In May 1945, the family of a Red Army major, the Ostromogil’skiis, faced a court-ordered eviction from the apartment they had inhabited since Kyiv's liberation. Soon thereafter, an instructor, Dirin, from the Kyiv Obkom's Organization- Instruction Department arranged to meet with the new Kyiv City procurator, Langunovskii, about his decision to allow a man by the name of Vaisberg to inhabit the Ostromogil’skiis’ apartment. Their encounter led Dirin to write to the Ukrainian TsK:

Such an episode suggests that, as returnees like Vaisberg inundated the Ukrainian capital to take advantage of the privileges they had earned during the war, they battled the formerly occupied over scarce resources. While the Ostromogil’skiis managed to stay in their apartment, the local Communists had been unable to prevent this battle from taking place. Dealing with stalled reconstruction and an increasing city population, local Communists spent much of their time trying to meet demands for better living conditions from an ever-growing number of people.

This chapter examines Kyiv's reassembling masses by looking at four groups: the formerly occupied, returnees, mobilized laborers (ranging from youth mobilized through orgnabor to German POWs), and demobilized servicemen.