I’d like to learn more about the Soviet housing system. From my very limited knowledge it seems to be one of the few sectors of the economy that actually functioned reasonably well. But maybe I’m missing something.
“functioned” is the key word there. No elevators, terrible insulation, no air conditioning, tiny radiators for heating, small living space for entire families, and infested with bugs. Of course some American apartment buildings check all those boxes too, but it’s naïve to assume that soviet apartments were great places to live
I add that “cannot be evicted” is a double edge sword here. Since appartments were free and were assigned more or less random (cough, cough, corruption), very often you got one or two … let’s say “interresting” neighbours
Edit: well some interresting facts from my mom who’s sitting next to me - there were quite some downsides
My father asked for an appartment and the answer was: get married. As a single guy you won’t get anything.
Also when you get married and have children, there’s no guarantee that you get some big appartment. Her colleague had 3 children, a husband and got 1 room appartment anyway
There was a list of people waiting for appartments. When you were somewhere down, you wait, for years
When she asked for an apparartment as a married woman, a “commission” arrived to verify, whether we as a familly really need one. And whether we couldn’t stay living with grandma
When my grandma with my mom moved into a newly built appartment, they opened a window and it fell off. My grandad caught it thankfully so it didn’t break. They never openned that window again. There was no one to repair it and a replacement was basically impossible. They were able to open it again in like 2010 when she changed windows
Thanks for sharing firsthand knowledge. Sounds like there were a lot of problems which isn’t surprising but at least compared to the US with our extreme numbers of homeless I’m still not sure which is better.
Of course, an ideal system would provide quality housing to everyone but I don’t know of such a system.
If you are ultra rich or ultra poor, the Soviet system is better. If you are lower, middle, or upper working class, the US system is better.
Source: I was born to a family of highly educated professionals in Russia during the late-USSR period, later moved to the US where we were working poor. The US was heaven on earth in comparison.
Yes, I guess that’s up to a debate which one is better (or none of them).
I’d say if we imagine housing as a scale from 0 to 100 where 0 means you’re homeless and 100 means you’re living in a mansion
The US way sounds like you’re using the whole scale - you’ve quite a lot of homeless people, but also quite a lot of people living in mansions. Some people are above average, some are bellow awerage and so on.
The soviet way is like if you’d shrink the scale to 30 to 50. You have no homeless people but also no one is living in a mansion (well … ). But also notice the best you can achieve in such system is average.
Which approach is better? I guess from “progress” point of view the US system is better. Theoretically if you’re skilled and hard working, you can get above average and live better life. That’s actually the reason why so many skilled and talented people fled the soviet union - in the west there was no “ceiling” for you. On the other hand, from humanity point of view though, the soviet system sounds much better - country caring about every single one of its citizens to have a place to live.
But I’d argue that maybe the 3rd way is best. Because well both Soviets and US are extremes. Soviets were … well … soviets. It’s like “left” on steroids. Also it failed - I mean if it was such a paradise on earth, why were so many people fleeing it.
But US is also an extreme - you’re like a capitalist lunapark. Even other countries from west are often horrified how you take care of people (or rather not care)
But there is some middle ground between these - you can have a system with focus on social issues but also not go crazy f.e. some scandinaviam countries
I mean shitty housing is better than no housing. Their setup comes out looking pretty good compared to a lot of places nowadays. But far from perfect as you point out.
I know little about Russia, but a quote from earlier this year from a Russian:
Boris Vishnevsky, a member of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, responded to Beglov’s remarks, saying in a Telegram post that “a quarter of Russians do not have centralized sewerage,” citing data from Rosstat, Russia’s state statistics service.
“And basically, it is hard to imagine something more gender-neutral than a backyard ‘latrine’-style toilet,” he added.
For context: In response to criticizing gender neutral toilets in Ukraine (I don’t know if they mean individual/private unisex bathrooms, or actual group restrooms they think are trans bathrooms, it’s not the point of this discussion anyways).
i don’t think the soviets are a great example of how to do things but homeless people lack those things too. well i guess you don’t need elevators to live on the street anyway so that’s one thing you won’t have to worry about.
of course they should have amenities. there’s no dichotomy here. you can make housing comfortable and free.
Funny but despite famines, purges, wars, etc. their population generally grew quite a bit during the Soviet era. So I don’t think that was a major factor.
I wasn’t being funny. I was mostly talking about their current war too, not their past. They’ve lost quite a bit of troops. Surely that’s had a noticeable effect on their housing market.
Well, if you were serious, then you are greatly overestimating the effects of these events on their population. WWII was really the only one that had a big impact. Otherwise, growth was mostly pretty consistent, despite violence that would be rightly considered extreme in other societies.
The situation today is somewhat different because population growth has collapsed due to oligarchy and neoliberalism. We’ll see what effects the war has but so far the deaths are not really enough to change the overall trajectory. But either way, today’s society is very different since they don’t have the same housing production and distribution scheme, which is instead much more like typical capitalist economies.
I’d like to learn more about the Soviet housing system. From my very limited knowledge it seems to be one of the few sectors of the economy that actually functioned reasonably well. But maybe I’m missing something.
“functioned” is the key word there. No elevators, terrible insulation, no air conditioning, tiny radiators for heating, small living space for entire families, and infested with bugs. Of course some American apartment buildings check all those boxes too, but it’s naïve to assume that soviet apartments were great places to live
I add that “cannot be evicted” is a double edge sword here. Since appartments were free and were assigned more or less random (cough, cough, corruption), very often you got one or two … let’s say “interresting” neighbours
Edit: well some interresting facts from my mom who’s sitting next to me - there were quite some downsides
Thanks for sharing firsthand knowledge. Sounds like there were a lot of problems which isn’t surprising but at least compared to the US with our extreme numbers of homeless I’m still not sure which is better.
Of course, an ideal system would provide quality housing to everyone but I don’t know of such a system.
Well the name of the game in the west is “things are better than “elsewhere” as long as you don’t fall through the cracks!”
The reality is the cracks are pretty fucking wide now.
Capitalism contatantly strives to be as slightly better than the opposition as possible. This doesn’t go well when it’s the only game in town.
If you are ultra rich or ultra poor, the Soviet system is better. If you are lower, middle, or upper working class, the US system is better.
Source: I was born to a family of highly educated professionals in Russia during the late-USSR period, later moved to the US where we were working poor. The US was heaven on earth in comparison.
What was worse about the USSR housing? Anything beyond what was mentioned above?
Yes, I guess that’s up to a debate which one is better (or none of them).
I’d say if we imagine housing as a scale from 0 to 100 where 0 means you’re homeless and 100 means you’re living in a mansion
Which approach is better? I guess from “progress” point of view the US system is better. Theoretically if you’re skilled and hard working, you can get above average and live better life. That’s actually the reason why so many skilled and talented people fled the soviet union - in the west there was no “ceiling” for you. On the other hand, from humanity point of view though, the soviet system sounds much better - country caring about every single one of its citizens to have a place to live.
But I’d argue that maybe the 3rd way is best. Because well both Soviets and US are extremes. Soviets were … well … soviets. It’s like “left” on steroids. Also it failed - I mean if it was such a paradise on earth, why were so many people fleeing it.
But US is also an extreme - you’re like a capitalist lunapark. Even other countries from west are often horrified how you take care of people (or rather not care)
But there is some middle ground between these - you can have a system with focus on social issues but also not go crazy f.e. some scandinaviam countries
I mean shitty housing is better than no housing. Their setup comes out looking pretty good compared to a lot of places nowadays. But far from perfect as you point out.
I know little about Russia, but a quote from earlier this year from a Russian:
For context: In response to criticizing gender neutral toilets in Ukraine (I don’t know if they mean individual/private unisex bathrooms, or actual group restrooms they think are trans bathrooms, it’s not the point of this discussion anyways).
i don’t think the soviets are a great example of how to do things but homeless people lack those things too. well i guess you don’t need elevators to live on the street anyway so that’s one thing you won’t have to worry about.
of course they should have amenities. there’s no dichotomy here. you can make housing comfortable and free.
There were no homeless because they were rounded up and put into prisons.
ah the supreme court’s dream!
Well, when you keep reducing the demand, it’s a bit easier to do.
Funny but despite famines, purges, wars, etc. their population generally grew quite a bit during the Soviet era. So I don’t think that was a major factor.
I wasn’t being funny. I was mostly talking about their current war too, not their past. They’ve lost quite a bit of troops. Surely that’s had a noticeable effect on their housing market.
Well, if you were serious, then you are greatly overestimating the effects of these events on their population. WWII was really the only one that had a big impact. Otherwise, growth was mostly pretty consistent, despite violence that would be rightly considered extreme in other societies.
The situation today is somewhat different because population growth has collapsed due to oligarchy and neoliberalism. We’ll see what effects the war has but so far the deaths are not really enough to change the overall trajectory. But either way, today’s society is very different since they don’t have the same housing production and distribution scheme, which is instead much more like typical capitalist economies.