Home, Sweet Private Home

For years--even under Stalin--the outstanding exception to Communist collectivization was the privately owned Russian home. Anyone who could build one could own one. Last week the Kremlin finally got around to abolishing this flourishing capitalistic institution.

Until recently, the government encouraged Soviet citizens to build their own homes because of the acute housing shortage. By 1960, 31% of all living space in Soviet cities was privately owned. But building materials were in such short supply that last year Khrushchev's new Communist Party program hinted at a reversal of the home-building policy. Nikita's Utopian blue print suggested that the imminent transition from socialism to Communism would make privately owned homes unnecessary. Another reason for the switch: the regime has been increasingly plagued by embezzling public servants who found a convenient outlet for spending their hoarded rubles on town houses and country dachas.

Last week's decree by the Communist Party's Central Committee allowed existing private houses to remain, but banned all such future construction. Instead, the new emphasis will be on cooperatives, such as the ones which have produced scores of big apartment houses in Moscow. When a group of tenants have raised 40% of the building cost among themselves, the state Construction Bank provides long-term (ten to 15 years) loans for the rest. The co-op system has one obvious advantage for the regime: the people will wind up paying for their own housing, releasing badly needed funds for the government to invest in heavy industry and the lagging agricultural program.

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