- cross-posted to:
- politicalmemes@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- politicalmemes@lemmy.world
This MF has never seen Vienna. A concrete block that everyone loves and it builds community?
Homelessness is definitely more depressing. That’s not even comparable.
But apartment blocks like that are also really, really depressing. Humans are not built for living in a crammed cage of a building.
I see absolutely nothing depressing about them. I would even love to live there.
Built? By whom?
The issue with soviet blocks was not the density. The actual design was brilliant as each of these blocks had all conveniences like schools and shops within reach.
The issue as with most soviet union is corruption and management incompetence. They took one design and applied to 15% of world’s land mass. So the house in deep Siberia and coast of warm Azerbaijan were the almost the same. To add society was so broken than no one actually cared for the vision these houses had. This is entirely system failure not a design one.
People live just fine in close quarters - just take a look at Japan.
I’d love to live in an apartment block like that. Different strokes for different folks, you know?
But mom, it was supposed to be my turn to post this this week.
When I visited Berlin, I heard a theory that these Soviet era units were why the cost of living was still accessible to creative-types so a big part of why the city is culturally thriving.
I don’t see a problem? State funded infrastructure has a place and purpose in our society. It’s built for function over form. Wonderful architecture is incredibly expensive and amounts to mostly fluff. If you would try to build civic infrastructure focusing on pomp and grandeur over functionality, you would not last long in the public sphere.
Yes, but as much as we all like the Brutalism style, would the cost difference really not be worth it for Art Deco or anything a bit more psychologically welcoming or uplifting combined with generous green spacing and walkability.
Actually, I like these building that look like they are from early 3D games
What’s right wing architecture?
Blue tarps? But they’re blue! haha, you wings are so silly with your flapping about
But seriously, have they not seen an apartment building or strip mall before? The architecture where I live is far from inspiring, it’s just strip mall after strip mall for miles, then some big block office buildings. Yippee
A 300 million dollar mansion for one person. A 1.2 billion dollar prison complex for a few hundred people . Everyone else is homeless and lives under a bridge.
Because they think things make them extraordinary. They can’t imagine the lives in those buildings being good without extraordinary things.
McMansions and parking lot deserts?
But everything gets depressing if all looks the same.
Prisons silly.
That’s communist dude not left, I m sure Denmark which is a socialistic country is left for you too, anyway do some traveling and stop spreading bollocks
It’s not even communist. Western Propaganda really created a false impression on this term…
I don’t think we really had communism yet on the world.
We’ve really had communism in the world.
You just don’t agree that it’s communism.
Reality is real, your idealistic purity is an impossibility. Deal with how things are, not how you wish them to be
We never had communism in the same way we never had a person fly by flapping their arms after jumping of a roof. It’s not that we did not try, it just does not end with a flying person.
To have communism, you have to concentrate all the wealth and power in some sort of government so that people don’t own “the means of production”. And when you concentrate all power in the government, human nature produces some sort of dictatorship.
Disagree. You and so many others throw around the word communism as if it is a specific type, rather than a general type. Not only that, communism and capitalism as not mutually exclusive. We have communism in capitalist societies and there was capitalism inside the USSR’s communism.
We have fully functioning communes within the USA. Those are communists living happily inside a communist community, with communist leadership, and communist ideals, all as a sub community within normal American cities. And it is successful.
The US has communism/socialism even within its own government. We have communist firefighters. There was a time all fire brigades were private and sold memberships and private insurance. It was communism that made it a public service. Even the socialist healthcare in the military was not always that way. Up until the Civil War it was private healthcare and the medics were for the battlefield only. All after care was out of pocket. Even for a time after the Civil War large amounts were not covered by the military.
And even looking at the previous poster’s comment about not seeing true communism- that is a category- are they referring to Lennonist communism? Maoist? Marxist? It’s like saying all capitalist governments are the same, as if the EU and the US, and Nigeria are all the same types of government.
human nature is not an explanation, it is hand waiving. and communism is a stateless society. no one should believe anything you’ve said here.
there is a cure for political illiteracy.
human nature is not an explanation
Yes, it is handwaving, because I ain’t spending time writing paragraphs of shit anyone with two brain cells to rub together can easily figure out on their own.
communism is a stateless society
Just because you string words together does not mean they mean something. If people don’t own/control the means of production, someone else does. Either you have private capital or a governing body. Calling it “stateless society” means nothing. That is actual handwaving of real issues.
“Just because you string words together does not mean they mean something. If people don’t own/control the means of production, someone else does. Either you have private capital or a governing body. Calling it “stateless society” means nothing. That is actual handwaving of real issues.”
communism is a stateless classless moneyless society. your semantic game doesn’t change the facts
communism is a stateless classless moneyless society
So it’s a fantasy where everyone magically knows what to do, how and when. Then does it with no incentive or punishment. No coordinators, police, or anything else required. Ok, clear. Now can we get back to real world ideas?
Because if there is anyone who has the ability to order people to do something and punish them for not doing it or decide distribution of incentives, that is called a government. No matter how you try to rename it or handwave it.
this is the height of bad faith, no-true-scotsman, illiterate Reddit or engagement.
Also, it helps not to reduce image saturation to zero and have the blocks somewhat decently maintained. A bit of paint makes also a huge difference:

https://bankfoto.info/zdjecia/petrzalka-3/ (Petrzalka, Bratislava)
here’s the image for other lazy bastards who don’t wanna click on a website like me:

Thank you, I never click on links anymore, not worth the occasional horror
Not the best example: Eastern-European countries tend to overcompensate and overdo the painting, making the result too noisy. Nordic cities look much better, precisely because they choose muted and coordinated colors, and usually paint the whole house instead of making patchy blobs. It so happens that khrushchyovkas are again better at it too, because they were built smaller and painted in one color, often muted orange or brown.


I did not say that I would consider those buildings in Petrzalka the height of all taste and beauty but the issue with it is not the colour of the buildings. It is the urban layout on ground level and the rundown horrendously car centric design. That is really dragging the area down. On the plus side, there is so much greenery even with all of that, that it is not looking grey there, certainly not during Spring-Autumn.
PS: Bratislava is west of Stockholm, has nothing to do with Orthodox Europe and Slovakia stopped being part of the East block almost as long ago as it was ever part of it.
It’s always funny how everyone between Germany and Russia say that they’re in Western Europe. Yeah keep telling that to yourself bud, Slovakia is certified Eastern Europe.
I am not Slovak, heck, I am not even with your expansive idea of “Eastern Europe” Eastern European. I also did not say that Slovaks are Western European. Calling them “Eastern European” is as ridiculous as calling them “Western European”.
Tell me, is Dresden also Eastern European and how about Vienna?
Does that look like “Eastern Europe” to you?

What I wrote above: “Eastern-European countries tend to overcompensate and overdo the painting, making the result too noisy”. Just like in your above pic from Slovakia. But not in this one.
No need to inform me that some Western-European countries and even the US did housing of this style, as I’m perfectly aware that it was peddled by Le Corbusier at the same time as the USSR developed its approach, likely with cross-pollination at least in the west-east direction.
Also, Dresden will remain East-European in spirit until the former East Germany stop trying to recreate GDR with their conservative voting.
You misunderstand my argument. My argument was not that Western Europe also has commie block type neighbhourhoods, my argument was that you lack to point out what it is that turned a part of Europe into “Eastern Europe” that has little in common with Moscow and much more with Vienna, just because it was forced into a geopolitic block for roughly 40 years, until almost 40 years ago.
But then, you also appear to believe that Dresden is Eastern Europe, so at least you are consistent. Could it be that you are confusing “Eastern European” with “post communist”. Those two things are not the same.
Indeed I am. Because what I’m saying is that folks who got their aesthetic sense botched by decades of Soviet doctrine, don’t do well at dressing up the high-rises, even though buildings of a similar kind in the Nordics do splendidly.
And, as I mentioned in the thread, one can look at Stalinist housing and Khrushchevkas for examples of Soviet-type housing that didn’t need gaudy paint to look decent, because they were built at smaller sizes and with the last remainder of the sense of beauty. Russians also never bastardized the old districts in Moscow and SPb, because those had established aethetics (except for new buildings inserted here and there, which predictably look shitty for the most part).
The bottom image is heavily tuned to have more vibrant colors. No place in real life has such strong hues. I’d suspect that place in real life looks very much like the above image
Gamla Stan is beautiful, no the colours are not as surreal and exagerated in real life but it is a colourful place also in reality.
Could be, but it’s still not the patchy mess that Soviet blocks tend to be colored into. New builds in Russia are often painted those very strong hues that apparently no place has. It’s horrible.



I honestly like the first one
My condolences.
Agreed, that looks pretty horrible. It’s more due to the lack of any color harmony than the strong hues. There are places with strong hues that look good imo, like Burano
If you look at the 🌳 , the don’t have leaves, indicating that the picture was taken on a cloudy autumn day. Everything looks depressing on a cloudy autumn day.
and/or desaturated to further enforce the effect…
I love this kind of thread. It always attracts some guy who finds it necessary to point out that in the USSR people had to endure the absolute horrors of having roommates. I think I saw him phrase it as them having “survived” roommates once.
I mean, roommates are definitely a form of horror. For every well adjusted person out there, several exist that never learned to clean up after themselves or think of how what they do impacts another person.
Hell, there are a lot of people who actually take delight in the suffering of others. Imagine trying to convince your roommate to do the dishes more than once a month and they’re laughing at you.
The blocks were built en masse with the exact purpose of escaping communal living that proliferated during rapid urbanization of the 1930s, so that connection is quite a stretch.
Its not the roommates that bothers me it is the listening devices and constantly playing propaganda that is illegal to turn off, or forced “vacations” in labor camps for disagreeing with government decisions.
↖ Person unable to tell that ‘1984’ is fiction.
Or someone who knows what happens in places like the PRK, China, US, and other surveilance intensive states.
Sure. But that makes it all the funnier when someone voluntarily chooses to focus on the roommates to criticize the USSR.
I can think of some things

Please be AI. Im overstimulated just from the still image
It is real, but there were some lense and perspective tricks used to make it looksworse than it actually is. Not that it looks great, but not that bad
Nope, this could be literally anywhere in the US.
Nah, this picture is old. I definitely remember seeing it in the 2010-2020 era.
Take any exit off of almost any motorway in America and you’ll be met with this.
It isn’t.
Vehicular manufacturing utopia core
homelessness has many causes but can be survivable and relatively more enjoyable than living in a hell hole poorly designed, maintaned and serviced high density clusterfuck
commie architecture fucking suuuuucks
Tell me you’ve never been homeless without telling me you’ve never been homeless
The Soviet Union had higher rates of homeless than the US both back in the 80s and today. Not to mention that commie blocks were notoriously poorly built and maintained. Soviet architecture just isn’t good.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, every single ex soviet state in Europe (outside of Russia and Belarus) went on a spree to “decommunize” their architecture because it’s so soulless and terrible, and they’re better off for it.
It’s annoying when this shitty propaganda post gets spammed on here every other day with the same misinformation and misconceptions being spread every damn time.
commie blocks were notoriously poorly built
Soviet blocks from the fifties-eighties stand just fine, so you should probably check your own propaganda.
Reality is propaganda to you. Commie blocks were infamous inside the USSR and outside of it that they were poorly designed, built, and maintained. There’s a reason why all the ex Soviet states ran campaigns to replace them.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, every single ex soviet state in Europe (outside of Russia and Belarus) went on a spree to “decommunize” their architecture because it’s so soulless and terrible, and they’re better off for it
Their homelessness did skyrocket after the USSR dissolved though. So saying “they’re better off for it” kind of depends on what you value more, pretty buildings or housing people.
The homeless were always there, the Soviet Union intentionally didn’t count them. The ex Soviet states did genuine counts which revealed the actual rates
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_Russia
Unless the USSR set aside some funds to have wikipedia run propaganda for them in the future, it seems that you’re wrong.
The article doesn’t contradict what I said. The Soviet Union intentionally refused to count their homeless population because the state pretended that it didn’t exist. The real numbers showed up only after the communist regime fell because the ex Soviet states started counting. Academic studies have shown that the Soviet Union in the 1980s not only had homelessness, but they had it at a rate that was higherthan what the US had at that time.
Right wing architecture

It would help if you found something less dope-looking. This pic is like 1920s New York, but with a swastika.
Coincidence?? It’s pretty easy to imagine the swastika replaced with a dollar sign
Why is the background smooth behind the swastika?
Search
public housing projects america. You’ll find similar photographs.












