City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects CUNY Graduate Center 9-2020 Engaging Neighbors: Housing Strategies and Political Mobilization in Moscow's Renovation Anna Zhelnina The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/4015 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] ENGAGING NEIGHBORS: HOUSING STRATEGIES AND POLITICAL MOBILIZATION IN MOSCOW'S RENOVATION by ANNA ZHELNINA A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Sociology in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2020 © 2020 ANNA ZHELNINA All Rights Reserved ii Engaging Neighbors: Housing Strategies and Political Mobilization in Moscow's Renovation by Anna Zhelnina This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Sociology in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. _______________________ James M. Jasper Date Chair of Examining Committee ________________________ Lynn Chancer Date Executive Officer Supervisory Committee: Sharon Zukin Jan Willem Duyvendak Philip Kasinitz THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iii ABSTRACT Engaging Neighbors: Housing Strategies and Political Mobilization in Moscow's Renovation by Anna Zhelnina Advisor: James M. Jasper In summer 2017, residents of thousands of socialist-era apartment buildings in Moscow were invited to vote and decide whether their building should be included in the demolition and relocation program proposed by the Mayor’s Office. Renovation is an ongoing urban renewal plan, first announced in Moscow in February 2017, to demolish whole neighborhoods of socialist-era, five-story buildings and replace them with high-rises. The vast project affected more than 5,000 buildings with approximately a million inhabitants. This dissertation addresses general questions of political agency and the possibility for diverse people in urban neighborhoods to produce change: to achieve desired policy outcomes, transform the rules of political interactions and the configuration of players in the urban political field. Inevitably, the interests, aspirations, and strategies of these people differ. In this thesis, I explore how these different aspirations and different life experiences clash, overlap, and develop into collective strategies, which can transform the relationships of the urban political field. To connect the experiences of Moscow residents facing urban renewal with the longstanding sociological debates, I synthesize theories of agency and strategy, theories of strategic interaction in social movement research, and urban scholarship on citizenship. Housing is a fundamental human goal, and ways of achieving and keeping a proper home shape a person’s housing strategy. Renovation soon turned into a housing struggle. The reason it sparked a high degree of mobilization in a relatively politically apathetic society is the thing it iv targeted: housing is literally the issue closest to home, able to provoke even politically indifferent people to act. I seek to demonstrate that political action partly grows out of individual strategies, motivations, aspirations, and feelings. These personal strategies, too, result in turn from earlier social and cultural processes. Renovation pulled Muscovites into the urban political field, a configuration of interactive arenas where decisions about the city in general and its specific parts can be negotiated. Setting foot in one arena could also motivate citizens to further explore the outlines of the field, and engage in interactions in further linked arenas, such as municipal elections. Previously, not many Muscovites had used or even known about the different arenas of urban and local politics, but the shock of potentially losing their home in Renovation exposed those structures to more citizens than ever before. People learned and tried out individual arenas, learned about the connections between different political arenas, and created new arenas, for example, homeowners’ assemblies or meetings of the new activist communities. v PREFACE I grew up in an old apartment building in Saint Petersburg, where I was taught that good neighbors were quiet neighbors. Bad neighbors had loud parties throughout the night and invited crowds of people who abused alcohol or drugs; they smoked or left trash in the stairwell, parked their cars under someone’s window and left their engine running or blasted music, causing noise and odors to invade the flats facing the courtyard. All these sound and smell invasions were painful for “normal” families. My mom would sometimes count the “normal” flats versus the “abnormal” ones in our building. The balance started shifting in the late 2000s: problematic kommunalkas were gradually transformed into separate flats, and the new owners were people whose economic well-being allowed them to purchase a flat. I always enjoyed my mom’s recounting the trajectories of the apartments in our building; stories about neighbors “receiving” and exchanging flats, going to great lengths to improve their housing conditions, and about acquaintances whose spouses turned out to be propiska predators – they married to get the official registration in the city. All these stories were about accumulation or losses, about gaining an advantage or losing it. My family was lucky: in the 1960s, my strategic and proactive grandmother made sure that her family received a room in a communal apartment in a good part of the city, in a decent building. This room became a foundation of our family’s housing well-being: before the USSR collapsed, my parents participated in the program aimed at eliminating communal apartments. As their neighbors moved out to new flats in other parts of the city, my parents’ status of life-long residents of Saint Petersburg entitled them to claim the emptying rooms for free. By the beginning of the 1990s, they had accumulated the whole flat. The timing worked well for us: after the country transitioned to market capitalism, the only way to acquire neighbors’ rooms in a communal apartment was to buy them. vi My family benefitted from the socialist-era housing policies and achieved a separate apartment. In the 2000s, we privatized it. But throughout my childhood, I remember my parents discussing that someone could come and relocate us (nas rasselyat). Because of this uncertainty, my parents would not perform any expensive repairs in the apartment. “We’d spend money – and the next week they would relocate us.” First, they said it with hope, and since the past decade or so – with fear. Over time, the building received the much-needed repairs, a small but reliable community of active neighbors emerged, and we valued our current home more and more as the prospect of getting a better apartment after a possible relocation diminished. Having lived under the Damocles’ sword of a possible relocation, I took it personally when Renovation created this reality for so many Muscovites. Most of them still don’t know whether or when their relocations will take place. They have to live with this uncertainty, not knowing whether it’s worth it to invest in improving their homes. When I was preparing for my first fieldwork visit to Moscow, I asked a Muscovite friend for advice. She was happy to help but laughed: “I already have an answer for you! Those who renovated their flats oppose Renovation, those who did not – support it!” It sounded sensible, but I knew that the reasons for renovating or not renovating one’s apartment could vary. Some people did not have the money for renovations; others, like my parents, might have lived in anticipation of relocations for decades and were reluctant to invest in something that might be taken from them tomorrow. Coming from a different city, I could still recognize many sentiments of my interlocutors in Moscow. It was also clear to me that Moscow was a traditional experimental ground for policies and innovations, the good ones and the bad ones, that could eventually travel to other regions of the country. Muscovites get everything first. vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Muscovites, who remain anonymous in the text, but who shared their views and feelings with me: thank you! You agreed to talk to me and helped me to see and love Moscow, an awkward fact for a native of Saint Petersburg to acknowledge. I’m indebted to my generous friends and colleagues in Moscow. Ksenia Isakova, Vanya Zhuk, and Prokhor let me stay with them and made me feel welcome and supported. Thank you for listening to my endless impressions from the field every evening! Daria Khlevnyuk and Nikolay Epplee, thank you for hosting and supporting me. Daria, you helped so much, taking photos, going places, and talking to me about Moscow. I also thank Oksana Zaporozhets for sharing her perspective, helping me find a place to stay, and cheering me up with cultural outings. Varvara Kobyshcha’s understanding of Moscow’s urban development was helpful and appreciated. I also thank the artist Viktoria Lomasko for sharing her Renovation-era sketches. In New York, I benefitted from the friendly and supportive atmosphere of the Sociology Program at the Graduate Center. Sebastian Villamizar-Santamaria, Isabel Gil-Everaert, and Benjamin Elbers: you are the best support crew for the Ph.D. enterprise that I can imagine. The input and support of my writing group, Maggie Fay, Hayden Ju, Susie Tannenbaum, were a stable source of inspiration. The Urban Studies Workshop: Sebastian Villamizar-Santamaria, Siqi Tu, Joanna Dressel, Kasey Zapatka, Viktor Bensus, and Nga Than provided helpful and thorough feedback on the chapter drafts at various stages. I am also grateful to my friends and colleagues at the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society and the Civil Society Workshop: Barbara Leopold, Merrill Sovner, Jessica Mahlbacher, and Trang Kelly.