Kitchen and bathroom shared with up to 4 families
this post was submitted on 20 Jan 2025
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A couple more things about "bad" Soviet apartments:
- Small patch of land to grow flowers (or potatoes, whichever your babushka prefers)
- Probably close to a school, a grocery store or some sort of public transport
- Walls made of real cement and not flammable cardboard
- Were built to last 50 years, some still going strong after 70 years (at least in my city)
Yes, there were queues, and you could be waiting for years to get an apartment, I would still prefer the Soviet approach 100 times over.
A note about those queues.
I've been thinking a lot recently about the difference between policy and material conditions. The USSR wouldn't have had queues (or very long queues) if they were a rich country like the United States. Any socialist country that is rich would have plenty of materials that nobody would ever have to wait in line (at least not a long line, no longer than in current day USA)
Of course, under socialism, certain excesses would be limited, but at the same time, if your country literally already had what it needed because of the overcapacity built by capitalism, then under socialism, basically all needs would be met very easily.
I need to do some more reading by other people on this topic because I'm no expert, but it makes sense to me.
The USSR wouldn’t have had queues (or very long queues) if they were a rich country like the United States.
Exactly, absolutely brilliant point. This is why your socialism is only as advanced as your productive forces and productive output. Otherwise you're building communism by decree rather than by degree.
you could be waiting for years to get an apartment
...which is what happens under capitalism anyway if you ever do get to own a house, so this argument doesn't even make sense
Here there weren't any patches of land, that's why we've got allotment gardens, so that you could do your gardening and leisure there.
USA has freedom. You have the freedom to be homeless and die a terrible death with drugs, hunger and medical problems
Err...being homeless is illegal. But you're free to be illegal. Until you aren't abymore though...
Unironically, being homeless or unemployed was illegal in the USSR, everyone was provided with a place to live and a job and if you instead chose vagrancy or parasitism you could serve time.
That I didn't know. But still sounds like a better "choice" than the US still has.
What do you mean "still", of course that's a good thing.
Except the latter part,yes totally. But if I would prefer vagrancy, so why not? Everyone should do as they please. Although I never heard of someone willingly choosing vagrancy, but there sure are.
"Everyone should do as they please" is such entitled bullshit.
People were provided homes, jobs, education, healthcare, maternal leave, holidays for children in pioneer camps, and so on and forth, in a poor country that didn't benefit from imperialism and didn't exploit other nations.
To achieve that, able-bodied people were expected to contribute and parasitism was not tolerated.
(Edit) You probably grew up in a capitalist society so maybe you just have trouble imagining a different one.
Under capitalism, the most vulnerable people end up homeless and unemployed, but in the USSR nobody was left behind, vulnerable people were provided homes and given jobs they were able to perform. People with mental health issues were treated, as a matter of fact Western propaganda painted the high number of hospitalised people as an example of how repressive USSR is, instead of recognising that in the West many of those people would be homeless, freezing to death in winter and suffering all kinds of abuse.
Hospitalisation was not the first thing to do either - USSR had a huge "sanatorium" industry, with entire towns built in beautiful locations like seaside, mountain ranges, etc. Workers who were suffering from stress, anxiety etc would be sent there by their doctors to rest and rehabilitate from entire USSR in hundreds of thousands - someting only the rich could afford in the West at the time. Of course now those huge sanatorium complexes are mostly empty ruins, one of the most striking examples is Tskhaltubo in Georgia (https://wander-lush.org/visit-tskaltubo-travel-guide-tips/)
If people were unhappy with their housing situation they could apply to change it and enter a queue for a new accomodation, similarly those unhappy with their jobs had all kinds of free evening education courses available, re-training schemes, and so forth.
Laws against vagrancy and parasitism didn't victimise the vulnerable, rather they existed to control the criminality. If you didn't work legally, where were you getting money from? If you didn't live under your registered address, how did you get an unregistered accomodation?
First off. Thanks for the detailed answer. You really care about topic.
Second. I might be entitled, as I'm a capitalist that greatly profits from this sick system. That said, not all capitalist countries treat their vulnerable in bad condition. I don't need to work so I do work voluntarily with people who are either mentally or physically handicapped. And we (no, I'm surely no murican) actually do a lot for those. Could always be way more, but...
So to your point: I didn't really wanted to paint the USSR badly. I'm sure they had it great. Kinda like our GDR (east germany) before we assimilated them, I assume. I would actually prefer such a system again, even though it totally would not be to my benefit. I have ex-ussr and ex-gdr friends and they unisono miss the old times. It wasn't perfect, but better than today's shitholes.
Long story short. You're right, I stand corrected and educated.
But you’re free to be illegal.
Only until they need to top up their prison slave labour workforce.
That's most likely the single reason to declare homelessness illegal. They don't have a lobby either, so they're perfect slaves noone cares for.
or pets allowed for $75-125 month plus extra $500 deposit
This pisses me off so much. I am paying you for the space, why do you care what I do inside it unless I am starting fires or collecting poop.
hey it's a steal compared to staying in hotels.. we stayed at a Hilton a few weeks ago and by some miracle when i told them on the booking site that I have a small dog they replied that it was fine and would be no additional charge. The lady at the front desk then told me it was $75 a night for 3 nights and then $150 a night thereafter. Her jaw almost dropped when I showed her the message from booking.com where they said the dog would be free-of-charge and so we didn't pay $150 for 2 nights of having him with us, which would've been like paying for another night.