Community Initiatives in Moscow: Demanding the Right to the Post-Socialist City?

This paper studies grass-root community and neighborhood initiatives in contemporary Russia. The fall of state-socialism has brought about radical changes in the meaning and defining living space. In the Soviet Union, housing was solely controlled by the state. Although tenant´s organizations did exist, it was not until Perestroika that state-independent tenants organizations developed. Since shock privatization of Russia´s housing market the Soviet policy aim of equalizing living conditions has been changed towards a mixtures of prolonging political control and installing neo-liberal market elements. Thus, community initiatives defending tenant´s interests by protesting and blockading urban development plans by government and business reflect new socio-economic, ethic and political cleavages in contemporary post-soviet urban settings. This paper analyzes three cases of neighborhood mobilization against neo-liberal urbanization in Moscow – against a hotel for migrants, the construction of a radial highway and resistance against raids of workman´s residential homes. The study sheds light on different opportunities and constraints, frames and mobilization strategies of post-soviet citizens vis-á-vis state and business actors. Citizen´s struggles to define and control public in relation to private space as well as their striving to participate in decision making will be discussed in terms of their ability to broaden the initiatives´ problem frames to general issues in Russian society. Moreover, are the various forms of collective action capable of contributing to the empowerment of identities of democratic citizenship and, therefore, become a movement to the right to the city?