[dfwgator]

Yes, because packing us all into Soviet-style apartments is so much better. /s

[Nifster]

exactly. The reason people wanted a home in the ‘burbs was to have a yard and some peace and quite. If they wanted to live in stacked boxes there are plenty of places they could have chosen

[hedgetrimmer]

It is! It makes it so much easier for the block captains to spy on the tenants and report their activities to the commissar.

[al_c]

[St_Thomas_Aquinas]

-—Yes, because packing us all into Soviet-style apartments is so much better. /s——

Read Gropius’ theory behind the apartment building. It’s eye-opening, to say the least.

http://www.amazon.com/Living-Machines-Bauhaus-Architecture-Ideology/dp/0898704642/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1335455951&sr=8-3

[varmintman]

Let me tell you what I've heard and read about Soviet era apartments in Russia, from people who experienced it.

There was a years-long wait for new apartments. It sometimes happened that a couple would get divorced and both stay in their apartment, and then both remarry, and you'd end up with four adults living in the one apartment, along with any kids or rug-rats, dogs, cats, or anything else.

Moreover the Soviet empire was always a curious mixture of communism and feudalism. In order to move from Moscow to Novgorod for instance, you had to find somebody in Novgorod who wanted to move to Moscow. That was because, otherwise, the mayor of Moscow would have to figure that his old buddy, the mayor of Novgorod, had just gone one (peasant, i.e. you) up on him.

The language in fact retains a lot of stuff from medieval times. The 'to jinx' for instance (каркать/накаркать) is borrowed from crow language ("carrrr") since common belief held that a human being could not pronounce a jinx or curse and a wizard with any ongoing need to put curses on people needed a crow or raven to pronounce them.