Housing Privatization and Housing Protest in the Transition from State Socialism: A Comparative Study of Budapest and Moscow

The focus of this paper is on housing privatization and housing conflict in moscow and Budapest since 1990. In Moscow the policy of 'free' housing privatization started in 1990 but take-up was low until 1992, after which there was a sharp rise to 35%. In Budapest housing privatization has involved payment and has risen slowly to 35 %. In Budapest the Tenants Association has had cooperative relations with the authorities, whereas in Moscow there has been sharp conflict between 'housing partnerships' and authorities. These patterns are explained in terms of tenants' motivations, institutional interests and the economic and political environment in the two cities. It is shown that these in turn reflect the different variants of state socialism in Hungary and Russia and the character of the 'transition' in each case. Particular emphasis is placed on the familiarity of the concept of home ownership, the level of personal economic security and the degree of institutional stability as immediate causes of the progress of housing privatization. The difference in patterns of housing conflict in the two cities is related to the degree of 'maturity' of democracy (with consequences for state responses to protest) and on the differentiation of commercial and residential property markets which affects the demands made in the housing privatization process.