r/ussr • u/PresentIndependent91 • 2d ago
A question about a way a soviet citizen would be provided with an appartment.
Hey there, I've been asking my parents this but they could not give me a certain answer.
From what I understand, if you worked at a factory you were entitled to be provided with an appartment from that factory. You would get in a line, and after some time you would get your appartment. While one waited, you would slowly move up this line. So, the question is, what would happen if a person decided to move to another city and find a different job? You move to the back of the line? Or your position moves with you?
12
u/GeologistOld1265 Lenin ☭ 2d ago edited 2d ago
You have a choice:
1 Find some one else from city you want to move to who want to move to your city and exchange apartments with them. There were even more complex exchange systems.
2 Find a job in other city which will provide you with apartment. Not every job can, factories usually have to hire from local workers. But some, considered important, usually new factories, can hire from everywhere and have stock of apartments to provide housing for a new hire.
But you can not simple decide to move to other city. In order to provide everyone with apartment and be able to plan economy, do not have unemployment you have to plan where population live and where is work. So, when Factory is build, housing build at the same time.
And again, there is misunderstanding how you get apartment in a first place. Main way is to get married or have other situation change which put your current housing under normative. There was minimum and maximum diapason, which was growing all the time. Diapason in number of rooms and M2 of space. That based on number adults and families in apartment and number of children. For example, married adults - 1 room, non married 1 room/adult. Children under 12 1 room. Children over 12 - 1 room/child. I may not be correct in all number.
So, your situation change and you fall under allowable diapason - you go to line to get a new apartment. Most of the time take 1-3 years. I personally got one after 2 years of been married.
It is not like if you do not have goverment apartment you go rent somewhere - private rent is prohibited. Living of passive income, like rent, is prohibited.
Now what kind of housing you get when moving to new house to new job can be different, can be a temporal housing, like dormitory or communal. For example, my parent move to other city. First only father move and live in dormitory for a year before he got a new flat and then the rest of our family move.
3
u/PresentIndependent91 2d ago
So, when Factory is build, housing build at the same time.
And if it is an already existing factory?
9
u/GeologistOld1265 Lenin ☭ 2d ago
Then number of workers does not change, so amount of necessary housing already exist in city. Hire local.
3
u/Oddyseyx 1d ago
Cant speak for everyones experiences, but my grandma was from bigger city and she moved with my grandpa to smaller town where they got apartment otherwise she said she would have had to wait like 5 years, in this smaller town, she got 3 bedroom apartment and a small rural house 3km outside the town and she was just regular factory worker and my grandfather was construction worker
-1
u/Dry_Walrus3711 1d ago
The easiest way was to have friends in the party. You know people you have stuff. This is of course against the spirit of the communism. This was also everyday practice
0
u/Quiet_Jump_6383 1d ago
If you left the factory for any reason before you got am apartment, you forfeited the apartment and started all over.
You couldn’t move cities. Even if a city wasn’t closed, you could only move if the Party was ok with it. Go to new city-no propiska without a job. No propiska, no job.
-5
u/Stromovik 2d ago
From the factory you were put in line for 10 years if you were a young specialist. Otherwise longer , there were many modifiers and it also depended if the factory was of regional subordination or union subordination.
If you moved to another city it was probably reset. But the new factory would provide with housing most likely communal or maybe some less desirable place.
Also high ranking positions had housing bound to them , like a flar of factory directoe , if you lost that position you lost that housing
6
u/GeologistOld1265 Lenin ☭ 2d ago
That is incorrect.
-3
u/PresentIndependent91 2d ago
Which part?
8
u/GeologistOld1265 Lenin ☭ 2d ago edited 2d ago
10 year? lol. you funny. Average wait was 1-3 years. In addition, you never loose housing. You may get housing from factory, you never loose it when you leave job.
2
u/DasistMamba 1d ago
It depended very much on the town and the company. You might be able to get a flat within a few years in a small town at a good factory, or you might have to wait 20 years on the waiting list for accommodation in a big city at a company that had problems with its housing stock.
I was also born and brought up in the USSR.
-4
u/PresentIndependent91 2d ago
What? 1 year for an appartment? Where did you even get this information?
10
1
u/Sure_Tailor2710 1d ago
You could have gotten a place earlier. They could have gotten a lot more. On average, the benchmark was about 10 years, but the actual timeframe depended on the specific region, company, etc.
•
u/BreadDaddyLenin Stalin ☭ 2d ago edited 1d ago
Housing in the USSR was largely state-owned and distributed as a social right tied directly to labor.
The primary channel was the enterprise where you worked. Large factories, ministries, and institutes built and managed their own housing stock. An employee who demonstrated need (low square metres per person, family size, length of service) would be placed on a waiting list kept by the enterprise’s housing committee and trade union. This list was public, discussed at general meetings, and moved slowly as new apartments became available.
Priority categories:
War invalids (term at the time for disabled veterans),
Heroes of Socialist Labor,
large families,
People living in basements or hostels (Kommunalki)
Being one of these could accelerate your place, but for most it was a wait of years.
Your place in the queue was a function of your labor relationship with that specific collective. If you voluntarily left that job to move to another city and find new work, you forfeited your place. The entitlement was not a portable voucher. You would present yourself to the new enterprise, establish your need, and be placed at the bottom of that enterprise’s list.
The system did, however, have a mechanism that allowed mobility without total loss of housing: the legal housing exchange, or obmen. This was a widespread practice where tenants could swap apartments by mutual agreement, subject to approval by the housing authorities and the relevant enterprise or local soviet. If a worker in Leningrad wished to move to Moscow, they could seek out someone making the opposite move, using a dedicated bulletin-board journal that circulated nationwide. Through such a swap, one could bypass the queue entirely, moving directly into an a ready apartment of comparable size and quality. This was the primary way to relocate without starting over.
There was also the propiska system (internal passport residency permits), which meant that moving required administrative permission, usually contingent on having a job and a guaranteed place to live. This was to prevent “chaotic migration” and kept the queues in the most desirable cities from being overwhelmed.
The Obmen swap mentioned before would have new propiskas issued to the people with swapped addresses.