From 'Soviet' to 'European' Yaroslavl: Changing Neighbourhood Structure in Post-Soviet Russian Cities

Abstract

The absence of a market meant that Soviet cities evolved in fundamentally different ways from Western cities, but economic reform promises to transform them. Drawing from 1993 survey data from the city of Yaroslavl, the paper analyses how Russian citizens look at their Soviet-made city. It finds that Russians of diverse background appear to be drawn to a historically `European' model of urban development in which the central city becomes home to the monied class and the socially correct, while poorer social groups are pushed toward the periphery. To understand the dynamics of the early stages of post-Soviet city development, a regression model containing demographic, life-stage and housing-condition variables is developed which predicts 52 per cent of the variance in moving intentions. After describing the initial impact of the housing privatisation process, the paper examines the reasons behind and the significance of the precipitous decline in housing privatisation since 1993.