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These were highly desirable at the time. Most people lived in old houses with a bathroom in the staircase or even outside, coal fired oven heating in some rooms, ancient windows, bathtub in the kitchen, etc. The government wasn’t investing in renovation or improvements of old buildings, so they kept falling apart.
The new Plattenbauten (commie blocks) had central heating, warm water, modern windows, modern bathrooms, shopping, healthcare, and schools nearby, parking spots, public transport connections, etc.
People would marry and have kids early to be eligible to be assigned a newly built apartment instead of continuing to live in a deteriorating house from the late 1900s, that had last been renovated in the 1930s.
I remember similar things about the Krushchevkas in the Soviet Union.
It’s funny what can be a step up. And how recently our quality of living was… much lower than it is now. In capitalist countries as well as former ML countries.
Commieblocks do have a certain eyesore quality with their monotony though, almost as bad as middle class suburbia, lmao
As someone who has lived many years in a similar concrete building, I do not think I will ever truly understand how a basic rectangular building can ever be an “eyesore” as long as they are cleaned and maintained. I like their simplicity and honest brutalist architecture. The rooms are often spacious and very easy to utilize for whatever you want to place in the rooms and have some of the best views in the cities they are in. And best of all: they offer great modern homes for many residents on a comparatively small slab of land unlike traditional houses.
Yeah, living in one as a child was awesome. All your friends were close by, school was really close, there were play areas nearby and other infrastructure things like health centers etc as well. Biggest complain of mine is the boring color, but that was later changed when it got renovated in the early 2000s.
Don’t you do brutalism like that
Brutalism is about making concrete EDIFICES that TOWER OVER THE SURROUNDS like the SKELETON OF AN ANCIENT BEAST
I lived in buildings like those for a while and they were pretty good; besides what you mention, public transportation and shops/amenities were in walkable range. Of course this wasn’t 70s East Germany though…
Suburbia allows for more individual expression and creativity. A German nickname for commie blocks was Arbeiterschliessfächer meaning Worker Lockers. The state puts you in there for storage until your next shift.
Suburbia means there will be more space dedicated to cars than to people, and you won’t have easy access to nature or civilization, because you are surrounded by miles of just more suburbia.
Individual expression like what?
Gardening, decoration, parties, guests, and inhabitants.
Suburbia allows for more individual expression and creativity.
Until the HOA notices!
I agree, just saying that I find both eyesores, lmao.
That picture of Honecker really sells the East Germany circa 1975
Who’s the dude one the poster?
Erich Honecker, then-leader of Soviet-dominated East Germany.
Cool picture. What I find really ugly is not necessarily the commie blocks but the lack of any vegetation.
Does anyone know where the picture was taken? I would like to see how it looks nowadays.
This source says that it was in Halle-Neustadt (which is now the district “Neustadt” in Halle 😅).
Cabriny Green.
The capitalist alternative:
This may come as a surprise, but Warsaw Pact countries and the Soviet Union had widespread homelessness too.
The difference is that they didn’t publicly admit it, for the same reason that they didn’t publicly admit they had any unemployment until the 1970s, and even then only obliquely.
This may come as a surprise, but Warsaw Pact countries and the Soviet Union had widespread homelessness too.
Citation? Even if that’s true, was it anywhere near as bad as in the US currently?
Crossing the Line: Vagrancy, Homelessness and Social Displacement in Russia, chapters 4+5 on the Soviet Union. Alternatively, I believe Soviet Workers and Late Stalinism addresses it, though I’d have to dig it up wherever the fuck it is for a precise citation.
The numbers are somewhat different… in part because both homelessness and joblessness were arrestable offenses that would get you sent to GULAG as slave labor. Complete with a 90%+ redecisivism rate for those convicted of those terrible crimes! Of course, that’s only counting the ones who weren’t caught again.
Even the numbers that were reported internally (and not given to the public of the period; the official line was that there was no homelessness) are noted to be underestimates, due to the reluctance of many local Soviet officials to make formal arrests for homelessness that would imply to The Party that they were in some way deficient, letting VAGRANTS and ANTI-SOCIAL ELEMENTS arise in THEIR area! Much better to clap them in cuffs for a night, then tell them to go to the next town over; it can be their problem.
It’s known by internal Soviet reports that there were some 500,000 ‘parasites’ in the mid-1980s, which was similar to the homelessness rate in the USA at the time. That, of course, presumes that the MVD was trying to make an accurate estimate instead of just counting who had been processed as a ‘parasite’ by them.
Thanks for providing at least approximate citations. I have a hard time imagining that homelessness in the USSR was ever anywhere near the current situation in the US. Even with arresting and pushing people to other cities, if you’ve seen what the streets around downtown LA look these days, it’s hard to imagine anything like it.
I have a hard time imagining that homelessness in the USSR was ever anywhere near the current situation in the US. Even with arresting and pushing people to other cities, if you’ve seen what the streets around downtown LA look these days, it’s hard to imagine anything like it.
Then you’ll probably have a hard time imagining literal hundreds-of-thousands of people being deported from their homes to Siberian work camps without a scrap of real shelter, or millions dying of famine. Men eating scraps of coal and clay just to feel something in their stomach. Starvation rations with hard labor in the dead of winter. Tents insulated with moss scavenged by the prisoners themselves. One square meter of living space per person.
