Soviet Periodicals Proclaim the dawn of a new day for the apartment dweller of the USSR. Yet after thirty-four years of experimentation based upon an entirely new concept of housing relationships, the urban housing problem in the USSR seems to have become even more acute than it was at the outbreak of the Revolution. It is true that in pre-revolutionary Russia, with its economic backwardness and underdeveloped urban life and economy, there was a great lag in housing construction. No compiled data exist, however, from which it would be possible to construct a completely accurate picture of the housing conditions of the 24,700,000 persons who made up the urban population of pre-revolutionary Russia. It has been estimated that the average space available to the individual in 1912–1914 was 6.6 square yards.