ABSTRACT
Urbanization is a major component of economic development and modernization. This chapter analyzes the Soviet urban experience in terms of systemic features, historical trends, and comparative analysis to help people understand the various forces underlying Soviet urbanization and to isolate those factors peculiar to the Soviet case. It attempts to place Soviet urbanization in a historical context to explain both prerevolutionary development and, particularly, Stalin's impact on the nature and shape of Soviet urban growth. Soviet and Western urban development invite comparison. But one fallacious Western tendency is to judge the contemporary Soviet city by Western standards. In the USSR urban growth was planned and implemented by state agencies within the context of public ownership of the means of production. The USSR has more doctors than any other country, but it lags behind the West in diagnostic equipment and the development of new drugs, and it suffers from chronic shortages of ordinary medicines.
