The article examines the role of Soviet housing cooperation in implementing the cultural revolution policy through measures to create a “new life”. The relevance of this research lies in the need to expand the traditional understanding of state policy in the Soviet Union, which was only achieved through the efforts of the party apparatus, but also through public institutions. Based on social history methodology, the authors analyzed a significant number of sources, including official materials from the All-Union Housing Cooperative Council, the Central Housing Union of the RSFSR, grassroots cooperative organizations, legal regulations, and theoretical works by RCP(B) — VKP(B) leaders, as well as central and branch periodicals and fictional works. Based on the above, it can be concluded that the housing cooperative did not effectively advocate for the “new life” policy. This was primarily due to the lack of a strong material base for the cooperative network. Despite some successes, they did not significantly impact the overall situation within the system. Ultimately, the inability of housing cooperatives to effectively implement government policy led to their dissolution in 1937.

The article is devoted to the process of formation of management of Soviet housing and tenant cooperative societies in 1920–1930s. Since consideration of this problem from the standpoint of social history can not fully illuminate the root causes of the emergence of a particular layer of housing managers, the author attempts a methodological synthesis based on economic history. Th e transfer of part of municipalized housing to rental housing in 1924 was due to the state’s lack of resources to maintain housing in proper condition. Under these circumstances the new economic managers were faced with the task of finding resources to repair the houses. Th e complexity of the task demanded
great organizational talent from the managers and chairmen of the boards in the economic realities of the 1920s and 1930s. Diffi culties in managing housing caused both by the housing crisis and by the subjective characteristics of the new managers, who sought to ensure their own comfortable existence, provoked discontent with the housing and tenant cooperatives and their economic managers.
The campaigns for purging cooperatives of “non-proletarian elements” failed to improve the material and economic condition of the cooperatives, so one of the factors that led to the liquidation of the housing and tenant cooperatives in 1937, should be considered the desire to prevent the strengthening of the quasi-bourgeois relations in the housing sphere.