(NON-)TEMPORARY HOUSING: PRACTICES OF SOLVING THE HOUSING PROBLEM IN LATE SOVIET NADYM (1960S-1980S)

Maksim Mochalin

doi:10.36906/2311-4444/26-3/09

UDC 93/94

(NON-)TEMPORARY HOUSING: PRACTICES OF SOLVING THE HOUSING PROBLEM IN LATE SOVIET NADYM (1960S-1980S)

Published in Bulletin of Nizhnevartovsk State University · Issue 3 · Pages 107–115 · Rubric: Domestic History

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36906/2311-4444/26-3/09

Received: 04.04.2026 Accepted: 16.09.2026 Published: 25.09.2026

Authors

Maksim Mochalin

ORCID

Maksim Mochalin

Tyumen State University Russian Federation · Tyumen

ORCID

ABSTRACT

This article examines the phenomenon of "slumification" in the city of Nadym during the oil and gas development of the northern West Siberian region (1960s–1980s). The study aims to comprehend the causes behind the emergence of spontaneous settlements and to analyze the local authorities' efforts to eradicate the temporary housing stock. Drawing on a comprehensive corpus of archival materials, the local periodical press (specifically, the newspaper “Rabochiy Nadyma”), and contemporaries’’ memoirs. The author establishes that despite official directives to liquidate temporary structures, the launching of a large-panel prefabricated housing plant, and a ban on importing new mobile wagons, a significant part of the population continued to reside in unamenable temporary buildings until the late 1980s. This phenomenon highlights a systemic divergence between state planning targets and actual housing construction practices. The study reveals that the prolonged existence of these “slums” resulted from resource deficits, a mismatch between planned indicators and actual demographic growth, the substandard quality of new capital housing, and practices of unauthorized construction outside approved master plans. The author concludes that temporary residential areas exerted a long-term impact on the formation of Nadym's urban landscape, becoming part of the material heritage of the region's industrial development era. The “slums” of Nadym reflected a fundamental contradiction between the production-heavy priorities of Arctic exploration and the social objectives of creating a comfortable urban environment. This work contributes to the historiography of socialist urbanization and problematizes the adaptation mechanisms of spontaneous settlement forms to the modernization of the northern oil and gas frontier.

KEYWORDS

socialist urbanization, housing policy, social history of the USSR, Nadym, slums, slumification, housing construction, balki, temporary housing, Nadymgazprom, oil and gas development

Funding

The Russian Science Foundation (project No. 23-78-10123)

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Mochalin M. S. (NON-)TEMPORARY HOUSING: PRACTICES OF SOLVING THE HOUSING PROBLEM IN LATE SOVIET NADYM (1960S-1980S) // Bulletin of Nizhnevartovsk State University. 2026. no. 3. pp. 107-115. DOI: https://doi.org/10.36906/2311-4444/26-3/09. (Date of access 19.10.2026).

MLA

Maksim Mochalin. "(NON-)TEMPORARY HOUSING: PRACTICES OF SOLVING THE HOUSING PROBLEM IN LATE SOVIET NADYM (1960S-1980S)." Bulletin of Nizhnevartovsk State University.3 (2026): 107-115. DOI: https://doi.org/10.36906/2311-4444/26-3/09.

APA

Mochalin M. S. (2026). (NON-)TEMPORARY HOUSING: PRACTICES OF SOLVING THE HOUSING PROBLEM IN LATE SOVIET NADYM (1960S-1980S). Bulletin of Nizhnevartovsk State University(3), 107-115. https://doi.org/10.36906/2311-4444/26-3/09

Chicago

Maksim Mochalin. "(NON-)TEMPORARY HOUSING: PRACTICES OF SOLVING THE HOUSING PROBLEM IN LATE SOVIET NADYM (1960S-1980S)." Bulletin of Nizhnevartovsk State University, no. 3 (2026): 107-115. https://doi.org/10.36906/2311-4444/26-3/09.

WIKI

{{cite journal | author = Mochalin M. S. | title = (NON-)TEMPORARY HOUSING: PRACTICES OF SOLVING THE HOUSING PROBLEM IN LATE SOVIET NADYM (1960S-1980S) | journal = Bulletin of Nizhnevartovsk State University | year = 2026 | issue = 3 | pages = 107-115 | doi = 10.36906/2311-4444/26-3/09 }}

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(NON-)TEMPORARY HOUSING: PRACTICES OF SOLVING THE HOUSING PROBLEM IN LATE SOVIET NADYM (1960S-1980S)

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