Local Soviets and the Attempt to Rationalize the Delivery of Urban Services: The Case of Housing

Over the past fifty years Soviet society has recorded one of the fastest urbanization rates in the world. In 1926, 26·3 million people lived in urban areas, and there were two cities with over 1 million inhabitants, and nineteen with over 100,000. By the beginning of 1981, the number of urban residents had increased sixfold to 168·9 million, and there were twenty-one cities with a population of over 1 million, and 274 cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants (see Table 11.1).