Memes

Thanks to the strides made by the developed socialist economy, it recently became possible to launch the construction of houses by industrial methods. Let us see now how available housing has increased in the Soviet Union. The young Soviet state inherited from the tsarist regime altogether 180 million sq m of useful floor space in towns. This figure has by now been exceeded ten times, mounting to 1,860 million sq m. In the last decade alone, 34 million flats were constructed, which means that more than half the population and nearly three-quarters of the urban population live in new flats or houses. Since some people move into new flats and houses, those who remain in the old dwellings are less crowded, so the majority of working people have had their living conditions improved.

Houses are built in the Soviet Union at an increasing rate. Whereas in forty-odd years, 1917-1959, only about 500 million sq m of floor space in state-owned houses could be built, 545-550 million sq m of floor space will be put into operation during the current five-year period alone (1976-1980). Such is one side of the problem, which is that at the current stage the Soviet state really can provide its citizens with comfortable dwellings.

The other side of the problem is no less important. Rent in the Soviet Union is the lowest in the world, although it is paid for the use of modern dwellings with all conveniences. Soviet citizens are astonished to hear foreign visitors complain that rent consumes more than a third of their earnings. In the Soviet Union, rent comes on average to 5-6 per cent of earnings. Since there is no unemployment in the Soviet Union, and labour is in great demand, usually several members of a family have jobs and on this basis rent accounts at most for 2-3 per cent of the aggregate income of an average Soviet family. In many countries, as is known, apartment houses or tenements constitute a profitable industry.

The Soviet state, however, has never regarded rent as an item of revenue. Both in the past and at the present time rent in the Soviet Union is expended on the maintenance and preservation of houses. The great material possibilities for the construction of new houses and the social measures taken to ensure fair distribution of floor space at low rent thus make a real guarantee of the right of Soviet citizens to housing.

• ABC of Dialectical and Historical Materialism- https://ia801800.us.archive.org/8/items/ABCDialecticalHistoricalMaterialism_cleaned/ABC%20of%20Dialectical%20and%20Historical%20Materialism.pdf

Rent being 5-6% of your income and going to building maintenance is what I use to shut down this line of anticommunism. The commie blocs in Bucharest were so nice that they made me an urbanist.