Abuse in providing housing in Kyiv in January 1944

Abstract

The question of the abuse of Communist Party-Soviet power in the allocation of housing in Kyiv, which had just been liberated from German-Nazi occupation, is being investigated. Based on materials from the Archive of the Security Service of Ukraine, the authors show that the best apartments were provided by the leader-ship of the republic to its employees, first of all, to the Central Committee of the Communist Party, the government, the NKVD, which ranked second in terms of the number of allocated housing, the apparatus of the Supreme Council of the Republic, the top of the communist youth organization, some people's commissars and scien-tists of the Academy of Sciences and theater artists. The author analyzes the reasons why each of these organizations and institutions was granted benefits when obtain-ing housing. Providing the largest number of apartments to employees of the Acad-emy of Sciences is not at all explained by the devotion of the communist leaders to science, but by some practical considerations. It should be emphasized that Ukrain-ian scientists made a huge contribution to increasing the defense potential of the USSR and solving the problems faced by the Soviet army. In second place in terms of the total number of apartments was the NKVD of the Ukrainian SSR, which received 500 apartments, the NKGB of the Ukrainian SSR was provided with 350 apartments. This second place was quite understandable, because it was about power structures and the resistance of the Soviet totalitarian regime. The apparatus of the govern-ment of the republic received much less - 200 apartments. In general, the analysis of this small but very revealing document from the SBU archive shows that, despite the devastation, deaths and tragedies of millions of people, the height of the war (the entire territory of Ukraine will be liberated only after 9 months, in October 1944, and the Second World War the war will end in a year and seven months), the communist "tops" did not want to live like everyone else, but arranged a "banquet in the midst of the plague": good apartments, food and clothes from special stores, and entertainment.