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Anna Zhelnina, "Private Life, Public Action: How Housing Politics Mobilized Citizens in Moscow" (Temple UP, 2025)
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A
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B
Hello, everybody. This is Marshall Poe. I'm the founder and editor of the New Books Network. And if you're listening to this, you know that the NBN is the largest academic podcast network in the world. We reach a worldwide audience of 2 million people. You may have a podcast or you may be thinking about starting a podcast. As you probably know, there are challenges basically of two kinds. One is technical. There are things you have to know in order to get your podcast produced and distributed. And the second is, and this is the biggest problem, you need to get an audience. Building an audience in podcasting is the hardest thing to do today. With this in mind, we at the NBM have started a service called NBN Productions. What we do is help you create a podcast, produce your podcast, distribute your podcast, and we host your podcast. Most importantly, what we do is we distribute your podcast to the NBN audience. We've done this many times with many academic podcasts, and we would like to help you. If you would be interested in talking to us about how we can help you with your podcast, please contact us. Just go to the front page of the New Books Network and you will see a link to NBN Productions. Click that, fill out the form, and we can talk. Welcome to the New Books Network.
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C
Hello, and welcome to another episode on the New Books Network. I'm one of your hosts, Dr. Miranda Melcher, and I'm very pleased to have on the podcast today someone who has in fact, already been a host on the New Books Network as well, but is here today as an author, as an interviewee, to tell us about a really interesting book she's written, published by Temple University Press in 2025, titled Private Life, Public How Housing Politics Mobilize Citizens in Moscow. So, Dr. Anna Zhelnina, welcome back to the New Books Network. Thank you for being on this side of the interview and I'm so pleased for this conversation.
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D
Hello. And I'm happy to be here. Thank you for having me.
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C
Could you please start us off by introducing yourself a little bit and tell us about the Moscow renovation plan and why you decided to write a book about it.
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D
Of course. So I am currently an assistant professor of Interdisciplinary Social Science at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, and I did my PhD at the city University of New York. And the book that we are talking about today is based on that dissertation that I produced at CUNY. I started working on this project, well, almost nine years ago. It was in 2016 actually, that I was working on my dissertation proposal. And I was always fascinated with housing, all things related to housing, related movements, mobilization, collective action, neighborhood living. And I was preparing a proposal on that. But in 2017, this renovation project was announced and I had to completely rethink my approach to dissertating. So I switched my subject because I could see that this massive urban renewal project, which is what renovation basically is, that it was really changing social and political fabric in Moscow. This is the capital of Russia, of course, and it was still unprecedented in scale. How much response this urban renewal proposal triggered from urban residents in the neighborhoods that were affected by the proposal. So what was renovation? It actually suggested a complete renewal of Soviet era residential areas. It suggested demolishing more than 4,000 apartment buildings initially that were constructed sometime around the mid 20th century. They were labeled as dilapidated, poor quality. And basically the city said, well, it's easier to get rid of those apartment buildings altogether than trying to fix them. And just to give you an idea of the scale of this proposal, of how many people were to be affected. So in those thousands of apartment buildings, more than a million Muscovites were residing at the moment. So the majority of people in the capital of Russia were living in those Soviet era buildings. And that was quite massive. And to my surprise, there was not much research done at the moment on what it meant for the people in the city. So that's how I jumped on this project and did my research on renovation between 2017 and 2019. And that's what the book is based on.
- [05:22]
C
That's a very helpful introduction to our discussion and always really interesting to hear about the kind of behind the scenes of how a project develops. Because often we are researching things and then something happens and it's like, oh, wait, okay, what are we going to do about this? So when we are looking at a big project like this, I mean, I'm curious about what you mentioned. Around sort of, you were able to immediately notice that it was impacting sort of everyday People's thinking and decision making when they were examining this project and was kind of launched into their awareness. So can you map out for us what are some of the key factors that are in people's heads, consciously or unconsciously, that contribute to kind of how they think about and react to something like this?
- [06:08]
D
Of course, it's actually a very big topic in the book. So what does actually influence people's opinions about urban renewal and the prospect of relocation? And I started off with some kind of usual suspects. The factors that are often considered when we're talking about topics like this, and this is socioeconomic status of people affected. So at the time in the media, you could often see that poorer people were happy to accept this renewal and relocation proposal because that would help them improve their housing conditions. And just. I didn't mention this. But also, the quality of the housing in question is very diverse. There are some relatively small, solid buildings that were in good condition, but there were also buildings that were, in fact, falling apart and required a lot of maintenance to keep them habitable. So, indeed, some people were happy to get an opportunity to move into a newer apartment because they just didn't have their funding available to do it on their own. So. So that was one big thing. But eventually, when I started actually talking to people and listening to their explanations of the process, how they arrived at a certain position to support the proposal or to oppose it, I could see that it was becoming a bit more complex Than just the kind of socioeconomic explanation that I just mentioned. So there's so much crystallized in how people see their housing and themselves as homeowners or tenants. The one big thing is, of course, the idea of what is good housing and the ideas about it are very diverse. They depend, of course, on kind of the cultures that we are socialized into, because we imagine good housing.
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Differently. And for many Muscovites, a separate apartment with all the amenities, but also something that could accommodate all their family members, was important. And.
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It wouldn't be a surprise to hear that also, people really connected their dignity as citizens to the quality of their housing. So being a resident of a decent apartment, probably a homeowner, that meant a lot also in terms of how people just felt.
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As citizens, as members of society. But in addition to that, I also noticed that housing does bring out people's perceptions of the state and their trust in government institutions. And we can see that also, actually, in other political contexts, not just in Russia, that the perception of urban renewal proposals, especially those driven by the state, are embedded in how People perceive those government institutions, do they trust them? Do they suspect them, that they don't have people's best interests at heart? So all of that also played a big role there. And it's not a surprise for especially people who know something about Russian political culture that the distrust, the mistrust towards state institutions is actually something very widespread. But another thing that I also noticed is that personal or family housing trajectories played a big role. So basically the experiences with the housing system, with government institutions, with neighbors, that people had also influenced their opinions on renovation. So if there was a history in the family of some housing related injustice or conflicts, then it was more likely that people were really cautious to accept the promises of the state. So really, the situation shows you how many different considerations go into housing related decisions, and specifically in the decision to support or oppose renovation.
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C
Yeah, as you said, there's a lot going on there. So I think we'll probably come back to a number of those things, but it helps to get at least a sense of some of the things that are swirling around in people's heads. But I think the thread I most want to pick up from is the kind of history aspect of what you've talked about there, that these ideas don't just kind of come up when something like renovation is presented. People are drawing on things that have happened before. And in fact, one of the things you talk about they might be drawing on goes all the way back to the Soviet era, where policies for housing obviously had a really big impact on people. So what did it mean then in terms of determining kind of what was desirable versus undesirable housing, and how do we still have kind of remnants or legacies of those ideas then in what you've just described for us now, this.
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D
Is of course a very important question and a very important topic to consider here because, and I would say there are two aspects to this. So there's one narrative about housing, socialist housing, and what it was in the Soviet era. But there's also a part on Moscow specifically. And I would like to talk about both of these aspects. So to start with the socialist housing, which still plays a role in how people perceive housing, their right to housing in contemporary Russia. In the Soviet times, there was no private property, so everybody was sort of a tenant, but a social tenant, if you will. Everyone received their housing from the states and they were renting it from. From the state or from the big enterprises where people were working for kind of a very affordable fee. And the socialist housing policy revolved around the idea that housing is actually a right, that people have a right to decent housing. They have a right to improve their housing conditions. And that was the task, the goal of government institutions or those public enterprises, employers, to improve people's housing conditions. So that perception is still really strong. And many residents in Moscow who I spoke to also perceive housing as a right. And that's an important context to keep in mind here. On the other hand, there's Moscow. And Moscow, as I mentioned, is the capital of Russia. It's the richest city historically. It's also a city that attracts a lot of internal migration. It's a very desirable place to live. And despite this socialist idea of having a classless society where people would not have any privileges in terms of getting better conditions, better housing based on their class situation, the example of Moscow very clearly shows you that this ideal was never really achieved. Because just in the city space of Moscow, we can see different neighborhoods with different reputations, with different kind of degrees of prestige associated with them. So as I mentioned, a lot of housing, most of the housing stock in Moscow was actually constructed during the socialist, the Soviet period. But there are still neighborhoods that are considered very prestigious with very good housing. And this would be often located in the northwest part of the, of the city. And there are more kind of middle class, or lower middle class, if you will, neighborhoods these days that are historically places where big factories, for example, would build housing for their residents. So there's a bit of inequality also coming from the socialist housing distribution patterns. So it is, to sum up what I just said, it is important to consider that these neighborhoods, these housing blocks, are not all equal. They're different in quality. People also attach different kind of degree of desirability to these different types of housing and to different neighborhoods. But it's also important to remember that this idea of housing as a right instead of something that you have to earn, as the capitalist housing system often implies, it is also.
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An important context for the renovation program.
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B
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C
Always helpful to have more context. Nothing is ever simple. So great to keep kind of adding these layers in thinking then less about kind of what's happening individually in everyone's heads. I wonder about the kind of social aspect between, between people. So in these, for example Soviet housing.
- [17:02]
Housing plans you're discussing, but I guess even after that, in the post Soviet era, but before we get to these renovation plans, like was there sort of socializing around housing, like I mean even a really basic example, like did people know their neighbors names or was that not part of the culture until we get to this point?
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D
Well, I think it depends on which specific period we're talking about. Because initially many of those residential blocks, and they are blocks, so they have a very specific layout.
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They're relatively low rise, they are mostly five stories high, they have an inner courtyard. So they are kind of conducive to neighbors at least seeing each other and meeting. And initially when they were built there was also, I think we could imagine a different culture of neighborly life back then in the Soviet times also because sometimes people were literally building those buildings with their own hands, especially in the so called cooperative houses or cooperative buildings when future residents were involved in constructing those buildings. So the networks of neighbors would emerge from those very early days and some older residents still living.
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In those buildings or their family members, they remember those days when the neighbors really knew each other. But of course it really changed. And Moscow is a huge city and as I mentioned, it's a very attractive.
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City for internal migration. And the population does change a lot. So after those maybe kind of more familiar, more neighborly times in the Soviet era blocs, it became more anonymous. So people normally don't really know their neighbors, even if they kind of can recognize their faces, of their immediate neighbors, or of people who are usually outside. Like the dog walkers are those characters that people often know, or people tending to their small gardens right next to the apartment buildings. So apart from that, people normally don't really socialize. And I actually had this question in my interviews. When I spoke to people, I would ask them, like, do you know your neighbors? Did you know your neighbors before the renovation was announced? And I often got a response like, what do you think? This is a big city. You probably also don't know your neighbors because it's so anonymous. And this kind of urban anonymity was really normalized. So there was not much room for.
- [19:56]
Socializing, for collective action also, because people just wanted to be left alone, really. Like they enjoyed the urban anonymity that those Moscow neighborhoods allowed. But I should also mention that even though this was kind of the normal situation of anonymity was so normalized, there were also.
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Kind of neighborhood movements, housing related movements, emerging just before renovation was announced across Moscow. So collective action in Moscow was often triggered by redevelopment because this is not the first redevelopment effort in the city in the capitalist era. But people did mobilize to protect their green areas, for example, or to resist the construction of highways right next to residential buildings. So there was something going on. And there were activist groups in most of the neighborhoods that I studied. But it's also important to mention that one kind of very strong trigger for collective action also at the local level actually came from the national level political movement, the national opposition that was especially prominent in the around 2011, 2012, when the massive movement against electoral fraud took place across Russia, also in Moscow. And as a result of this massive movement, some activists who were mobilized for this kind of national effort, they also turned their attention to local issues and became activists at the local level. And this created a foundation for what happened later during renovation.
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C
So let's talk more then about renovation. And before we get into how people reacted to it, can you tell us more about how it was framed? Like, what was it trying to renovate? What was it sort of not focused on? What was the logic behind those sorts of decisions?
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D
Yes, actually the name of the program, this official name Renovation, is very misleading because it's when you hear it, you might think, oh, they are going to renovate. They were going to renovate the buildings, the actual apartment buildings. But this is an example of really seeing.
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Like the city, like the state. So it's a macro approach to renovation, because the idea behind this policy, this project, was to renovate the whole city. So basically it was framed as this massive effort to change the quality of the housing stock in the city by demolishing old buildings and replacing them with new ones. So it did not involve renovating the existing buildings. And this kind of gaze really shows you what the scale of this effort. The policy was framed as a gift to the city, to Muscovites, basically a free improvement, an opportunity to improve the housing conditions for free. But it was also an effort to make Moscow more modern, more kind of contemporary, more competitive on the global.
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Kind of in this global market. And the goal was to improve Moscow, not to improve individual housing conditions of the people, actually. And in addition to that, something that was less pronounced and less present in the public.
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Kind of advertisements of the program was the fact that it was also an effort to redistribute Moscow's very valuable land and the socialist blocks, those residential areas, they often stand on very expensive land next to the city center, in areas with very developed social infrastructure, transportation, and so on and so forth. So those are just really Prof. Potentially profitable areas where new housing can be built. And the socialist buildings, because they are low rise, because they are relatively affordable, they just don't have that promise of a huge profit. So the city was also trying to change that and to use.
- [24:48]
The land that those buildings occupy more efficiently. And the idea was also to support the construction sector. So the companies, the developers that would be involved in demolishing and building new apartment buildings would also be supported by this, by this effort. And what I found also really interesting is that in addition to kind of depicting these socialist era residential blocks as dilapidated and in need of maintenance, which often was the case, the city government also started basically just demonizing those areas and painting them as those.
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Dens of crime and social disorder and all kinds of bad influences for the city. So it was also an interesting effort to completely change how Muscovites themselves perceive those neighborhoods. But it shows you that it was kind of an example of the city level thinking, very ambitious projects, not really incorporating the views and the perspectives of ordinary citizens.
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C
Let's talk then about those views and perspectives of ordinary citizens. What sorts of sides or factions, I suppose, developed for and against these plans that you've just laid out, how did people decide kind of how to react and which sides to take?
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D
So as, as you already mentioned, there were two main sides. There was the side that.
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Kind of immediately supported the program, people who really wanted to move out of their socialist era buildings. There was another side, their opponents, who were ardently Opposed to demolitions. They wanted to stay put. They wanted to stay in their cozy apartments. So there was that. But what I found really interesting is that not everyone actually develop the A position immediately. And one of my favorite examples is that. So I should have mentioned that there was some democratic effort involved in this process. So the residents of the buildings considered for demolition were invited to cast a vote, which was really not legally a vote, but just a procedure to collect opinions of the individual residents, whether they wanted to move or whether they wanted to stay where they are. And people could cast their votes as many times as they wanted. So not just once as in a normal voting procedure. And one of my favorite examples is.
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A person, I don't know them, but they voted in this voting procedure seven times. So they changed their mind multiple times. And while this is kind of an extreme example, there were more people who would change their mind several times and revote. So that shows you that not everyone really immediately developed a position. And that is the process that I was really interested in. And there's a chapter in the book describing precisely that. So how do people arrive at a position? And as I mentioned, there were people who basically had immediate gut reactions to the announcement, and they immediately knew that they were hopeful or they immediately knew that they need to do whatever it takes to stop this. And I have examples of those positions in the book. But I also explore what happened with people who were not sure initially how did they develop their position. And I explored this process of articulation. How do people explain to themselves and to the others why they want to move or why they prefer to stay where they are? So that's a very interesting.
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Process for me, and I do dedicate quite a lot of attention to it in the book. And one thing I show is that speaking.
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To other people is really important to us when we make our decisions, when we develop positions. So this process of articulation and.
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Kind of being in a dialogue with others is really important. And this is also where the activists come in. And I show this in the book as well, that, well, it's really hard to convince someone who already developed a strong position about something, but it is possible to intervene with those who are undecided yet. And activists in this case, I do talk about specifically the activists on the anti renovation side, how they try to develop arguments and talk to their neighbors to convince them to vote against renovation. And they could really be very successful there. And I also show that, that in some areas, in some buildings that are very similar in quality and very similar in their socio demographic profile, if you will.
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The kind of the result, the outcome of the vote could be completely different. And the deciding factor there was the activity of someone who really advocated for a particular position. So this is just to say that yes, the housing trajectories matter, the people, people's experiences and expectations and their distrust or their trust towards state institutions, all of that matters. But there's still a room for activists to work with these, with these perceptions, with these ideas, with those cultural tropes to convince people and to help them arrive at the particular position.
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C
So clearly there are then lots of, or at least some enough to make a difference, kind of clear opinions and people willing to go around and do something about them. To what extent was this something that was encouraged on the policy side? Were people, for example, invited to express their opinions or influence policy, or was it just sort of. Well, you can think what you like, but don't tell us about it.
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D
Well, there was this voting procedure that I mentioned. So the, the city administration really presented this as an unprecedentedly democratic process because the individual homeowners and tenants alike were invited to cast this vote and say whether they support the demolition of their building or not. So theoretically, yes, there were spaces where people could express their opinion, but what was strongly discouraged was any collective discussion or any collective development of a position. And the government still organized events where people could come and ask their questions if they had any. There were so called meetings in the.
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Local administrations, but also in the kind of the district administrations. This is the higher level administrative unit in Moscow, where the head of this unit would be present, would deliver a very standardized pitch for renovation, and then invite people to ask questions. But those meetings were framed as kind of a one way street. So the participants, the attendees.
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Were expected to be there to kind of quietly listen to what was conveyed to them and then maybe ask a couple of questions. But they were strongly discouraged to use, to express any collective opinion or to form any collective action.
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But people really, of course, were not, were not happy with this. And.
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Despite this discouragement, new spaces emerged where people still wanted to have a collective process to make a collective decision, to discuss different opinions. And under the pressure from the activist groups, from residents, there was also a huge debate.
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In the State Duma, because the whole renovation plan also required a change in legislation. And.
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The parliament was a necessary arena to change that legislation. So at some point a public hearing also took place at that level. And this is where those collective opinions and collective discontent was very visible. But that was rather unplanned. So the initial idea was inviting individuals to vote quietly informed them about the very general, very vague conditions of the proposal. And this collective action was really not invited and not expected at all.
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A
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- [35:07]
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C
Clear from reading some of the details in your book, that the policy leaders were like, okay, this wasn't maybe necessarily in our plan, but guess this is happening now. And in fact happening now not just in the forums that the policy leaders kind of expected things to happen, not just necessarily in the corridors of the housing developments. This grassroots mobilization is going beyond that into quite a few spaces. Is that right?
- [36:05]
D
Absolutely. And one interesting detail that I also noticed while researching this, that even though the official spaces, those invited spaces were not really welcoming to all this commotion, to the mobilization of neighbors, neighbors, residents could still hijack those spaces and maybe use them not as it was initially intended. So I have examples of how active residents really hijacked those meetings in the local administrations by being very vocal, but also by using these spaces where many neighbors who didn't know each other came together. They use those spaces as mobilization grounds, basically. So in addition to the official purpose, there was something else going on in those same rooms or in the waiting halls next to those rooms. So a lot of activity, a lot of mobilization was really happening in between the in those cracks, if you will, between the official spaces, in the waiting halls, in the local administrations where activists were present with their paperwork, they wanted to attend office hours or something. And while waiting in the corridors, they also had a chance to meet each other, to mobilize, to exchange experiences. So a lot of this was happening kind of in the gray areas of the official arenas, but there was also something else happening. And I Mentioned earlier that those socialist housing blocks, they had a specific layout that they had courtyards and spaces where people could meet but normally wouldn't engage with one another. So that completely changed during the renovation related mobilization. Those spaces really came to life in a very different way from before. So people would have meetings in those courtyards, they would turn the staircases, those kind of entry hallway spaces, into agitation arenas. Everything was plastered in posters, announcements, calls to attend a neighbor's meeting. So these spaces that were really ordinary transformed into political arenas because, because of this threat to, to those apartment blocks. So in, in addition to hijacking or transforming official spaces, people really transformed their routine, everyday spaces into political, political arenas, which wasn't always positive. And I also do talk about that in, in the book that basically.
- [39:16]
Some activists who became very recognizable because of their activities, they couldn't have, no, they couldn't have any rest in those domestic spaces where they would normally expect to be a bit more anonymous or to have a chance to have some rest and kind of turn off the pressures of their work life, of their public life. But they couldn't do it anymore because everything became, everything was political. So even if you took out your dog, you ended up just chatting to your neighbors for an hour because everyone wanted to, who recognized you, wanted to speak with you about something. And people also felt threatened. Some of the activists, for example, on the anti renovation side, who were in a minority, for example, in their building, they often shared with me that they didn't feel safe surrounded by all the pro renovation activists, their neighbors. So that's an interesting flip side of this transformation of the domestic spaces into political arenas. But definitely that was not a normal situation for Moscow that those ordinary spaces became so politicized.
- [40:37]
C
This was really interesting to read about, especially for some of those kind of more evocative details that you just shared a little bit of there in terms of kind of what this meant when someone walked into an apartment, for example, and kind of how this changed things. And of course you mentioned a little bit earlier some of the impacts of all of this organizing in terms of votes and changing minds. Is there anything further you want to tell us about the impact of all of this?
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D
So what I mentioned had to do with the immediate voting outcomes and I mentioned that the activists could change how their neighbors voted. But in the book I also look at the kind of longer term outcomes of those mobilizations. So in addition to saving some buildings or adding some apartment buildings to those demolition lists, these activities really changed how local politics operated in the renovation, affected areas. And I specifically discuss two examples in the books. One is the municipal elections. Those are very local level elections in Moscow neighborhoods that took place only a few months after the renovation was announced. And normally these are very sleepy elections, if that's even a thing. No one really pays attention. People rarely even were aware that they had a municipal council in their neighborhoods. And for that reason, because of this kind of political apathy at the local level, those municipal councils were often hijacked, again to use that word, by the United Russia party or by the kind of regime adjacent political actors. So there was not much oppositional activity in those municipal councils, with few exceptions. But after renovation, Muscovites realized that those were actually important sources of information, of resources for the neighborhood's maintenance, and they turned their attention to those municipal elections. And as a result of this mobilization, as a result of this improved attention to everything political, the 2017 election, municipal elections in Moscow resulted in quite a few successes for the oppositional municipal candidates. Some activists who mobilized in response to renovation also ran as candidates in those elections. Some of them won seats in several districts, municipal districts. The municipal councils were, as a result, completely independent, so comprised of people not affiliated with the United Russia, the party of power at the time. So I could trace how that happened. So where did the candidates come from? Also who voted for them and how the activists of the renovation time kind of channeled their activity, their new skills, their new knowledge, their new networks into those more formal political efforts. So that happened right after renovation. You could say, well, this is just kind of the momentum of renovation that helped those elections to become so important. But I also looked two years later, almost two years later, in 2019, the city council elections in Moscow, you could still see the same social structures in action when preparing for those elections. The pushback from the government was much stronger because that was kind of a more visible political arena than the municipal elections. But the activists were still trying their best. You could still see the continuity from the renovation era networks and efforts in those elections. So this is just to say, to show how those smaller scale mobilizations can really build up to political changes at higher levels of politics.
- [45:12]
C
I think that's very helpful to understand the kind of flow, as you said, up the food chain, potentially. I wonder if we can talk about kind of across as well. I mean, to what extent, for example, is this Moscow based story? Obviously, Moscow is really important, right? As you said, it is the capital city. It is a really important one in people's minds in Russia. Is there, however, any element of what You've been telling us about Moscow. That might apply to other places in Russia.
- [45:39]
D
I think, of course, it can apply to other places in Russia, but I also think that it can apply to other places, other big cities undergoing transformation of some kind in other countries, in other national contexts even. But you're right, Moscow does sound very special. It does sound very special inside of Russia.
- [46:03]
But I do think that for cities that are facing urban renewal or displacement or some kind of redevelopment in capitalist cities, the process is very similar. If you go kind of, if you get to the bottom of it, the processes of mobilizing the processes of.
- [46:29]
Those alliances between the big capital and the city governments, they are kind of very similar, even though I should say, of course, the authoritarian context of contemporary Russia and the increasingly authoritarian context at the time that plays a role. But it is surprising how many authoritarian.
- [46:55]
Elements you can see, even in cities, in countries that are not necessarily seen as authoritarian. So even in democratic context, you can see elements of this.
- [47:09]
Well, I wouldn't say suppression of the individual and collective will of people living in the areas. There are all kinds of ways, the growth machines or those political economic alliances that are governing cities, that they can push their vision of the city, push their vision of redevelopment and how difficult it can be for the ordinary citizens to oppose that. So definitely I would say that this attention to the role of civic infrastructures, those activist networks, the capacity of different neighborhoods to mobilize and resist it is a universal story, if you will.
- [47:56]
C
Yeah, I mean, there's many big cities, right? There's many. Housing is something that everyone's concerned with. So it definitely makes sense to think beyond Russia. Is there anything else that you hope readers take away from the book we haven't discussed yet?
- [48:08]
D
Well, I think we talked about most of my key ideas, I think, but I just would like to summarize that I think it is very important to look at that lowest level of political life, the.
- [48:25]
Anything housing related, anything that looks really mundane and ordinary.
- [48:34]
All of these kind of spheres of life, they have a lot of political potential. And I think it's really important to pay attention to that. And another point that I'll also emphasize is the importance of those activist infrastructures, of activists, of their networks, of the skills and knowledge that they have. And they are important, but they are also very fragile. And that's something that we haven't talked about yet. But I also look at how what happened to those activist networks after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. And that was a very kind of revealing moment that shows you how fragile civil society can be, even though you would think, like what has housing to do with Ukraine and the war in Ukraine. But in the book I also very briefly show how immediate the effect of the invasion was for Moscow's civil society.
- [49:38]
How it affected its core, how it destroyed many of the tools that were developed during the previous few years. So just to make this point, that civic infrastructure is really important, but also very fragile and they need maintenance just like any other type of infrastructure.
- [49:56]
C
Yeah, that's definitely very important to remember. So I think that's probably a good place to conclude our discussion about the book. If I could ask though, you mentioned at the beginning kind of how long a project this has been for you. So I'm curious what you might be working on now that it's done and out in the world. Is there anything on your desk that you want to give a sneak preview of?
- [50:17]
D
Yes, actually, in a couple of months from now, I'm gonna be starting my next project. It's a European Research Council funded project on activism and mental well being of activists. And this project has a direct connection to what I did there with renovation and activists during that time. Because one of the big things that I kept hearing from people when I was collecting my data on renovation activism was how demanding it was and how difficult it was to stay sane and to stay healthy when faced with this.
- [51:05]
Massive task of really reverting the government policy and saving your home. So based on that, I developed this new project to look at how what does activism do to our mental well being, both positive and negative. So that's the next step for me.
- [51:24]
C
That certainly sounds really interesting. I hope that becomes a book and you can come back and tell us more.
- [51:29]
D
I'll happy to do that.
- [51:31]
C
In the meantime, of course, listeners can read the book we've been discussing titled Private Life Public How Housing Politics Mobilize Citizens in Moscow, published by Temple University Press in 2025. Anna, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast.
- [51:45]
D
Thank you for having.