"What about the living environment?" Manturov then asked. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 ｉｎfo

"Volodya," Vadick called his friend's nickname, "used to be a family of five crammed into a room of only 11 square meters. Now, I share a 12-square-meter room with my wife, the daughter of Comrade Yu Chang. ”

"You and the daughter of the elder? Is it a real marriage or a fake marriage? ”

Fake marriages? True, there were indeed fake marriages in the Soviet era.

Why fake marriages? Because couples can be assigned to a single room that belongs to both of them. Or stay in a single room that has already been assigned to one of the parties, so you don't have to share a room with strangers.

"Don't get me wrong, Volodya." Vadick quickly explained: "Before I got married, I was already assigned to this private room. As for Nadia (Nadezhda's nickname), I didn't know her until I moved in. ”

"Yes," said the chief in his own defense of his daughter and son-in-law, "I can prove that they are really married, at least I hear their moans every week." ”

"Dad!" Nadezhda also walked out and said embarrassedly: "You said that we just kiss and hug often, do you need to say that we do that?" ”

Yu Chang laughed funny and rude: "How can a husband and wife not do that?" Hehe. ”

"Nadezhda Alexandrovna," Katya called Nadezhda's name, "I didn't think you lived here!" ”

"Yes, Katyusha, we haven't seen each other for a long time. I just heard that you are the second secretary of the Moscow City Party Committee and married to Comrade Manturov, I am really happy for you! You've finally found your significant other! ”

Unlike Manturov, Katya's friends are all over Moscow State University's faculties and grades. After graduating, they also entered all walks of life. Who called her beautiful and became an indicator of trends? Whenever I have free time, I exchange tips on dressing up with my classmates.

Unlike Manturov, who only knew a bunch of engineers, he spent his spare time either in dormitories or leaving Moscow to play around. As a result, the only gain was to know Yakov's cubic in Yaroslav.

"Yes, Volodya is my other half, we fell in love early on, but an accident separated us, and we couldn't find each other. Fortunately, we met again in Novosibirsk and soon got married. Katia is right, and it is easy for contemporary people to accept.

"I see, you guys are really fateful."

"By the way, Nadia," this time, the person who asked the question was replaced by Katia, "how many people live in this apartment?" ”

"In addition to me, Wadick, my father and my mother, there are also Kuzmin and his wife, the Khaneyevsky family of five, plus two nannies, a total of 13 people."

"13 people in an apartment? Why is it so crowded? Katia asked, surprised.

"That's right, 13 people. We're not crowded here, and there are too many shared apartments for more than 20 people in the workers' quarters to count, but they're about the same size as here, or even smaller than here. ”

"How does this work?" Katia sensed the problem, "The first and second five-year plans have been completed, and people in the capital have to share an apartment with several families, while in a remote city like Novosibirsk, shared apartments are almost a thing of the past."

And Moscow, as the capital of the Soviet Union, should have better living and housing conditions than Novosibirsk. Over the years, the Moscow city government has been building a large number of new apartments, but the housing problem has not changed much? Not much improvement yet? Is there something wrong with our approach? ”

"Comrade Secretary, Comrade People's Commissar," said Khanevsky, who lived in the apartment, as he walked out, "Recently, there have indeed been a lot more apartment buildings in the city of Moscow, but there are so many people in Moscow that the number of apartment buildings in the city must at least double."

We've got it all right, and we've only had 13 people here. In the next block, each apartment is home to more than 17 people, and it is smaller than ours. ”

"So the supply of housing in Moscow is far below the demand?" Katia asked.

"True, the supply of housing in Moscow is increasing, but the population is also increasing." Manturov pointed to the root of the problem: "The current supply is only enough to cope with the growth of the population without affecting the existing living space.

The newly built apartments, with the exception of the high-end residential complex of the Tver district, have been converted into shared apartments, with three to five families moving into each unit, and better for two.

As a result, over the years, the average living space in Moscow has increased by only 0.5 square meters. At the end of the day, it's the lack of housing supply to keep up with population growth. Although there is a system of domestic passports, the vast majority of new immigrants to Moscow are now legal, and the role of the domestic passport system is very limited. ”

"Comrade People's Commissar is right," said the old resident who has lived in Moscow for many years: "although the supply of housing is there, it still cannot keep up with the increase in population. An increase of 0.5 square meters of living space per capita is already a good result. ”

Since the coming to power of Comrade Stalin Steel, the population of Moscow has continued to rise. In 1923, the population of Moscow was only 1.5 million, and by 1939 the population of Moscow had risen sharply to 4.2 million, an increase of 1.8 times. This was actually one of Stalin's plans, to make Moscow a big city in the truest sense of the word, a metropolis.

Looking at population growth, Stalin's plan is halfway complete, and Moscow's population has been left behind Paris to the same level as Berlin.

In addition to having a sufficient population, Stalin wanted to erect the tallest, grandest, and most imposing buildings in the world in the city. The result was the Palace of Soviets, and a series of flashy and labor-intensive Stalinist architectural projects.

When completed, the Palace of the Soviets will be the tallest building in the world. At 495 meters, it was 114 meters taller than the Empire State Building, the tallest building in the world at the time.

In addition to the Palace of the Soviets, Moscow will also build a series of Stalinist apartments, office buildings, cultural palaces, libraries and other facilities.

These facilities, while of positive significance to the people and to the Bolsheviks, were able to alleviate the problem of a tight supply of housing in Moscow. However, these beautiful buildings took a long time to build, and the number of housing provided was not large, and they generally only catered to the middle and upper classes.

For example, the 7-storey apartment project at 6 Tverskaya Street took 3 years to complete. Some apartment buildings are only six or seven stories high, and it can even take four or five years to build.

Although the flashy building structure slowed down the construction speed, the main reason was the lack of labor. Even if there was a surplus of labor, they were transferred to the huge foundations of the Palace of Soviets.

In addition, due to the large number of projects, the labor force cannot be concentrated, which slows down the construction of various projects.

More importantly, the Soviet government had no intention of changing the current situation in which the people were crowded into shared apartments, because behind this policy of shared apartments had a great political purpose - that is, to deliberately move party activists and loyal workers into the homes of the former bourgeoisie in order to be monitored, in what is known as the fabled "yплothehne".

In the case of the apartment visited by Katya, the head of the apartment, Alexander Valenkov, who had joined the party and served in the Red Army in the Russian Civil War, was one of the targets of his comfortable and spacious apartment because of his wealthy merchant family.

Khaneyevsky, who later moved in, was a working class loyal to the party, the Kuzmin couple were party rank-and-file cadres, and Vadik Shennikov was a party engineer, whose "potential task" was to spy on the Valentenkovs.

Fortunately, Valenkov was also a member of the party, contributed to the revolution, provided high-quality medical care to various members of the apartment, and had a good relationship with other people, so he was never reported. And Vadik Shennikov, who later moved in, fell in love with Valenkov's daughter even more and established a kinship.

The phenomenon of shared apartments, I'm afraid Katia and Manturov can't solve it. First, there were not enough resources to build a sufficient number of apartments in a short period of time, and second, the policy of "seeping sand" was one of the surveillance plans of the Bolshevik Party, which was politically necessary and difficult to abolish.

Although the policy of "seeping sand" cannot be abolished until Stalin is gone, this does not mean that they do not need to take measures to alleviate the problem of housing supply in Moscow.