Housing in Communist economies

Some people think that under Socialism, affordable housing would exist.

Well, here's something to consider: Under both the Soviet Union and Communist China, internal borders were put up within the country to control movement of people and where they could chose to live. This was a natural response to trying to dealing with the economic problem of scarcity.

If the Soviet Union had offered free housing to any of its citizens wherever they want to live, more than half the population would have wanted to live in Moscow. It would obviously be impossible to give away free housing wherever the recipient wanted to live.

Not only that, but in the Soviet Union, at one era of time there were long waiting lists for people trying to get housing. As a result, some people had to just build housing themselves, because they couldn't wait.
The housing planners initially built to high quality and used plenty of extra concrete in the designs because they were afraid if the quality did not meet specifications, Stalin might have them sent off to the gulag. But with the priority being put on quality, there was a trade-off with quantity. And perhaps one reason the early Soviet system seemed to function adequately was that the society's population had not long before been decimated by war and famine, which conveniently limited the need for new housing to be constructed. During the succeeding era of time, a larger number of apartment blocks were built but they were very poor in quality. The slope of the floors were often not even perfectly level. By the late 1960s in Moscow, the earlier crisis in housing was mostly over and the quality began to improve to reasonable levels, at least not terrible in quality.
The housing for families in cities often consisted of what today would be considered very small sized apartments, which an entire family would live in. These were well-designed apartments, however, with a very efficient layout.

The problem of insufficient housing was still very acute in mid-1950s when Nikita Khruschov became the Communist Party leader. His solution was to stop construction of the lavish "Stalin Empire style" houses (which are being valued to this day for their big rooms, high ceilings and beauty; they were expensive to build so the state couldn't build enough of them) and embrace standardized factory-style construction techniques (just a few "typical" projects for the whole country; prefabricated building blocks and panels) to make construction as quick and cheap as possible, so the housing problem could be solved quicker.
Indeed, this approach allowed to drastically improve living conditions of many families (Nonetheless, the Soviet Union never fully resolved the housing problem.)
As for the aesthetics, Khruschov declared "a war on architectural excesses", so all houses since that time lacked decoration, had very basic exteriors and were very similar.

People's access to housing was like their access to consumer goods in that it depended on their position in society and their place of work. Often, housing (the so-called "department housing") was provided by the workplace. Administrative control over housing and the movement of citizens was carried out by means of the residency permit.

Many people without housing, especially people from the rural areas, tried to get work as janitors so as to gain a room in the city.

In cities right up to the 1970s, most families lived in a single room in a communal apartment, where they suffered from overcrowding and had little hope of improving their situation. A comparative minority of people lived in "private" apartments or still lived in dormitories and barracks. Although as far back as the 1930s, a private apartment for each family was declared a goal of Soviet housing policy, large-scale construction was begun only at the end of the 1950s. Extensive construction of low-quality five-story concrete-block buildings, dubbed "Khrushchevki," (or "Khrushcheby," which rhymes with the Russian word "trushchoby", meaning slums), mitigated the situation to some degree. Nevertheless, the declared goal was not met, even in the 1980s when high-rise projects with private apartments became the main form of city housing. At that time, some cities, including Leningrad (Saint Petersburg), had almost a third of its citizens "on the housing list".

By the 1970s, the average waiting time to receive an apartment in the USSR was around six to seven years.

Beginning in the 1960s, people who could not count on joining the housing list because their present space exceeded the legal norm (they had more than five square meters per person, equivalent to 53.8 square feet) could contribute their personal funds to a cooperative construction project and receive what was called a "cooperative apartment." Only the better-off portion of the population could afford this, and here also the amount of living space a family already had could not exceed specific limits. For those who could join a cooperative, housing was comparatively affordable: the price per square meter in a cooperative apartment was about equivalent to an average monthly salary.

The limit of nine square meters per person held up to the early 1980s, after which it began to increase. In calculating square meters, the government took into account not only a family's primary living space, but also, if they had one, the dacha (a tiny summer cottage some families maintained on a small lot, to be able to get away from the crowded city and maintain a tiny garden).

Soviet dachas could be owned, which made them one of the few substantial forms of private property available. The appalling conditions that most people endured in their city apartments made escape to the dacha seem attractive. In Stalin’s time, dachas were mainly a perk of the Party and cultural elites. By the 1980s, most all families who held the type of jobs requiring a university education had the ability to have one. A 1993-1994 survey of seven Russian cities showed that almost a quarter of all households owned one.


related thread: Some thoughts on China's Hukou system

 

"The easiest way was to get a job with an enterprise or organization that built housing for its employees. Then the waiting time could be just a couple of years. Public sector employees (teachers, doctors) could join a waiting list compiled by the local administration, but the waiting time on these could be more than 10 years. What’s more, applicants had no say over what type of apartment they would be given or where it would be located.​

"After graduation, my parents, as young professionals, immediately received a room in a hall of residence, and when I was born, a one-room apartment not far from work," writes Pyotr from the Krasnodar Territory. "When my sister was born, we were given a two-room apartment. Thus, just five years after graduation, the young doctors lived in an excellent two-room apartment."​

Apartments were not given to people as their own private property, but rather were rented out for life in what was known as social rent. Tenants could register other people in their apartment, and they could swap their apartment with others (which, although not officially the case, sometimes involved additional cash payments). However, they could not sell, gift or bequeath their apartment to others.​

"I received an apartment in 1979, a year after graduating from university when I was assigned a job in another city. Under the law, young professionals were entitled to an apartment within three years of employment," recalls Galina from Kursk. "Having arrived in Dzhezkazgan (a regional center in Kazakhstan), I was given a place in a hall of residence and a year later, a one-room apartment. Having stayed in the job for the mandatory three years, I then returned to Kursk through an apartment swap."​

The Soviet Union did not have a housing market per se, but housing cooperatives began to appear in the late 1950s, and these essentially allowed members to buy an apartment in installments. Prices varied from region to region, but not significantly. In the 1970s-1980s, a one-room apartment cost 5,500-6,000 rubles (around the same as a new Volga car), while a three-room apartment cost about 10,000 rubles. The average salary in the USSR at the time was 150-200 rubles. Thus not many families could afford a condominium apartment, and housing cooperatives accounted for not more than 10 percent of housing in the USSR.​

https://www.rbth.com/history/333815-soviet-apartment-buy

 

Yeahright except that Lenin guided the USSR in state capitalism and he announced it. (See his NEP.) And China never made it to a worker-owned, worker-run economy. So they never made it to socialism. Capitalist propaganda LOVES to confuse this……. —of course.

 

Can you be more specific what exactly it was about the Soviet Union or China that you do not consider to be a reflection of Socialist ideas being implemented in the sphere of housing?

Just claiming "The USSR was never socialist, therefore this doesn't show anything about how socialism would deal with housing" seems a bit inadequate.

Tell us what the Soviet Union did wrong, that you and your Socialist planning would have done differently. If you claim they didn't truly implement a "Socialist" system, when it came to housing, how so?

 

It’s pretty amazing how it is necessary to deliver this to each poster, one at a time, repeatedly, week after week after week. Maybe I should do a thread on this so I can just point the uninformed to the thread. Ah, but it would probably be removed for “not complying with” some rule. So alternatively I could think about keeping my own file on it to cut and paste.

Well, for now I do have links.

"The shift from "War Communism" to the "New Economic Policy" (NEP) early in 1921 was motivated by four factors: First, the peasant uprisings all over the country; second, the mutiny in Kronstadt; third, the threatening famine; and fourth, the growing disorder in the ranks of the ruling Communist party.

The New Economic Policy consisted, in the main, of four reforms: First, the introduction of a land tax and the granting to peasants of permission for free trade within certain limits; second, the permitting of small-scale private industry; third, the granting of "concessions" to foreign industrial and mining firms; and fourth, permitting of small-scale trade in the cities."

"Lenin inferred that what Russia needed was the legalization of some phases of capitalism: small trade, small industry, and "state capitalism"; state capitalism to Lenin meant big industry in capitalist hands under supervision of Soviet authorities.

". . . for our Russian Republic, we must take advantage of this brief respite in order to adapt our tactics to the zig-zag line of history. ... we went too far along the road of nationalising trade and industry, of stopping local turnover. Was this a mistake? Undoubtedly.

In this connection we did much that was simply wrong, and it would be a great crime not to see and realise that we did not keep within proper limits, that we did not know how to keep within proper limits. . . . We can permit a fair amount of free local turnover without destroying, but on the contrary strengthening, the political power of the proletariat." [Lenin, "The Tax in Kind," Report Delivered March 15, 1921 at the Tenth Congress of the RCP (B), Selected Works, vol. IX, p. 113. ]

https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/russia/cccp-history-nep.htm


From marxists.org ….
"What can we say about Lenin’s views on socialism in the late spring of 1918? By then it had become clear that setting up socialism in Russia would be a far more complex process than he envisioned even a year before. The prevailing form of economy in Russia in 1918 was individual production on small farms, with only scattered industrial production. Lenin said it would take much time and effort to overcome this state of affairs, and any ideas about immediately setting up socialism were illusions. Russian society was not at that time socialist, said Lenin; it was moving towards socialism. In May 1918, he put it this way:

No one, I think, in studying the question of the economic system of Russia, had denied its transitional character. Nor, I think, has any Communist denied that the term Socialist Soviet Republic implies the determination of Soviet power to achieve the transition to socialism, and not that the new economic system is recognized as a socialist order.[10]

In the same article, Lenin pointed out that even state capitalism would be a step forward compared to the primitive level of production prevailing in Russia.[11] Immediate emphasis had to be given to modernizing and developing the economy.

https://www.marxists.org/history/erol/ncm-7/lenin-socialism.htm



Lenin considered the NEP as a strategic retreat from socialism. He believed it was capitalism, but justified it by insisting that it was a different type of capitalism, "state capitalism", the last stage of capitalism before socialism evolved.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Economic_Policy



Then there is the Socialist Party of Great Britain ….

State Capitalism for Russia
Lenin’s economic policy

Among the first to describe the Russian economy under the Bolshevik government as “state capitalism”, was Lenin himself in 1918. By this term he meant state control of capitalist-owned industries.
……..
A number of Bolsheviks denounced as “state capitalism” the policy of subjecting these factories to state control and to speed-up, one-man management and factory discipline.

Lenin’s reaction was extraordinarily honest. He admitted that his government was pursuing a policy of state capitalism, but argued:

“State capitalism would be a step forward as compared with the present state of affairs in our Soviet Republic.” (Left-Wing’ Childishness and the Petty-Bourgeois Mentality)

In admitting this he was admitting that Russia lacked the large-scale production on which alone Socialism can be based.
……
As soon as the Civil War was over in 1921 they were abandoned and Lenin again advocated a policy of state capitalism. The New Economic Policy (NEP), introduced that year, was described as a policy of developing capitalism in Russia under the control of the Bolshevik government.

https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1970s/1970/no-788-april-1970/state-capitalism-russia/



"Sunday marked the 100th anniversary of the start of Lenin’s New Economic Policy (NEP). In a stunning about-face on March 21, 1921, the NEP began undoing the previous four years. Expropriation of businesses and the nationalization of industries stopped. Lenin proclaimed a partial restoration of, in his own words, “a free market and capitalism.” Even state-owned firms would seek to operate on a “profit” basis. Individuals could own small enterprises again. Market prices would be permitted in place of state directives."

https://fee.org/articles/lenin-s-new-economic-policy-when-the-soviets-admitted-socialism-doesnt-work/



As you can see, this is all common knowledge on the left, but it is “inconvenient” information for anti-communists.

Here’s more to browse: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Lenin+NEP+state+capitalism&atb=v320-1&ia=web

 

When I researched Soviet housing years ago in college, I seem to remember that I found out that the housing of the early 20th century there was confiscating private houses and pushing whole families into a single bedroom, multiple families sharing a house where before there was only one.

About the same time in America, I read that people were living in small tenements in New York City. So, all in all, the housing situation of the early 20th century was crumby!

 

Scarcity is a capitalist plot.

Which, ironically, was also very common in Tsarist Russia.

Nevertheless, the declared goal was not met, even in the 1980s when high-rise projects with private apartments became the main form of city housing. At that time, some cities, including Leningrad (Saint Petersburg), had almost a third of its citizens "on the housing list".

Well, that gives them enough time to schedule a plumber, then.

Just a little larger than a prison cell.

 

If you read much Russian literature from the 19th century, it was pretty common for entire families to live in small bedrooms. Thanks to our ruling classes and their enforced scarcity of living space, many are heading that way again.

 

I fail to see how it is "inconvenient" to show that capitalism, even in its most restricted form of state-run capitalism heavily influenced by central planners and the punishment of failure, still produces some wealth beyond the subsistence level, while socialism has no theory of wealth creation and thus devolves into mass starvation.

 

I think any objective and aware reader of my post knows that you failed to represent what I was saying. So let me spell it out in case I’m wrong about that. The truth of the USSR is that Lenin advocated and steered the country to state capitalism in order to develop the productive capacity of the country. Therefore the USSR was, from the beginning, NOT on a course to socialism, but to a form of capitalism. And that effort had its own problems, failings, disappointments, and disasters. That’s the truth.

Now, the “inconvenience” of that for anti-communists should be obvious: they could not honestly point to the USSR as a country that established a form of capitalism which bailed the country out of problems and blossomed into a free-market paradise of capitalism because that didn’t happen. That is one aspect of “inconvenience” of the truth for them. But another aspect is that since that was the truth and the disasters were obvious, they “had to” pretend what the USSR had was, in fact “socialism” so they could rail endlessly about how horrible “socialism” is while pointing to the failures of a form of capitalism, --state capitalism. The necessary dishonesty that entailed was “inconvenient”, but so was the need to develop an entire BS propaganda narrative to brainwash nearly all Americans into believing Russia was “socialist” and “failed”.

Is that clearer?

 

Kode, I read your long post about Lenin's "New Economic Policy" (NEP) and I don't think, or am not sure that it really addresses the question.
For example, I don't think NEP really applied so much to the specific area of housing in the big cities, almost all of which were public housing. And the coverage in the opening post of Soviet Russia's housing problems extend well beyond just the time of Lenin's rule in Russia.

What you seem to be saying is that the problems in Russia were caused because Socialism didn't go far enough. But many of the unique problems cited were clearly due to Socialism, and not a Free Market system.
I mean, your argument might apply if you were trying to blame Capitalism and claiming that Soviet Russia's housing problems would have been even worse if they had not had any Socialist system. But when we are talking about specific sorts of problems unique to the Socialist system, it seems difficult for your argument to apply.
Keep in mind this is the sort of mentality of many ideologies in the aftermath of demonstrated failure, claiming that their ideas would have worked but were not taken far enough.

 

True, but that was mainly due to large numbers of poor immigrants coming into America at that time.
You might not be familiar with history but right before the wave of immigrants coming from about 1896-1916 (primarily from Eastern or Southern Europe) there had been a previous wave of immigrants (primarily from Germany) moving into the Midwest and Great plains, to settle the land and start farms. Apparently, what I suspect, is that after that first wave of immigrants came, all the cheap farming land was taken. You can also research the "Free Silver" movement which came in the wake of crashing wheat prices beginning in 1893. Farmers were defaulting on bank loans and losing their farms. So it wouldn't have made sense for that second wave of poor immigrants to move out to the Midwest. Where were they going to go then? Many went to work in unpleasant factory work, and others were stuck in overcrowded conditions in the big city, mainly New York.

So to repeat again, these were immigrants, either not born in America, or were second generation born of immigrant parents.

And indeed there was some sense that America at that time was becoming "too full", that the country had taken in immigrants faster than its economy could absorb them. This was kind of confirmed by the Great Depression in 1929 (there had already been signs as early as late 1927), in my opinion. At the start of the Twentieth Century there was a downward pressure on unskilled wages due to the high level of immigration. This of course made a few people rich and increased the level of social inequality.

 

I’m saying socialism never actually took root!! And who says “the free market system” was the alternative for them?

It wasn’t a “socialist” system!

"Keep in mind this is the sort of mentality of many ideologies in the aftermath of demonstrated failure, claiming that their ideas would have worked but were not taken far enough.”

I’m not asking you to accept talking points. That’s your job. I’m asking you to actually know the relevant history apart from and not related to the capitalist propaganda that was and is so prevalent. I have posted the relevant history several times on this forum. And to crystalize it into one simple talking point for you, it is that in neither the USSR nor in China was the working class ever put in charge. The way to do that was not found yet. And you can’t have an economy and system of, by, and for the working class unless the working class is in charge. E.g., they never did establish socialism though they tried to create some structures (not systems) that looked a lot like socialist-type systems….. —sorta like our Social Security system doesn’t make the USA a socialist country despite the occasional propaganda from the right.

 

There were clearly some Socialist (or at least Socialist-like) housing policies in the Soviet Union. I think you are in denial if you cannot recognize that.

 

Our social security system started out by paying people who had never even paid a single dime into the system, and those funds were (naturally) borrowed, and have never been paid off. We're STILL paying interest on those payments, which were nothing more than outright money redistribution through theft. And you don't own your SS account, so for those unlucky enough to die before they can start collecting, they get nothing.

They worked their whole lives, "donating" (by force) 14% of their income to a fund that they and/or their heirs ultimately got NOTHING for. Hundreds of thousands in forced contributions, all forfeit to Uncle.

I have no problem with some sort of forced savings program, even if the amount remains unchanged. I also have less than no, but more than a big problem with you not having a say in that, and it is COMPLETELY unacceptable to me that your funds can be forfeit based on the date of your death. You sent all that money to .gov, and neither you nor your heirs got a dime back.

 

That's impossible. There are simply too many people in that category (depending on how you define it, but even with a narrow definition, it's still too many) to run anything. You've heard the saying, 'Too many cooks in the kitchen'? Well, the same thing applies to a business, factory, and especially a government. By the time they would be done arguing amongst themselves, no actual work would be done, and if you're suggesting anything like a true democracy (where every single Citizen gets to vote on every single issue), rather than a Representative Republic such as ours, you'd find yourself in a situation where you'd spend all of your time as a part-time unpaid legislator, so double nothing productive would get done.

Oh, by the by... China's big accomplishment towards a capitalist economy involving so-called private property... Is not. All those Chinese people buying property are only getting 50-year leases, sometimes with longer terms, which means there's nothing left for your heirs. At the end of the lease, it becomes Government property, and it's a major issue for them as the first of those leases are going to start coming due in the next decade or two, so they have to decide if they're going to cancel the repossession and ditch their socialist ideas (and contract), or if they're going to cave in and allow the families involved to keep it, and either live in it, sell it, or even rent it out if they choose.

One thing I have learned from my time on this forum in particular is that genuine socialists do NOT like private ownership of real property, as they have this funny idea that all land belongs to everyone, meaning (in their sick minds) someone could put up a tent (or whatever) in my yard somewhere and it would be acceptable and legal. And definitely not theft, even though there's no other way to explain it.

 

I answered that! I “recognized” it! Why are you completely misrepresenting what I said??? WHY?

 

So? Your personal opinion is allowed, but WTF does that have to do with the discussion at hand??? Are you really so completely unable to recognize the subject and the comments about it?

 

Ok, so you agree with me. Thx

 

a related thread about government inefficiency in building things:
Government paying ridiculous amounts to build public bathrooms

 

Want a list? We could start it with defense spending.

 

You mean they had not paid because the system was new and no-one paid? The people who were retired at the time were paid by those who were still working, which is still the idea.

As for the topic, - sure USSR sucked big time. Hardy anyone was happy with standard of living there.

 

I'm from Russia myself. I read the article with great interest. Many of the statements in it are correct, but not quite. I want to clarify for the forum members. There were no internal borders in the USSR. A person could move completely freely throughout the country. But it was necessary if he stayed in some place outside his place of residence for more than two weeks to register at the local police station. This did not imply any fine or punishment.

 

2
The author is right to say that many wanted to get to Moscow. But in reality, it was very difficult to move to live in Moscow. They did not give everyone free housing in Moscow.

 

3
Before the war and after the war, very good houses were built, with a large area of apartments, a good layout, high ceilings, thick walls that withstand any frost. These houses were called "stalinki". But the population of the USSR increased very quickly, as far as I remember, in 10 years after the end of the war it grew by 20 million. And it was necessary to build more housing. Therefore, at the end of the 50s, houses began to be built everywhere from panels - this is a reinforced concrete slab with a height of a floor. It was believed that this was a temporary solution - for 10-20 years, and then these houses would be demolished and new, higher-quality houses would be built in their place.