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The Tragedy of Soviet Apartment Buildings

By on June 22, 2012


Perhaps the most enduring symbol of the Soviet experiment is their architecture. During the spring of 2007, I lived in an oft-forgotten corner of Romania, working to expand HOPE’s work into the country. As with all former Soviet republics, Romania’s cities are filled with massive apartment blocks, exemplified in this picture which was taken from the window of the apartment where I lived.

Galati 040
Romanian Apartment Block

 

They aren’t pretty. These concrete, gray monstrosities line every street, each one in a different state of disrepair. Not only do they blight these communities, but it also made navigating Romanian cities a nightmare (try finding your apartment when all the buildings are carbon-copies of one another).

The shared common space of the buildings was disastrous. The façade, lobbies, and stairwells –the commons–were always in terrible condition. The interesting thing about these buildings was that once you reached the door of the apartments, the “home” began. Inside, many of the apartments were actually quite nice, though you’d never know it from the outside.

The Communist regime built these concrete palaces but did a poor job (read: terrible) of maintaining them. Individuals buy the apartments within the building, but not the building itself. As a result, nobody maintains the lobbies, the landscaping or the exterior walls. Individual apartment owners simply fend for themselves, meaning the majority of urban Romanians live in ugly housing. The Romanian government proved time-and-again that it was a terrible landlord.

Under Communist systems, the government serves owns the real estate. The tragedy of the commons is just one of a litany of Communism’s fatal flaws.  We see glimpses of this economics reality every day in simple things like the way we drive rental cars (versus our own cars) and in the condition of dormitory bathrooms. Successful economic systems take the tragedy of the commons seriously, acknowledging that when “everyone owns it, nobody does.”

Bonus Conversation: Join the conversation over at Reddit, where this article has generated nearly 50 comments so far.
Sound Off: Do you care for things that aren’t yours… like a rental car or a dormitory bathroom? How do you solve the “when everyone owns it, nobody does” problem? Let us know in the comments.

Photo: fourstory.org

About Chris Horst

  • Greg Shaw

    Sure. In my college cooperative of 500 people we had an accident in which three people were injured, one severely. It was people’s fault there long ago, but embarassing to us in the Texas press, which didn’t like hippy communes. I went out and cleaned up the blood on the sidewalk, because that’s just something you do.

    Also, Sweden has really nice socialist housing buildings, and San Francisco’s CitiApartments has a lot of shitty lobbies.

    • http://www.quarterlifeman.com Jayson Schmidt

      Greg, you’re right: it’s not always black and white. Some socialist housing is pretty darn nice and other free-market properties look as though they’ve been subject to a warzone.

      I agree 100% when you say: “because that’s just something you do.” I wish everybody had that mentality.

  • John

    When was Romania a Soviet republic??

    • http://www.quarterlifeman.com Jayson Schmidt

      Yes!

      Romania came into Soviet occupation at the end of WWII (and fully via the Warsaw Pact in the 50′s). They left following the fall of the iron curtain.

  • http://tcavey.blogspot.com tcavey

    I’ve found cleaning the break room to be like that. We all use it but no one wants to clean it. Thankfully I don’t have to worry about that any more.

    • http://www.quarterlifeman.com Jayson Schmidt

      TC:

      I think we’ve all experienced that, which is why I think Chris hit it out of the park: “everyone owns it, nobody does.”

      The last company I worked for (before founding QM) even had a Director of HR to order the new break room items and a receptionist to clean it and stock them. If anything, it made the situation worse, knowing that somebody wasn’t far behind to clean up “your mess.”

      I think it’s important for all of us to live by the mantra, “leave things better than you found them.”

      • Chris Horst

        I still have moments of remorse for the woman who cleaned our shared bathroom in my dorm. 40 college guys shared one mass restroom and had basically no ownership in its cleanliness. You can figure out the rest of the story.

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