter without anywhere to live.
As a general rule, the rich were obliged to occupy a limited number of houses, and working class families were moved into the rest. But the distribution process often proved to be arbitrary.
In addition, it was necessary to plan ahead for the consequences that such an upheaval would give rise to, and the questions of repairs, lighting, water, etc., had to be dealt with.
Soon, with the profound intuition of the people which only needed an occasion for its exercise, neighborhood commissions were organized that provided for the needs of each street and each building.
The amount of rent for each habitation was established; statistics were gathered showing the available accommodations; the necessary repairs were estimated and carried out—something that would not continue in the future; more equitable distributions were made than those of the original round of allotments, and, finally, everything was organized in as orderly a way as possible, in accordance with the agreements and the consent of the majority of the neighbors.
These commissions held frequent assemblies where problems were resolved in the simplest and most harmonious manner.
“Satisfaction was general,” Kibalchich said, and the former president of the Commission whom we were interviewing agreed. “Despite the profound chaos caused by the revolution, disagreement or litigation between neighbors was very rare.”
In a disinterested and altruistic manner that cannot be praised too highly, they resolved problems and everything went perfectly smoothly.
But necessity, which has always been the mother of all inventions, made them aware of the fact that they had only gone halfway towards their destination.
Each House Committee, or Street Committee, realized that the problem was more complicated, and that by working in isolation it was stultifying its possibilities for improvement. Inevitably, they had to expand or perish. And so an agreement was concluded.
The Committees of contiguous houses, or adjacent streets, federated with each other; some dissolved, others were organized; this resulted in an expansion of all of them and mitigated the difficulties that were encountered during the early stage.
Soon the Federation of Committees of the entire capital had been formed, and without any official regulations, without real orders, or municipal laws of any kind, the residents of Petrograd, on their own initiative, had almost single-handedly solved the housing problem.
Rents were controlled, and were considerably reduced; the necessary repairs were made; workers who lived too far from their workplaces exchanged residences with others, and accommodations were distributed more in accordance with strictly equitable criteria.
Throughout this period, which lasted about a year and a half, there was not even one single eviction, nor did even one family lack a place to live.
Planning ahead for the future, a certain percentage of each rent bill was sensibly set aside for a fund to build new homes, and to provide a subsidy for building maintenance.
Health and sanitation in the houses was measurably improved, and their cleanliness was exemplary.
In each house, all residents were obliged, except in case of circumstances beyond their control, to take their turn every week cleaning the stairs and attending to the requests that were submitted to the Committee, and to either fulfill them or give an account to the assembly as to why they were not satisfied.
Everyone could come and go as they pleased, receive any guests and let anyone stay in their homes without interference.
Liberty: the complete freedom of each as long as it does not harm another.
This was not to the Government’s liking. The dictatorship of the proletariat, the centralization of everything, naturally clashed with the spirit of liberty reflected by this institution created by the people.
It was not, however, in the Government’s interest to destroy it. It had demonstrated its usefulness in practice. Rather than destroy it, it was in the Government’s interest to seize control over it. And that is what it did, although not without a struggle and not without protests.
It began by installing a communist as president of each Committee or Commission. As for those Committees or Commissions where one of its supporters could not be elected as president, it dissolved them on the pretext of counterrevolutionary conspiracies. It limited the number of Committees and, as the coup de grâce, it assigned a salary to the presidents, it made them functionaries of the State and it granted them the right to enter any home and arrest, as we have said, anyone that seemed suspicious.
The communists adjusted quite well to this police role; party discipline demanded it. The others did not accept it, and there were mass resignations, leaving the field completely open to the communists.
From that moment on, my informants claimed, the House Committees or Commissions lost their efficient character and became just one more aspect of the cumbersome communist bureaucracy.
Residents no longer expressed any interest in the housing problem; favoritism emerged as the decisive factor and the Bolsheviks, masters of the situation, destroyed the most beautiful thing about collective activity: individual initiative.
No one wanted to be president of their Committee because they did not want to antagonize their neighbors, nor did anyone want to bear the burden of its responsibilities. They also abhorred the idea of becoming parasites. They refused to assume responsibility for the office that conferred upon its holders the authority to inform on, arrest and kick down the doors of their neighbors. From then on, the Committees or Commissions that had performed so many notable services, and had prevented so many injustices and arbitrary actions, which had so fairly and humanely dealt with the serious problem of housing, ceased to exist, in order to be replaced by a caricature of a Commission which only attracted the most Olympian scorn of the citizens. Thus died one of the most popular institutions that the feverish passion of the revolution had engendered.
With its stump-like foot, the elephantine state squashed the most promising sprout of popular spontaneity.
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