Before heading up to Boston tomorrow for this year’s ASEEES conference, I wanted to add a few more thoughts on the conversation regarding Communism on Tomorrow Street. First, Karl Qualls raises an excellent point in his post about the motivations architects had in pursuing the ever-smaller dimensions of the single-family separate apartment.
Author: Steven Harris
First, I’d like to thank Steve Barnes for organizing this book discussion of Communism on Tomorrow Street, as well as the participants for their commentary thus far. They’ve provided far more food for thought and questions than I can address in one post, so I’ll address a couple now and save more for later.
In her original post, Christine Varga-Harris discusses the emphasis that I place on egalitarianism as a central feature in Khrushchev’s mass housing campaign. As it evolved over the course of Khrushchev’s years in power, this issue led to political embarrassment for Khrushchev personally (albeit behind closed doors) when party-state elites just a rung or two down from the Presidium overcame his resistance to the cooperative, which he claimed represented inequality.