LAUSR

city. As is, emphasis on increasing centralization and decreasing experimentation detracts from discussions about the significance of the flexibility that remained in architecture and urban planning throughout the 1920s. That Meerovich abundantly shows this to have yielded a variety of designs and prolonged engagement with western European models is not surprising given that the book is largely set amid the New Economic Policy, an era that necessitated economic and ideological compromise, yet witnessed a fervor for social transformation. Further complicating his key assertion that the state strove to make housing an instrument of power are factors like the persistence of individual ownership and of cooperative construction—indicators of enduring popular influence in housing—that he himself recognizes. That said, Meerovich achieves his aim of outlining the establishment of the Soviet departmental workers’ settlement in terms of its predecessors and the official decrees, intentions and norms that attended its development. Especially interesting are his account of how European architecture and urban planning concepts were transmitted to Russia, and his portrayal of the myriad ideas for revamping daily living that emerged in the early Soviet era—all enriched by nearly two hundred illustrations. As Meerovich amply demonstrates, until late in the 1920s, the form that housing was to take was not dictated. His meticulously researched book is therefore of special value to scholars interested in the history of Russian architecture and urban planning across the revolutionary divide.