The Soviet Union com­prised one-sixth of the earth’s land sur­face which made the one-family detached houses pos­si­ble to build, unlike in the coun­tries with the lack of land ter­ri­to­ries. How­ever, the over­all run­down of the coun­try after the WWII had forced the gov­ern­ment to com­mence the mass con­struc­tion of col­lec­tive flat blocks in order to accom­mo­date hoards of peo­ple who had no roof over their heads.

New build­ings with small pri­vate apart­ments replaced mis­er­able wooden cot­tages where peo­ple lived in awful con­di­tions with­out  show­ers or indoor toilets.

Since early 1920-s, while the ordi­nary peo­ple lived in the poky wooden huts or nes­tled together in the shared col­lec­tive apart­ments, the rul­ing elite ten­anted in the state-of-the-art houses.

Because of the mass con­struc­tion of the apart­ment blocks by the mid­dle of 1970-s all Soviet  cities looked very sim­i­lar to each other.

Related posts:

1. How Khrushchev Had Killed the “Vampire”
2. Think Big? No, Even Bigger!
3. Queues
4. Novosi­birsk: Then and Now.
5. Sign­boards of Soviet Stores