8 Republic the share of privatized housing was 68%, in Kalmykia - 54%/, in Altai Krai - 56%, in Omsk Oblast - 63%, and in the Agin Buryat Autonomous Region -66%.

In contrast, less than 25% of housing passed into private ownership in the republics of Mordovia and Sakha (Yakutia), the Chuvash Republic, Arkhangelsk and Ulianovsk ciblasts, Nenets, Komi-Permyak and Taimyr autonomous regions.

The analysis of privatization rates in the Russian Federation regions shows that:

- privatization was supported everywhere in Russia;

- the scope of privatization of housing varies substantially across regions;

- in most regions, privatization reached its peak in 1993, after which rates began to decline rapidly;

- by 1996, privatization ceased to be a mass-scale phenomenon.

In other former Soviet republics housing privatization can be viewed as a completed process. In the Baltic states, especially Lithuania, practically all housing is private. The Russian situation is particular in that even though 55% of the housing stock is now privately owned, a large proportion of housing (39%/6) remained in state or municipal ownership. Ukraine holds a place in-between Russia and the Baltic states.

# 1.2. Social dimensions of housing privatization in Russia

The goal of the work described here is to sum up changes in the distribution of residential property by the end of 1996. The factors and social consequences of housing privatiza1ion are examined depending on the size and category of Russian settlements on the basis of sociological swveys conducted in the past few years in Moscow (population: 8,664,000), Vladimir, an oblast administrative center (population: 340,000), and Gorodets, a small town in Nizhny Novgorod oblast (population: 33,000).

Specifially, we aim to show the component parts of the housing privatization processes that could exert an adverse or, on the contrary, beneficial effect on housing reform in Russia: the transition to market methods, housing maintenance reform, development of private utilities companies, the establishment of condominium associations, etc.

This state of affairs gives rise to a number of questions that will be examined here. What affected households' decisions to privatize and why did many households decide against privatizing their dwellings? Which categories of housing were more likely to be privatized, and which social groups were the most eager to privatize? What were their motivations?s At least partial answers to these and related questions will be found in the analyses devoted to Moscow and to two provincial cities that follow below. General results are summarized here and detailed data are provided for the three cities in the sections that follow. It is hoped that the analysis of the behavioral patterns that emerged in the course of privatization will make it possible to forecast households' future plans and intentions as regards their housing situation and to connect privatization of property with prospects for the solution of the housing problem.

One of the findings common to all of the surveys presented in this paper is that in big cities, privatization had a clear "territorial" slant: most separate (as distinct from communal) apartments in the center and adjacent districts were privatized, and these were generally the best-quallity and most conveniently located housing. This was determined, first, by the concentration of high-quality housing there; second, by the While the sigificance of housing privatization, its scope, rates and local peculiarities have been discussed in many works on housing (Vine et al., 1996; Meyers et al., 1995), motivations behind the decision to privatize have not been considered as extensively and thoroughly. In ftis regard, one must pay trnbute to the contribution ofthe Urban Institute (Struyk and Kosareva, 1994; Struyk and Daniell, 1994). Other studies have exanined in pea detail the attitudes of Moscow households to housing privatization in the early stages of the process (Daniell at al., 1993) and taken sociological approaches to the issue (Guzanova, 1996).