Total Modernism. Mass Housing and Urbanism in Soviet Zaporizhzhia

Total Modernism. Mass Housing and Urbanism in Soviet Zaporizhzhia explores the transformation of Zaporizhzhia from a quiet rural town until World War I, into a major industrial centre in the 1920s with the construction of the Dnipro Hydroelectric Station. This book examines the city's development during the 1950s to 1980s, when Soviet policy shifted from industrialisation to welfare, and from production to consumption. In this respect, Zaporizhzhia may be seen as a local model of the birth of a modern Soviet consumer society.

Historians Pavlo Kravchuk and Mykhailo Mordovskoi, who is also a graphic designer, skilfully combine text and images to illustrate how this shift was reflected in urban planning, architecture, and, most importantly, the lives of ordinary Soviet citizens. The introduction of prefabricated construction techniques facilitated the rapid erection of districts of mass housing, providing ordinary people with their own small apartments for the first time. This development sparked a demand for consumer goods. Simultaneously, as people sat in their new kitchens, they acquired a degree of privacy and a space to meet and discuss, away from the controlling eye of the state.

The new Soviet apartment became not only a place of leisure but also a space for dissidence, marking the beginning of the regime's decline.