Typical project of a house of a Soviet collective farmer: what was supposed to be massively built for village residents

Each of us has at least once been to a typical ancient middle zone of Russia, not yet spoiled by siding and metal profiles, in such a village, where front gardens and small, almost identical, village houses have been preserved, look with their three windows at wide rural streets. The external similarity of the buildings is no coincidence: well-established traditions of construction, lack of assortment building materials and the same wealth were not too conducive to the embodiment of individual architectural projects.

Interesting fact: in 1944, the government decided to systematize knowledge on the construction of rural wooden houses and developed "Typical project of a collective farmer's residential house", an explanatory note to which was recently published by the State Archives of the Pskov area. The document is very curious and informative, and even gives a hint of an answer to the question: why the rural population of the country of the Soviets began to decline.

The construction of typical houses was supposed to be in the forest regions of the BSSR and the middle zone of the RSFSR. Let us remind you that the yard was 44 years old - the end of the war, devastation, and the housing stock had to be restored. And the government chose the most extensive way - to take a typical hut, the history of which goes back a couple of hundred years, and describe it, from a constructive point of view, without introducing anything new. There was no question of any engineering communications, planning conveniences or the use of deeply processed wood: the house is one-room - the walls are chopped.

Layout

The first thing that attracts attention is the layout. The living area of ​​the house consisted of one room 26 sq. m. If you believe the stories of grandmothers, and there is no reason not to believe them, there were many children in rural families of that time, in addition, old people often lived under the same roof with their families. Thus, 3 generations of 8-10 people were supposed to live in one room.

In general, the explication of the house included 11 rooms. This is the already mentioned living room, a cold entrance, a storage room, which is also obviously cold, and a porch-terrace. And then the interesting begins. According to the developers, a Soviet collective farmer of the middle of the 20th century had to live under the same roof with pets and these are not cats or dogs. The house was planned to house a poultry house, a cow house and a small livestock house. The restroom deserves a separate description. It was supposed to be located within the animal building, right between the cow and the poultry. It is very convenient and civilized - there is no need to run in the cold or in the rain to a separate outhouse on the site. And so it went down to the wind relatively comfortably and checked the cattle.

Foundation

Despite the fact that the construction industry of that time had long used cement, concrete and brick, the foundation of the peasant house was planned to be wooden in the form of log chairs with a depth of at least 125 cm. The chairs, before being installed in their place, had to be roasted over low heat or coated with hot resin. Pick-up logs were also subjected to pitching, which filled the gaps between the chairs below the level of the walls. The foundation for the Russian stove was carried out separately. It was made in the form of a small log cabin, also installed on upright chairs.

Walls and roof

The walls of the hut were a classic blockhouse. The project provided for the use of a log with a diameter of 22 cm for living quarters and 18 cm for the canopy and outbuildings. The walls of the underground for storing potatoes or vegetables were also cut from thin logs.

The rafter system was made of round logs with crossbars made of plates, the lathing was to be made of spruce poles, and the roof was covered with planks.

Floor and attic floor

In the peasant house, the project also included insulation. So the attic floor was made of wooden plates along log beams, hewn into 4 edges. For understanding, wooden plates are unedged boards cut to size with hewn edges and individual geometry. The ceiling was assembled from such boards by fitting and undercutting adjacent edges. From the side of the attic, clay putty was made on the boards - 2 cm, followed by backfilling with a mixture of dry earth and straw, 15 cm thick.

The finished floor is the only place in the collective farmer's house where a 4 cm thick board was used. The board was unedged and fitted to each other by trimming the edges. The construction of the floor cake looked like this: a rough slab floor, 2 cm clay putty on top of it, then 5 cm backfill and a finishing board.

Windows, doors, stove and decor elements

The project included a detailed description of the construction of windows and doors, and also contained a section on the exterior of the house.

The windows are double-bound. The inner one, aka winter, was deaf and was taken out of the frame for the summer.

Entrance door "single-leaf on carpentry dowels". An interesting point: the height of the entrance door according to the project was 185 cm, which is quite low. This standard is due to the need to preserve heat in the hut, which was heated by a Russian stove.

Heating should be mentioned separately. The project provided for a Russian stove of improved design, popularly called "teplushka". The traditional Russian stove did not heat the space of the hut below the level of 70-80 cm, that is, below the sub-six. Various implements or a daily supply of firewood were stored in the sub-furnace. In the improved design, the lower sector also provided heat, which significantly increased the efficiency and the duration of the temperature maintenance.

An interesting aspect of the project is the recommendations for decorating the hut, which included detailed dimensions of carved platbands and shutters, details of the terrace fence and decoration of the pediments.

Estimate

No less interesting in this project was the section entitled “the amount of materials and labor required to build a residential building”, only “yers” and “yateas” are not enough. So, for the construction, 62 cubic meters of round timber, over 4 cubic meters of poles, 9 cubic meters of clay and 3 sand, 0.4 tons were required straw, 31 kg of wrought iron products, 14 square meters of glass and other materials in the amount of 609 rubles and 93 penny. All labor force was accounted for in man-days. The construction of the house required excavators, carpenters, caulkers, stove-makers, joiners and auxiliary workers for a total of 620 man-days.

As a result

The document is definitely a fascinating read that will perfectly fill a couple of hours of your life and will allow you to imagine the harsh everyday life of a village worker of the times of developed socialism.

P.S. And only after finishing this article, I suddenly realized clearly that my village house built in the 70s, which I use as a dacha, was built according to exactly such a project. The farmyard is no longer there, and the outhouse has become more comfortable, but under the slate there are still shingles on spruce poles, and the ceiling is insulated with a mixture of earth and straw. The house is raised on a brick foundation, but for 12 years I have not got used to bending down, entering the hut and constantly banging my head against the lintel. And also in this house there is an amazing atmosphere of calmness and serenity, and there is no desire to either rebuild or modernize it.

Do you think such a project will take root now? Write in the comments!

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