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As someone from a post-soviet country, and had to live in one of those.. there's plenty of reasons to shit on them.
Indeed. There is a hierarchy.
Commie blocks are better than tents.
But proper social housing is better than commie blocks.
And proper social housing mixed with middle class owner-occupied housing in the same neighborhoods and even within the same buildings is the best.
Honestly if I wasn't busy at work I'd make a whole list of why commie blocks are bad, including why they hardly make good social housing
For anyone interested, there are multitudes of videos on YouTube showing commie blocks and why they are bad, so don't feel bad for focusing on work.
Anyone interested can find the information with an easy search.
Are they better than nothing?
In the same way being shot in the liver is better than being shot in the back of the head, sure. But if I saw someone saying victims of shootings that got bodyshot are "shitting on it for no reason" and "they only hate that their bullet scar is ugly" I'd call them out too.
Just cause something is better than the absolute worst doesn't mean it's immune from all criticism. There's probably a fallacy name for this, but I don't know it off the top of my head.. I shall call it "the starving kid fallacy" for now after the classic example of "there are starving kids in africa so you should eat your vegetables" that parents do.. and it the same way OP is doing by saying "there are homeless people, so you should be content with living in a commie block". It's just guilt tripping people for being dissatisfied with their situation for no particular gain other than a perceived moral high ground
Privileged people that have never known suffering should not be allowed to have an opinion on this.
Who is saying its immune from criticism?
there was a project to move people from favellas to social housing. Didn't work for a few reasons, including long commute time to and from work and no infrastructure. People in the streets have a working community that helps them survive, simply moving them to hellscrapers destroys it.
Ok im gonna try typing out some of the observations of living in commie blocks from personal experience as well as some stories from my friends. Im also spoilering it for anyone who doesn't want to read the list.. also also.. not a comprehensive list of everything, just what I can think of on my lunch break
here goes
- The first thing to point out in my opinion is the construction: The construction of these were often rushed so at best they require expensive renovations and at worst they collapse, see tofu dreg in china
- Safety: This is something I remember from my safety classes back in school. We had to make a fire escape plan for our houses, with at least 2 exits.. which I really struggled with cause I lived on a high floor, so no jumpimg out the window, and no fire escapes only meant I could do 1. So the commie apartments don't meet our modern safety standards
- Location: A lot of this down to the economic collapse of various commusist countries, but many of them are quite literally in a middle of nowhere, in terms of finding a job. This is something I struggled with a lot, cause any job I could find would require a car to commute
- Parking space: The commie blocks were often designed with green space in mind which would be nice, if they weren't also not designed with the idea of every household having a car, so when you have 16 parking spaces and the rest of the 40 cars in the mud that was once grass they start to look a lot more depressing
- Accesability: The majority of commie blocks had no elevators, with the exception of quite tall ones. And even then the elevator usually started at the first floor rather than ground floor. This means if you're disabled and the only available social housing is commie blocks.. tough shit cause you're not getting in. I know someone who's a single mother with a disabled adult daughter who's she the primary caretaker off. She would have to carry her daugher up and down a flight of stairs everyday, and then also drag the electric wheelchair up
- Renovations: Pretty simple - the apartments are usually owned by individuals, rather than a housing company, and getting all 60 or so people to agree to renovate the outside of the building is imposible, with both poorer people and older people stubborn to change, as well as alcoholics and the like
- Utilities/equipment: Many of the commie blocks in my area didn't have city gas, that means for cooking anything you either had to have an electric stove, or more commonly from what I've seen buy big gas tanks and lug them up to your floor. They also lacked extractor fans, so I hope you like greasy walls
- Insulation: Have you seen soviet wall carpets? It's cause even with the windows closed you could feel the breeze through the walls. The winters there meant multiple jackets indoors, and the summers were unbearably hot too
- Insulation pt 2: With high humidity it also meant mold. Fun right?
- Insulation pt 3: No noise insulation either. At least meant the cops got called a lot for all the spousal abuse
Just to name a few :3.. im gonna go eat now
Woah! Thanks for this, interesting hearing a firsthand account. Very similar to trailer park life in the US, in my experience. Public housing/the projects are also similar but I never spent much time in them, strong racial divide in most of the US between trailer parks and projects.
I'm assuming a fair amount of drugs/addiction, small scale petty crime, and domestic violence? Cookouts and parties? Is there pride in being from a commie block? Is there a culture and music? Also, while I'm blasting you with questions, any chance you know a good documentary or book/article?
Drugs I didn't see much of in my town, alcoholism definitely.. though I know that in other areas there are drugs as well.. in terms of crime we mostly got general hooliganism, like throwing firecrackers or graffiti, as well as public drinking, not much theft and the like.. domestic violence was definitely something that happened a fair bit
Not much cookouts and parties in the commie blocks themsleves other than occasional family get togethers for the holidays that get out of hand. Generally in my country we were big on going to the countryside, so over the summer up until night the area would be quiet as everyone would go off to the lakeside to grill
In terms of pride, I wouldn't necessarily say anyone saw anyone any different depending on the housing they were from.. knew lots of people from all walks of life, and in general I don't think there was a major socioeconomic division in that regard :3.. the closest to a commie block culture you could define would be marozai as we called them, more commonly known as gopniks elsewhere - generally people who were low class workers skimming by in the soviet union, mostly categorized now as wearing tracksuits, public drinking and eating sunflower seeds, and usually working some under the table job like refurbishing cars bought from auctions and selling them as new, or working in unlicensed construction, though the majority of people living in commie blocks were just standard families you'd find anywhere. In terms of music around holidays when people would stay out late you'd mostly hear rap.. a lot of russian music too
And no particular documentaries im awere of that specifically talks about life in one of these areas heh
We had to make a fire escape plan for our houses, with at least 2 exits.. which I really struggled with cause I lived on a high floor, so no jumpimg out the window, and no fire escapes only meant I could do 1.
The roof. If yours flat. And even modern housing doesn't have two sets of stairs per entrance(?).
- Accesability: The majority of commie blocks had no elevators, with the exception of quite tall ones.
Got it. You are talking about very old 4-5 story buildings.
EDIT:
- Renovations: Pretty simple - the apartments are usually owned by individuals, rather than a housing company, and getting all 60 or so people to agree to renovate the outside of the building is imposible, with both poorer people and older people stubborn to change, as well as alcoholics and the like
Wierd. It is much easier to get 50%+1 in "small" 60-appartments building, than in same in new housing with over 10k people living in 3708 flats.
Got it. You are talking about very old 4-5 story buildings.
Yes. Im talking about commie blocks, glad you noticed :p
9 story and 16 story brezhnevkas are commie blocks too.
Although it does appear that living in them was better than living in a tent and perhaps led to living in a better housing situation? Unless the place was demolished after you moved out, it would be better than a tent for someone else.
Bad housing is better than no housing, largely in part that it helps people get out of the inertia and deathspiral of homelessness.
There's a minimum a society should provide, and public housing at least can satisfy that.
We should absolutely provide public housing and hopefully it’s nicer than commie blocks lmao.
The point is people were removed from their homes and placed in commie blocks. The conditions were horrible and it’s all well documented since the wall fell. People shit on commie blocks because of the authoritarian history and not the fact that it’s a way to house homeless people. I’m not sure if I would prefer a communist block over a tent on a California beach to be honest I’ve only done one though.
Not disagreeing there. My one and only argument to make here is literally "I disagree with the statement that people shit on commie blocks for no reason, as they aren't nice places to live". Obviously I have lived in one, and it's definitely preferable to nothing, so.. it's not like im saying "demolish commie blocks, and discontinue social housing" (the ones that do get major renovations are even quite nice :3.. definitely think there should still be more accessible options for social housing needs tho) just saying that the situation of living in one, as portrayed in the meme isn't ideal
I can assure you that living in my house is a lot better than living in a tent as well
The history of these countries cannot be seen in a vacuum. Socialist countries were historically enemies of the United States. The U.S. did everything in its power to weaken them (including economic policy and assassinations) in the USSR, South America, and Asia. And then people knowingly proclaim that socialism can never work.
Yes there was corruption, bureaucracy, oversight, and abuse. Of course, there were missteps and injustices. The same can be said, however, for the U.S. today. At least the communist countries have the excuse of having to stand against the richest and most powerful country in the history of the earth. They did not have the luxury of developing an alternative system in peace.
If history were different, we would still live under the "divine right of kings" and people would argue that parliamentarianism is an untenable mob rule. So we surfs should just continue to work the land and suffer the abuses of the king and his vassals. But our course of history has proven this a lie; we know that the status quo only serves the interests of those who exploit the labor of others.
Don't see where I said socialism can't work. I said that after living in a commie block for around 15 years I know that they aren't good housing :p..
Fair enough, I read too much into your comment
Ah yes if only the Americans weren’t checks notes feeding starving soviets the USSR would have won. Laughs in Berlin airlift.
You know Stalin’s dead and he can’t actually give you a head pat for being a really good boy, right
Look, the post clearly states "No real reason". You, you gotta learn to read.
(I lived in one of these and it was absolute hell)