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Comment by tinbad | Hacker News Reader

Growing up in communist Russia, 400sq. feet apartment would be the luxury option for 2 or 3 families with multiple children each. No joke, my parents lived with their siblings and parents (and sometimes grandparents) in the same apartment even after everyone had children of their own. Somehow we still managed to occasionally have 20 more people over for birthday celebrations and cook all the accompanying excessive amounts of food :)

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Striking, but hardly common.

You should clarify that in Russia they operate in "living space" sq.meters, meaning that 400 sqft will not include kitchen, corridors, bathroom, etc. Just the bedrooms and the living room.

Secondly, you are over-generalizing. While a part of population did in fact live in cramped conditions (or even in shared condos, whereby 2+ families shared a single apartment), more than enough people lived in a very decently spaced apartments, with living space ranging between 28 sqm to 40-50 sqm. So "400 sqft" apartments were nowhere close to being "luxury".

OTOH, a bathroom with a window - now that was indeed a true luxury (because how the vast majority of buildings where designed).

Good point - size-wise, that's subpar for the number of people. My grandparents received a 95 sq.m. apartment for them and my aunt (teenager at the time) across from a beautiful park in Moscow, now that was considered super lucky.

Two "lucky" strikes in the same family in Russia? It seems there might be more than just luck to that.

Military families had better luck than others. Only politicians did better in USSR, but that's long gone.

Author here. As we lived in that apartment I constantly reminded myself that compared to all families from around the world and across time, we had a luxurious life. Clean water, climate control, safety, food 3 times a day, etc.

We definitely had company over, often gatherings of 10-12 people and one time we had 5 overnight guests (that was a bit crazy but fun).

Very helpful read! Even for someone who doesn't have a lack of space, all the lessons are still relevant and definitely made me think about my living spaces.

Also, in the sentence about the coffee table (seen two photos up), shouldn't that be "second photo from the top"? Unless I misunderstood and tried to find a coffee table in the photo with the surfboards/piano

Will check, thanks. I shuffled things some during editing and might have missed that.

Edit: it was in the picture with the surfboards. It is the blue trunk in the lower left. Coffee table/trunk/changing table

Thanks for replying! I see now I was looking at the coffee table in the old "bachelor setup"

and compared to what you could have had if you gave up on living in an absurdly expensive city?

33sq.m. was the norm for two adults. When you had a kid, you submitted paperwork for extra 10-15 sq.m., but usually got moved to a new development, not in a desirable area.

My parents went through it in 80s. By then this mostly worked for military/otherwise connected families, but has broken down for the rest of the country with wait list numbering in years. In theory you gave up smaller apartment for a slightly larger as need arose. In practice, most families did not want to move far and construction pace did not keep up for economic reasons.

And yet we get hordes of collectivists that infest HN that say we should try it again...."but it'll be different this time"

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