The first prefabricated apartment building in Kharkiv—and in the entire Soviet Union—was built in 1933 and is located at Hryhoriia Skovorody Street, 40. However, this was a one-off project; the first mass-produced prefabricated apartment buildings in Kharkiv were not made of concrete but of wood, and they appeared in the second half of the 1940s.
They were called “Finnish houses,” and construction began almost immediately after World War II. A significant portion of the house-building kits were supplied by Finland as part of reparations; older people recall the poorly translated assembly instructions that came with the houses. But, to be fair, these houses could also be called American. In the 1930s, the Finns adapted the technology of assembly-line production of panel houses, which had been invented during the “suburban boom” (mass construction of single-story suburban homes) in the United States and Canada in the 1920s.
Most of the Finnish-style houses in Kharkiv have been remodeled, clad in brick, or have already completely disappeared. But you can still find houses in very good condition, close to their original state. For example, in the historic Novo-Zapadny district, located between Novi Budynky and KhTZ, or near Zelenyi Hai Park.
The houses still feature tiled or shingled roofs and beautiful window shutters. Some of the owners have taken such good care of their homes that they look much younger than their advanced age would suggest.
Panel-type houses were also manufactured in the Soviet Union itself.
Transcript from surviving film footage from 1949:
The house is manufactured at the factory.
A house-building plant has been operating in Bolshevo, near Moscow, for the second year now. Here, prefabricated houses—or “panel houses,” as they are called—are manufactured on an industrial scale. The entire production process, starting with the sawing of logs, is fully mechanized and based on the assembly-line principle. The plant manufactures all 10,000 components that make up a house. The finished blocks are then shipped to the assembly site. Assembling a house from these blocks take only 5–7 days and is carried out by a crew of five workers. During assembly, the workers do not use saws, planes, or any other carpentry tools. Each component is precisely fitted and adjusted. This is what the interior of a house manufactured at the plant looks like. The Bolshevsky House-Building Plant is increasing its production of prefabricated houses month after month.”