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Comment by boulos | Hacker News Reader

> Then he saw the bananas. He really wanted bananas. He wouldn't ask for bananas. So I grabbed a bunch and put them in the basket.

> "Are you rich?" No. I have a good student job. "Are your parents in government?" No. My dad's dead; Cassie's dad is a doctor in another state. "Anyone can shop here?" Absolutely.

In multiple communist countries in Eastern Europe, bananas were special because they only came ~once a year from Cuba. Anyone having access to them outside that time and/or getting more than a few would fit the profiles he described.

By contrast, some people in Eastern Europe had fancy ski huts available to them. You or I might have asked the same questions if you'd gone skiing with them in the 80s only to find out that his father is a draftsman. "Don't all of you have ski houses?"

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For worker class in Russia, it is super common to own (as opposed to rent) your own apartment and also own a country house ("dacha").

You may be otherwise piss-poor, wage wise.

The supermarkets has improved greatly though - not quite the USA level, but on par with Western Europe or sometimes slightly better (more chains, easier to eat healthy)

Today, sure. In USSR, no apartment was privately owned, though. You were assigned one "according to your needs" - e.g. when I was a kid, my extended family of 5 (me, my parents, and my mom's parents) had a two-bedroom apartment of 48.5 m^2 total, 27.2 m^2 of which was the two bedrooms. To give an idea of the size, here's the floor layout of that exact series of apartment buildings:

https://i.imgur.com/ImxdsUG.jpeg

(Note that there are multiple apartments shown here - every "3K", "2K", or "1K" corresponds to one apartment with that many bedrooms. The "fraction" after that shows the total area and the combined bedroom area of each apartment in m^2.)

I think the best way to describe that arrangement was a "no-cost rent". You only had to pay utilities, and you couldn't have it taken away from you arbitrarily. But e.g. selling it or even renting it out would be impossible (legally; the black market existed regardless), nor could it be inherited.

There was a thing called building cooperatives which gave out the rights to gift or sell the apartment after the mortgage was paid. The private ownership on real estate was legalized in 1990 through that system.

Yes, although you still had to have a "need to improve living conditions", as measured in square meters currently allotted per family member, to get an apartment that way.

There was also the "build it to live in it" condominium programs that opened more opportunities specifically to those just starting their adult lives, who would otherwise qualify at most for a room in a communal apartment, and couldn't possibly afford a downpayment on that mortgage (15-20 monthly salaries). But those came late - many weren't even completed by 1991 - and they had considerable pushback from many local authorities, partly on the basis that such luxury was "undeserved" and unfair to older people who were in the line for regular apartments, and partly because some of their member-elected governance councils were starting to get political ambitions and push for more local self-administration in the 80s.

How old were you though?

That was similar in a lot of post-war Europe, e.g. for my grandparents in the UK.

The Americans have always lived in abundance and luxury in comparison.

This was late USSR, all the way up to its dissolution and privatization of housing in 1991. I was a small kid at the time, but I don't recall the standard being different depending on age.

The allotment of living space (counted as bedroom area per person) varied depending on the city, and sometimes there was a difference between the nominal and the actual number. In Moscow and Leningrad the designated minimum was around 7 m^2 per person, but in practice applying for a new apartment would be unlikely to succeed if you had more than 5 m^2. In some of the provinces, it could go as low as 3 m^2 per person.

And keep in mind that this is the minimum that entitled you to apply for a new apartment. Which means that you'd be put in a line to wait your turn to actually get one when one is available, say, 10 years later.

My wife is Bulgarian and spent some of her childhood in the USSR before her parents managed to get out (via South Africa).

A very clear memory for her is her Grandfather waiting 6 hours in line to get a banana because she said she wanted one, when she was about 4 or 5.

It's so weird to see the same sentiments echoed, yet makes sense given the above.

No, a ski hut or dinky dacha is not impressive in a country the size of Russia with abundant land, timber, and cheap labor.

Ending hunger is impressive.

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