1/10
Some prime examples of communist architecture in Chisinau Moldova
These seem actually pretty nice buildings to me. If they would still be such well maintained today, with grown up trees....it wouldn't be bad at all.
They make them pretty in Germany, Estonia, maybe somewhere else
Went on holiday to Slovakia and Slovenia, and when commie blocks are well maintained, they don't look ugly at all. Especially because they're usually surrounded by green. Also when you talk about them remember what the alternatives are: homeless camps, favellas and landlords
housing prices in my area have more than tripled in less than 5 years
suddenly a commie block doesn’t seem too bad
Those commie blocks are also in the hands of landlords and the rents on them are absolutely ridiculous for how garbage the quality is.
The government actually maintained them. Private landlords will only do the bare minimum and maximize profits
I've been to the building in the second photo. Or at least, what's left of it. I guess it had a private landlord.
If you were there after 1990 yes it probably does
Well it looked like it hadn't been maintained since the early nineties so yeah. I was there five or six years ago.
Sounds about right
This isn’t true. It was characteristic the opposite. Whatever was built in socialism was mismanaged and consequently not maintained, along with the constant lack of funds to maintain what was built. That’s the very typic of authoritarian regimes, especially communism, that they cannot maintain normal life and anything produced.
(Let’s leave the special case of North Korea aside, where the infantile dictators seem to have very strong will to keep the Potemkin village look out of their windows.)
I can’t speak for US and its legislative specialties or reasons but Austria, Germany, even northern Italy wgere private property was predominant or where democracy was the political system and responsibility was more important than in authoritarian regimes were prime examples in contrast to Yugoslavia. YU, just over the border from Austria or Italy looked dirty, run-down, even buildings 10 years old looked tired, maintenance of building surroundings was bad, neglected (grass wasn’t regularly cut and when it was it was cut badly in contrast with austrian reality of a private company that got the job of maintaining public spaces and needed to do it well or face termination of the job.).
Got bad news for you, but those blocks in Austria are in a lot of cases, either government owned or heavily regulated. In any case, a lot of people would make the case that this is some sort of socialism. For instance, 25% of the housing in vienna is owned by the city government.
You have no clue what you're talking about in the first place, don't you?
I rented a shitty apartment on the outskirts of Milan sleeping in a shared bedroom for 2 years.
The bed was kept together by cable ties, the fridge was broken and everything was falling apart.
The owners (private) lived abroad and knew nothing about the state of the apartment and they didn't care. I lived there because it was the only affordable place I found.
That's the magic of the free market.
So? What’s your point? You had a place that you could afford.
Where do you live now? Do you work? Did you work then? Did you improve your situation? Did you get a better job? Did your life choices get you ahead or took you back?
My first aoartment was in a room 2,5x2,5m. I was happy in it because it was my own place away from home. The awfulness of communism was gone by then thankfully. It was what I could afford. It was in a house with an old couple. Many other people lived with their parents, I chose not to, because I love them too much. Living with parents or trying to rent a room or if coming from some money - an apartment - was the norm. At least after the end of the criminal system there was a chance for improvement of the failed state of things. Under communism of course housing was lacking, the system even didn’t know what the needs are because cebtral planning doesn’t work, and the system spends most pf the resoyrces for repressive organs, most of all on the secret political police that ebables the autorutarian regume to exist with turning people agaibst eachother with the threat of repercussions if they tmdon’t collaborate.
Lists to get government apartments in badly managed blocks of flats were long and usually polutically and corruptly put together with people tied to the party or with those that offered bigger bribes or through party connections. Privaye building of apartment housing was non existant except private fwmily houses. Bricks were, along the strictly forbidden foreign currencies, the only hard currency with monetary inflation in the 1000%. So people built their houses while living with their parents, even married couples. It was slow building and usually by themselves. Of course bricks couldn’t be bought by everybody. Lusts existed there too, because there were too many people trying to turn their wage into something hard. Etc etc etc etc. I mean… ehy do I need to tell you that nazism … sorry communism is fucking bad?
Yeah they where nice it was after communism in Romania that they really began to fall apart. Nothing gets done in the blocs unless everyone agrees and pays to do it. Blocs can look really strange when half the apartments are renovated and repainted and half are not.
I grew up in Europe been inside many commie style blocks. Say whatever you want about the outside but I much rather live in one of those spacious apartments then these newly built shoe boxes.
As a guy from 3world country with over 1.4billion population, this is dream for many people even for those who has a white collar job. But government is busy giving free stuff to gain votes instead of building big apartment sprawls for affordable housing
India moment.
I wish.
You know what’s more depressing than commie blocks?
Homelessness.
Yes, but commie blocks are communist, thus bad. Homelessness is not communist, thus not bad.
/s
Homelessness is just laziness and moral ineptitude manifested. /S
I always say, those commie blocks looked nice back in their prime. Functional mass housing like that sounds like a dream
Look how much space there's between those apartment buildings. Nowadays they just pack them as tight as they can. No room for activities
I would prefer them packed and just have like one small to medium sized park with lots of businesses around them. Green space is nice but green spaces with things to do are way nicer.
consoom
Commie block is the modern urban master plan but done 60 years earlier. And actually built and working.
And honestly apartment buildings around the world at that time looked the same, I don’t know what OP is complaining.
I'm not complaining, I have found memories of the commie blocks, and I still remember the nights in the dvor (courtyard, every communist housing development has one), ugly doesn't equal bad
It’s not even ugly
Yeah try living in one when it’s -20 outside. And +33 in the summer
While -20° is utter insanity, +33° is a lovely warm day in Australia.
But ... below zero? Yeah, nah! :(
Yeah it’s a nice warm days but these blocks get extremely hot in the summer. I live in one. You can’t really stay inside in the summer and they don’t have aircon obviously
Aaah, yes, the lack of aircon would be not at all remotely pleasant - though for me 33° is quite ok, I can see that people who consider temperatures below freezing to be quite ok would object to a 50° difference - as would I! :(
I'm blessed at living in a place where there's (generally) only a 40° difference between the coldest and hottest temperatures. So far at least... I'm in Australia, on the west coast. It's nice here, mostly.
Are you not allowed to fit split system airconditioning units to warm/cool these places? I assume no or you'd have done that already.
Not the guy you asked but i also live in a commie block built in 82' in romania and it's really nice. While the exteriors of the blocks are weird now, since everybody renovated the apartaments as they wished and they all look different, the interior is definetly great. I live in a block with ground level+ another 4 floors and i am on the 4th floor (last) and we also have an attic with a stairway into the ceiling so there s that. We just got an ac (its really easy actually to mount, and since romania is more southern we get more summer a lot of people in commie blocks have them)
It’s up to the landlord I guess, i don’t really know many people who have aircon because our summers aren’t that long. Also it’s pricey. I know some of the older blocks also cost a ton of money to heat up if they’re really old. So they generally suck to live in if they haven’t been renovated
"commie blocks", tag "Ugliness"
shows examples of pretty stalin era buildings and good examples of soviet modernism (not the commie blocks, but buildings used for services)
The only real problem with these images is the lack of pedestrian infrastructure, but there are at least buses. I've been inside commie blocks many times, and I can say for sure that most of them have good locations and the inside can be better than a new "cheloveynik" 80% of the time
I have been to Chișinău, and it has been one of the most pedestrian friendly, and certainly the greenest city I have seen in Europe. There’s enormous trees and sidewalks on every street.
Wait, what? Most images show sidewalks. I grew up in one of the former Soviet countries and I could walk absolutely everywhere.
if the soviets gave the area at least one gift it was their transit system, as an american i’m unbelievably jealous that even rural areas in Siberia are all pretty effectively serviced by buses, trains and more - here in the US rural transit is a complete joke, you pretty much have to own a car to do literally anything.
Yes, when I moved to the U.S. in 2001 I was shocked that there are no sidewalks and the public transport absolutely sucks.
I would argue that in most American cities, transit is a joke. RTD here in Denver, fairly dense and walkable compared to other US cities of its size, has eliminated service since the pandemic and now we learned that there are glaring problems with the light rail infrastructure. Couple that with drug use on the trains and busses, needless to say ridership continues to trend downward post pandemic
Maybe not evident in the photos, but they actually used to be very pedestrian friendly (not sure if that’s still the case; I left the USSR in 1991). We had friends who lived in the newly built ones in the 80s and while they seemed sprawling, you could easily get around on foot. They were often connected by underpasses through intersections that would take you into the courtyard of a “complex” that had benches and playgrounds and babushkas staring out the windows (Soviet CCTV, if you will). The grocery stores and farmers markets were usually easily accessible by foot and there was often a bus/tram stop that would take you into the city. I miss my old life there
The problem with underpasses is that they still prioritse cars: the driver gets to see the outside world, while the pedestrian becomes a creature of the underworld. I do agree with you about the courtyard, those are actually pretty good, but with cars coming into the hands of people to a larger extent in the 90s, the courtyards are often filled with cars, but overall they're still ok. Also you make a good point about babushkas, a principle of a good public space is visibility (also a problem of underpass) - when you can easily see what's going on around you (you have enough light, not too many obstructions), you can react when someone is in danger and someone else can react when you're in danger, that's why babushkas matter in urbanism. Overall, commie blocks need an overhaul to comply with modern standards of urbanism
With a significantly increased number of cars per capita and insufficient parking (not planned for), walkability of these cities has drastically reduced.
Honestly I wish they would build these denser. Usually a commie bloc is placed on a lot 10 times its size and surrounded by greenery.
There is nothing wrong with green spaces but I feel like building very dense housing and then spacing it all apart sort of defeats the purpose. Every journey you take starts with a walk of a couple of minutes before you actually start your journey.
And the green places are generally soulless. Parks are great but you know whats even nicer? A cafe overlooking the park. A restaurant with a terrace in the park. A grocery story or bar next to it. I don’t just want to stroll through a park. I want to do things there.
you showed many beautiful buildings
These are Chisinau buildings. They still exist in Moldova. But some of them aged terribly.
Especially the Inturist hotel near the academy of science
The building in the first image also aged like milk https://maps.app.goo.gl/KNBwKhFXLAeCi2xSA?g_st=ac
Sounds weird but could be worse with all those off color thermal isolations and added rooms. If you know you know
These are like their best versions in the best condition
The building is 4,5,6 were already 30 years old, built right after WW2 in a reconstruction effort
These are just examples of modern architecture at the time, not different from those in western countries. There were in fact huge settlements which had functions of the socialist agenda, but those shown here are no such things.
Back in the day in my city commie blocks where more popular and your preferred choice to live
They look good though
beautiful
So little cars what a time to be alive
They were really expensive and you needed to wait in line to even be allowed to buy one, almost everyone used public transportation and even today the trolley busses are an iconic part of the city
Commie blocks is way better than camp site
If they are so good why don't they build some in California and NY ???? /s
I know you are being sarcastic here. But it's the induced demand, car centric infrastructure, and the ponzi scheme of suburbia. That prevents high density apartments, midrises, rowhouses and townhouses from being built in most part of America and Canada.
Not to mention the fact it's usually illegal to build those kinds of structures.
Rather this then no home at all.
Most of the pictures arent even commie blocks
Built by the commies for the commies in the architectural approved style, what are they then?
Most people, when saying commie blocks, refer to the apartment buildings which were made out of prefabricated concrete blocks, hence the name commie block. Many of the building in your pictures are built from them, but many are not.
In your post, there are some Stalinist era buildings which look fancier (pictures 4 and 5), and which while built in the Soviet Union, are not referred to as commie blocks.
Look at those spaces people can inhabit with dignity instead of being in the street. Where do I sign up?
Half of Brazil’s buildings are like that, there’s nothing communist about it, they’re just bland. Housing and function, no architecture. It’s not exclusive to communism
The only ones that are bad are 8 and 10, and that’s mostly because of the street scape. I have no problems with the rest
First one can easily be found in France. Many post WW2 projects look similar
Our beautiful Italian postwar Razionale Style, their horrible authoritarian commie blocks /s
The good old free United States doesn’t look too different.
Idk, state housing sure seems better than rampant homelessness
I love this building style especially russian and communism style blocks hate me for this but i can tell my opinion and have free speech
ugliness posts gorgeous buildings Never change subreddit
This is great. Plenty of housing for ppl
There’s no “communist” architecture, these are all normal modern buildings.
Picture 3/10 could very well be an apartment complex on the Costa Blanca / Spain.
You know, a common tactic between feds is to post these pictures during autumn/winter periods with nobody around. You'd know that if they paid you.
They look nice. And current American apartments aren't that different either.
Current American ones are built to worse standards and don’t last nearly as long
Housing as commodity in a nutshell.
I wouldn't judge that, but I have seen American buildings similar to the ones in this picture.
Those darn communists making sure their people are housed and sheltered
Its a pretty good way to efficiently provide families with sustainable and affordable accomodation, something most capitalist countries are unfortunately failing to do for their people right now.
Agree, in the same city, a brand new apartment is 80k USD and the monthly average salary is 600 before taxes. It's almost impossible for young people to buy an apartment right now if they don't work abroad.
Back when they didn’t need power washing
Here’s what 3/10 looks like 40 years later: https://maps.app.goo.gl/cQopRXib75SCNyk3A?g_st=ic
Wow, what a huge difference 😄
What remains of the second building from a different angle https://photos.app.goo.gl/zHCnPhBchJR7XFc89
Hey! That’s Moldova. I was born there!
Mai treci pe acasă
Eu vreu placinte
Ugh, sustainable housing for thousands of working people 🤮
Much better than any suburban trash
Commie blocks get me bricked up
These aren't that bad. Find some fall or winter ones with a few years on them...or the current photos and they'll belong.
One of the most sought after and expensive residential buildings in India looks exactly like the first building lol. These are good
I remember Intourist hotels from 1980s USSR.
Have you seen it now? It was a hell of a lot better back then.
Very beautiful buildings and significantly better than letting people be homeless on the streets.
Gorgeous
Was
Way better than the rampant homelessness we see everywhere today
As a guy from Pakistan who can't even afford to buy a 80 sq yd pice of land or a 20 year old Suzuki with a busted ac. This doesn't seem bad to me at all.
Seems like alot of people want government rations in here 😂
No, they want to get on the list of people that are allowed to buy a car
"allowed" to "buy" a ~shitbox~
'Commie blocks'. 🙄
i think they look pretty :(
In a lot of former communist countries these would be considered luxury apartments
How many people on here praising and think it would be nice and beneficial to live under communistic society in housing like this ACTUALLY live in a communist country? Please be my guest and go try it. I’m sure you’ll love it 🙄
Honestly, city planning was maybe one of a mere handful of things the Soviets got right. Despite the insane levels of ugliness, Commie blocks work. They fulfill their intended function effectively and efficiently.
You know what doesn't work very well? SFH Suburbia. It simply isn't an efficient housing model, nor a financially solvent one. Yes they look good, for a short time. But that's all they have going for them.
Not to say Commie blocks are perfect of course. They were cheap, and you get what you pay for. That being said. Soviet urban planning provides interesting insight in to how cities can be built, and how to remain cost effective. Not to mention the decently planned out infrastructure.
Better than what capitalism gets you
I would love to learn about these commie blocks. They don't look too awful. Too bad the eastern bloc failed to thrive due to its dependency to Russia...
This is so beautiful and reminds me of my childhood in the GDR ❤️
Some of these, shave off the balconies and they look like American government buildings
Second pic album cover from sudno song band if i remember rightyo
I think these are fine in concept. They were just built really cheaply and usually there isn’t the supporting infrastructure around then to accommodate the density like underground parking, public transportation, etc. If they were renovated and maintained it would still be much cheaper than demolishing them and building new buildings.
To be honest some of them (particularly the first few) don't look too bad - from the outside - it would depend upon the interior layout for me to be able to make a fair assessment.
That said, I'm not selling my 3x1 brick and tile house to move into one, nope! :)
But I have lived in apartment buildings and those first few look passably decent, judging by the apparent balcony sizes etc.
It's old but still very beautiful. It's like the pyramid, although it's old but it's durable.
The 4th one is good though
4,5 and half of 6 are actually very decent and would still look okay today
I don't think 4,5 and half of 6 is commie blocks. Coulde be older than the union of soviet socialist republic
Try going to Tallinn, Estonia. They’re everywhere
I don't see «hell» in that. 🤔
Is this Vilnius, Lithuania? Or are these pictures from all over the place? I think I recognize Vilnius in 2 fotos.
I love it :)
Then visit Moldova to see more, we need more tourist
Would love to!
It's really cheap outside the capital and we also have an outstanding cuisine ☺️
I believe you! I’ve been looking to travel to Romania, Moldova and Ukraine. Last one have been on ice for the last two years though 😬
We have these similar buildings in Sweden from the late 60s/early 70s called “miljonprogrammet” (the million programme). Many of these buildings get a bad rep, but they have been build with good accessibility to schools and stores and a lot of green areas. Some of them have awfully ugly exterior but the apartments are spacious and nice, but that really depends on where they are I guess. Many of these apartment buildings are in places with very bad socioeconomic problems too.
Personally I usually find them more charming than the newer apartment buildings popping up lmao.
The buildings *were beautiful
They're great. Most of them are being renovated, so they end up looking better than some newer blocks (which are mass produced, low quality cash grab and start to crap out 10 years after being built).
I live in one of these blocks. It's some 50+ years old and still going strong. Once our neighbourhood had a nice grass meadow between the blocks, where kids could play ball, run around and such. But then some developer cunt decided to buy out the area and build a newer housing block. They started the construction and then the developer went bankrupt.
Three years later some other dev bought the construction and finished it. It's been 10 years and the entire building is covered in cracks and fissures and generally looks like shit that's going to fall apart in another 5 years.
The other commie blocks are still there and kicking arse.
There isn't a single communist apartment building that was renovated in Chișinău, you definitely live in a Baltic state or Poland
The film grain and lighting makes them look sort of attractive.
Isn't communism just the best
I wish these were in more places. We need affordable living, and no one is building for living to be affordable anymore.
Awesome
This looks really nice tho
The first one looks like a jailhouse in my hometown.
Yeah, that’s on a nice sunny day. In winter or early spring… it’s horrid.
Fist hand living experience is multiple type houses. The whole purpose for houses like that is that you can build one in months. But the construction is cheap and ineffective for quality life as soundproofing and heat sustainability is poor especially for side flats. They are OK old commie blocks.
The 4,5,6 pics arent even bad but rest of them are the horrendous soviet era designs. All are EXACTLY the same.
The weather and nature makes them look quite good, it's more planned than American neighbourhoods, look at those pathways
And we start building like that again, since it is really efficient.
These all look great. What subreddit am I on ??
Buildings that used to look great 😃👍
Great concept, unfortunately underutilized
Looks like Croydon
Is it Chisinau, Moldova?
These used to be nice buildings in the 90s before the fall of communism. I left the USSR in 1991 and still have nostalgia for this world. The old commie cities don’t look like this anymore, especially the residential areas. They’re in a dire state of disrepair.
Worker's breeding boxes
We have buildings like this is NZ, think it was the style in the 70s not communism.
OP said good ole commie. He forgot about Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago. It was a good ole capitalist for the poor.
We like commie blocks! There's so much greenery, everything is close to home, public transport, less car pollution etc.
If the infrastructure they were intended to be a part of was actually maintained, this could be the ultimate housing.
Sadly, the USSR failed at that, and now everyone has cars, which pollute the environment even more when parkes so closely together in the green areas of these commie blocks...
I kinda think they are pretty
I don’t see a problem with these. People like to look at these, call them ugly, and say “see, communism bad,” but here in America at least, there is zero guaranteed housing at all. They look far better than a tent or nothing at all
Such posts sudden me so much: there is nothing inherently communist about large panel prefabricated buildings. These were built already before WW2:
Prefabrication was pioneered in the Netherlands following World War I, based on construction methods developed in the United States.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_panel_system_building
And after the WW2 it was adopted by countries around the globe. For instance they were absolutely fundamental to French mass housing Programm (Grands Ensembles, Vällingby in Sweden was one of the most iconic post war project in all of Europe (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%A4llingby). South Korea, a staunchly anticommunist country, housed half of its population in such apartment buildings (http://www.pedrabissi.studio/mass-housing-reloaded - https://datashare.ed.ac.uk/handle/10283/4360). Large panel houses are not an expression of the communist ideology but rather of (high) modernism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_That_Is_Solid_Melts_into_Air
Last but not least, during the Stalinist period modernist architecture and urban planning was condemned in the Soviet Union and its satellite states. What was built back then there, and what had no equivalent in the capitalist Western Europe, was the antithesis of the modernist housing estates.
They seem pretty nice. Is this a trick? They’re indistinguishable from capitalist buildings. Is that the point?
Like Cabrini Green; but with balconies
I mean the design and city planning is terrible. BUT my mother used to live in one of those long time ago and back then it was normal for the working class.
She loved her apartment and there was no jealousness or greed of the level we got today.
Income levels were more equal than ever and everyone lived in the same flat. The great equalizer.
Not saying this is the best way to roll things - I still believe in meritocracy - but compared to bare knuckle capitalism where there is no meritocracy at all too at least no one had to sleep in the streets.
I’d rather be forced to live in a modern apartment than risk living on the streets or some run down trailer
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2d
Almost every building above 4 floors has an elevator
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