Stalin and other communist dictators consciously used architectural space, sculpture and art to influence the societies they dominated. This book is a detailed case-study of a particular building, Moisei Ginzburg's Narkomfin Communal House, showing how its inhabitants (who often lived in the house from birth to maturity) were influenced by its architecture. Victor Buchli demonstrates how such basics as principles of hygiene and gender roles were shaped by the building's architectural form. However individuals also appropriated architectural space and material culture to cope with the conditions of daily life under a dictatorship, reading the message' the architect had attempted to write' in subversive ways. An original study of the ways in which material culture really works in the modern world.