this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2026
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To be fair, you too can own a house if you're willing to settle for what the average house in Russia is like. In-fact you can often get the house for free and only have to pay for the plot.
That's just not true. Most permanently inhabited houses/apartments in Russia are quite well-built and well-insulated because otherwise you wouldn't make it through the winter. They may be ugly as fuck but you can't get anything similarly well-built in western europe for less than 100k in the middle of nowhere, and most people can't really afford that (how are you going to pay the mortgage if you are in the middle of nowhere?)
If you settle for the "european-quality" home or apartment with more cracks than walls and a slightly leaky roof, sure, you can probably afford it (which I actually plan to do at some point). But most people prefer to rent than to live in a place like that.
No they're not. They're cold as fuck and heated by a single gas or coal stove in the middle of one room. They can't afford insulation, and good building materials can't be shipped to the middle of nowhere.
That isn't true at all. I'm not from the area, but I was watching a guy recently discussed the town he lived in. It was a series of giant apartment complexes from long ago.
They're insulated from the ground by standing on stilts because they have to be otherwise they'd melt the permafrost and sink. They also have centralized heating that gets pumped each of the buildings.
It's a giant-ass country man, there's probably lots of ways to live. I'm not going to claim all of them are great but they clearly don't all resemble what you're talking about.
Dude you are talking out of your ass. I have lived in plenty of apartments and houses in middle of nowhere Russia and on average they're much better built and insulated than even modern houses and apartments in Spain or France (can't speak for Germany). Besides, almost all apartment blocks even in tiny towns have central heating and not an individual stove, just for efficiency reasons.
Because, once again, you will fucking freeze to death if your house is not well-insulated and it's -35 outside.
Slave labour doesn't build better construction. You're not really a Stalinist are you?
how was bulding homes "slave work"? do your propagandized ass know eastern block had best worker rights in entire human history?
Most housing units in Russia are apartments in "Khruschevkas", built long after Stalin. They look really ugly, and the quality is not amazing but it's actually pretty good if you renovate it properly. Speaking to a couple people who worked construction during the period (friends of my parents), both of them were quite happy with the salary and benefits back then, and they still live in Khruschevkas they helped to build themselves so that's kinda nice.
BTW, "Stalinkas" (apartment blocks built for communal living during Stalin's time) are actually revered as literally the best housing options in both Moscow and St Petersburg due to thick walls, high ceilings, good floor planning and high-quality building materials. I'm not pro-Stalin, I think he's the second worst leader of USSR (after Gorbachev). That said the quality of construction was actually pretty good back then, even though there may have been some near-slave-level labor used to build them.
are you a trostkyist?
No, I wouldn't call myself a Trotskyist. I think Trotsky had some maybe-good-in-theory-but-not-really-in-practice ideas (ref continuous revolution) and predicted some trends in the USSR somewhat correctly (ref dictatorship of bureaucrats) but mostly he said and did some really really dumb shit after the revolution.
You're thinking of the White House or Ivy league universities. Not Russian apartments.
Why have you lived in plenty of apartments and houses in middle of nowhere Russia? Even average Russians haven't lived in plenty of places.
I was born & grew up in a small town in Russia (we moved apartments twice during that time), moved to Moscow to study (had to move apartments there as well), then spent a year in St. Petersburg, then came back to a small village next to my hometown where I lived in my grandparent's house and started to build my own. (in the end I had to flee the country when the government started to crack down on any opposition)
It's not an unreasonable amount of times to move.
My old bosses dacha sounded nice until he pointed out how cold it could get in the winter as it was essentially only heated by a stove. I guess it's nice for a summer getaway from the big city - a bit better than a tent.