General life in the Eastern Bloc ?

1) Where would someone go to acquire about getting an apartment?

2) If a single person wanted to get an apartment, would he/she be paired up with someone else, or would it depend on how populated that particular town/city was?

3) Would the flats in the larger cities have it's own toilet? I guess this would vary from country/city.

4) I know in Romania post was delivered seven days a week. Does anyone know how often it was for the other countries?

Thanks for any help

Comrade Szabo, perhaps you should specify a certain date. Life in the Eastern Bloc countries varied not only from country to country and city to city, but also from time to time. Life in an Eastern Bloc country in 1955 could be very different from life in an Eastern Bloc country in 1980.

Another thing I didn't take into account. If anyone can help I'm mostly interested in the 1970/80s and the countries East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria.

Edit - Just realised this should have been posted in the "Back in the U.S.S.R. (life in the East)" forum. Sorry.

You said you are interested in Bulgaria, so I can help with that.

Why are you interested? Fire away with questions as it is hard to answer otherwise!

And although you didn’t specify, I am the resident Hungarian (you know you have a very Hungarian sounding name?) so I know all about that place, and a fair bit on Romania (oh the stories I have on Romania, heh, heh ).

Resident Bulgarian and a resident Hungarian...but it seems the guy has left!!!

Hehe sorry I forgot about this thread.

@ Red_Star/Comrade Bendeguz in Bulgaria/Hungary what was the housing like? Was there enough housing? Did people have to put up with power shortages like in Romania?

Thanks for any help

Well, lets see…

In Hungary, it was not easy to get housing, but there was nobody living on the streets. Like in the rest of the Eastern Block and U.S.S.R. there were large amounts of concrete tower blocks to house the population. They were pretty small on average but not too bad, and since nearly everybody you knew lived in one of these apartments as well, there was no envy or jealousy.
There were power shortages of course, but not any more than normal that I am aware of, but I will have to get back to you on that…

Mind you, this is what the situation was in Hungary from around the late sixties till around the mid 80’s when my parents left for Australia. Happy to help in any way I can . Any more questions?

In Yugoslavia the housing was fantastic compared to the rest of Eastern Europe, but then again, Yugoslavia wasn't really the East Bloc

well I actually have afew questions myself.
A friend of my father lived in east Berlin and the accent is noticable, all he can do when the subject of even SOCIALISM comes up is bash the communists, he continues to say the housing was terrible, his job was bad, he was forced into millitary service.

If anyone has info on berlin in the following:
-Housing
-food
-employment
-control on the people


In fact if ANY OF YOU from ANY OF THE FORMER WARSAW STATES could give some info on this I would looooove to hear it. Thank you.

In the 80's, the DDR was in the top 10 of world economies. If i recall correctly, its was the seventh economy.

Don't think so, if it was like Iskra says, the new Germany wouldn't have to invest so much in making the DDR meet the West German standard

They didnt invest shit, thats the whole issue today in East Germany, why the hell do you think the SPD main slogan for the east was 'investing in all of germany'. Because after the unification, they never invested! And the people know it, hate it, and voted PDS for it.

The only thing invested in was removing all traces of socialism. Living standards in the DDR were the top of all socialist countries.

Maybe you're right, but why is the German economy so drained?, and they keep saying billions have gone into the DDR

[In fact if ANY OF YOU from ANY OF THE FORMER WARSAW STATES could give some info on this I would looooove to hear it. Thank you.]


In Soviet Union, housing was not bad. Apartments were small, but most verying upon job. I did good military service, so my apartment was not very bad. Like someone said, there was no jealousy becuase everyone had these same apartments. Standard of living was not very much bad. Power outages were not TOO bad. Some, about once a month power would og out for much over 3 hours. Bu overall i like quality of life.

I would appreciate a good comparison of the Warsaw Pact states living standards to one another. And can prove it of course, thanks.

Can anyone tell me what the role of an individual was in socialist politics in that time?