Forging citizenship on the home front: reviving the socialist contract and constructing Soviet identity during the Thaw

In October 1957, E.G. Khilimok moved into a new apartment at the 122nd block (kvartal) of Shchemilovka Street, the foremost experimental housing construction site in Leningrad at the time. As one of the more than two hundred families receiving housing there, she was among those featured in a human-interest story published in the local newspaper Vechernii Leningrad. The two buildings on Shchemilovka being settled had reportedly only recently been covered in scaffolding; now they were complete and contained all sorts of amenities. As the stream of vehicles laden with household items advanced toward the new apartment block, the ‘cordial host’ – housing office manager G.A. Savitskii – greeted new residents.1