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Absolutely coincidential.
Commieblocks were designed to be 1) cheap 2) mass-produced from uniform concrete elements that you could rearrange like legos (although not as flexible, there were only a few generic types into which you could arrange them) and 3) to conform to communist ideology that "everyone should have the same kind of accommodation" (which somehow always translated into "everyone as equally shitty accommodation").

There was no defensive thought put into it. The idea was always that the great Red Army would always crush every enemy of the Soviet union long before the working people would have to worry about it. The workers were supposed to just keep to their work in the factories so they could supply the war machine.

>>64315816
Absolutely intentional. They were inspired by the role "Pavlov's House" played in the defense of Stalingrad.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavlov%27s_House

The tall, wide apartment buildings could act as a barrier against nuclear weapons.

>>64315840
points 1 and 2 are correct but point 3 is not. for example, apartments came in different sizes, and there were different things you could do to get a larger one.
also they weren't shitty, at least not when they were built

>>64315840
>The idea was always that the great Red Army would always crush every enemy of the Soviet union long before the working people would have to worry about it.
This wasn't really the case, particularly in the case of the "buffer states" like Poland and Ukraine. They also had the Chinese to worry about, after the sino-soviet split. That said, you're still correct in your response to OP's question, and any defensive preparations for those states didn't make it into commie block design.

>>64315840
>"everyone should have the same kind of accommodation" (which somehow always translated into "everyone as equally shitty accommodation").
It's always seemed strange to me that with that idea, and with the masses of space Russia has, that they couldn't give everyone somewhere actually nice.
And it kinda kills me that the architects actually tried, with the trees and such to make nice living spaces, but then gave everyone a shoebox amount of space to live in and decided to not bother with actual roads.

Russia needed to efficiently distribute heating steam from factories through pipelines.

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>>64315877
Khrushchevka and Brezhnevka were not inspired by the defensive role of Pavlov's House in the slightest. They came about as the cheapest, most practical way to lump together the dysgenic biomass cultivated to work the factories. Even the official cope was that they were only temporary until the glorious abundance of real communism shall flow freely over the lands and then the masses will get to live better than rats. The massive amounts of concrete poured in wasn't some complex decision with ulterior motives, it was simply the way they build things with what they had no shortage of and a total lack of finesse, taste or architectural sense. Envision what a brutish culture could come up.

>>64315883
Formally, you were only allocated the apartment you were entitled to based on the extent of your family. Informally, it was tongue-work: whether the anus of the higher-up bolshevik in charge or how useful you'd be as an informant. This is of course appealing to those with such predispositions.
They were only shitty to anyone with basic human sense and decency, therefore they were indeed very appreciated and altogether seen as a tremendous step up from sleeping in the streets after you've come to the city for work because the State took your land which you worked on as a farmer your whole life, so of course you're now suddenly intellectually mature enough to participate in the social life and development of the city, with your offsprings fondly cracking semechki on the sidewalk 50 years later, reminiscing about the good old days mamochka and papachka told him about when the State took care of everything, gave you house, gave you lathe, gave you thoughts and you had no worries, aahh, those were the days, da.

>>64315816
unintentional, they were just meant to be cheap and fast to construct
schools and public buildings were designed to be dual-purpose, to convert them into field hospitals during wartime

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>>64315880
idk about that but the (moscow) subways were definitely imagined as shelters from nukes. They poured a lot of money into some of them too. Quite a contrast to other construction efforts.

>>64315994
>because the State took your land which you worked on as a farmer your whole life
Lol. LMAO, even. Live in a peasant commune was hellish even by the quasi-medieval standards of rural Russia.

Also commieblock consctruction was done to quickly get back housing after, you know, whole fucking cities got turned to rubble by WWII.

>>64315994
>Pavlov's House bullshit
I didn't feel like taking the time to debunk this shit, but this anon is spot on.
Disclaimer that I'm not a Russkiy, so this isn't first hand knowledge to me, but it's my understanding that in addition to what this anon said, commieblocks are legitimately a step up compared to Soviet living standards of the 40s/50s. I'm partial to the argument that the USSR didn't really recover from the German invasion until at least the 50s, and commieblocks are a part of that. I forget what they're called (hopefully some ex-eastern block can fill in), but a large part of the Soviet population lived in these cramped, long wooden cabins that were packed with too many fucking people living on top of each other. Shit was closer to a shacks than proper housing. The notion you could go from that to your own private apartment with just your family is a huge step up.

>>64315816
Civil defense was a factor in post war urban planning in the Soviet Union. The design of the housing blocks themselves didn't particularly lend to this, but their layout did. Often the blocks would be configured around a courtyard which would house a school, store or hospital. In an emergency the gaps between buildings created natural choke points for armored vehicles and infantry making the segment easy to defend around a central rally point. The bulk of these concrete buildings could also potentially deflect a blast wave, limiting the damage from artillery strikes and possibly nuclear attack (if indirect).

The primary goal of course remained low cost, fast construction and efficient heating/maintenance but they work pretty well as defensive structures in a pinch. The Siege of Groznyy demonstrated this in spades.
>>64315840
Not really, it was a well known and poorly kept secret that the subway systems built into any city big enough for it to make sense doubled as fallout shelters. Each station can seal itself off in an NBC attack. That thinking permitted everything. US took civil defense seriously early on in the cold war but gradually gave up due to cost and ICBMs with hydrogen warheads becoming the primary threat profile, but the USSR never dropped the idea until the whole state collapsed.

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>>64315816
How well do they actually double as defense installations? They're concrete blocks and all, but so are a lot of things, you'll still reduce one to rubble with some bombardment, they're not underground bunker complexes.
I doubt the apartment buildings were as robust as say, the Grozny Presidential Palace.

>>64315840
>>64315994
Illuminating.

>>64316136
>I'm partial to the argument that the USSR didn't really recover from the German invasion until at least the 50s
That's not even an outlandish notion, the Russians were at Total Fucking War with the Germans, the Eastern Front was by far THE most intense military conflict in all of recorded history. They made damn sure to fight all the way into Germany to get revenge, but that doesn't mean they were just gonna walk off all their losses by 1948 or anything.

>The notion you could go from that to your own private apartment with just your family is a huge step up.
True. There were parts of Russia which simply weren't properly caught up with the industrialized world yet by 1950, places where people didn't have electricity, indoor plumbing (or even outdoor plumbing), if even paved roads. A concrete shitbox with lights and running water? That'd be a stout upgrade for some.

>>64316218
>The design of the housing blocks themselves didn't particularly lend to this, but their layout did
Reinforced concrete is reinforced concrete. If you've ever been in an actual commie block you can see the walls are very, very thick. Even the balcony barriers on them are thick concrete often.

They'll hold up to most small arms fire.

>>64316248
I know what you are talking about because I grew up in one, with a bunker for the country's leadership 200m under my feet.

Concrete is great at stopping bullets, but it's also prefab panels of concrete. If you recall the apartment bombings in 1999 (probably a false flag by the FSB) a well placed explosive knocking out some bottom floors will drop the whole building or at least a good chunk of it like dominoes. The buildings have no core frame independent of these panels or load bearing redundancy. They suffer horribly in earthquakes as well, which the more southern regions of the former USSR can attest to.

That said, when they collapse they are a jagged pile of rubble with large amounts of intact panels that are still impassable to armored vehicles and can hide defending infantry. Especially if they collapse from the top down with bottom floors partially buried but still intact.

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>>64316267
Death traps.

>>64315840
>which somehow always translated into "everyone as equally shitty accommodation"
Which also excluded the elite, which had way better housing, including but not limited to having multiple entries into homes, such as having separate entries for maids. No, I'm not joking.

>>64316285
Christ, that's terrifying.

>>64316285
That was in the UK, but stemmed from a similar situation. Prefab panels, only in their case rather than civil war or terrorism it suffered the horrible fate of being built by Chavs who would do goofy shit like filling gaps with discarded newspapers and beer bottles. Soviet construction standards were notoriously awful, but somehow the Nglund managed to do even worse.

In any case, things like walk ability, access to services, energy efficiency and cost were much bigger factors for Soviet urban planning but they never got over the trauma of WW2 and possibly WW3 and it showed everywhere in subtle (sometimes pretty overt) ways.

Hard to say if that would have been of any value at all in a cold war gone hot scenario say in 1986 with MIRVs coming in carpet bombing everywhere. A Metro 2033 scenario is likely optimistic cope, but it never happened so it's impossible to say for sure if this type of preparation would have had no value at all.

>>64316248
>Reinforced concrete is reinforced concrete
You're just comparing modestly normal housing with american paper and plywood bullshit. Those soviet commieblocks aren't even that durable, all things considered. Older brick houses are way more durable.

>>64316218
>but their layout did
Actually it's the other way around. The soviets assumed the buildings would be fucked up by war and other destruction and tried to space them apart, specifically away from the main rounds, as to have the roads be "non-collapsible"/"non-blockable" (by fallen commieblocks).

>>64316056
>They poured a lot of money into some of them too. Quite a contrast to other construction efforts.
Money was poured to make them a propaganda structure

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>>64316320
Yes, the thing with that system is they seem to handle internal explosions way worse than slabs with columns (and beams). Weaker walls are better as pressure relief, those structural walls can end with a domino collapse. Bongs made it even worse for that building.

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>>64316320
>built by Chavs who would do goofy shit like filling gaps with discarded newspapers and beer bottles

>>64316320
>being built by Chavs who would do goofy shit like filling gaps with discarded newspapers and beer bottles.
>Soviet construction standards were notoriously awful, but somehow the Nglund managed to do even worse.
You have no idea how bad soviet shit was. Trust me, my birth certificate has a hammer and sickle on it.

There would be no danger like in office buildings or luxury apartments, where the goal is to create spacious floors with fewer and thinner columns.

>>64315931
>with the masses of space Russia has, that they couldn't give everyone somewhere actually nice.

That would require a car, and even people that had them generally didn't use them to commute

There were people that lived in villages with standalone houses, the problem was that those places didn't get good stuff in their stores and farmers lived shitty lives. I am convinced that farming is the most capitalistic endeavor known to man because no communist country ever managed to make it work despite some truly impressive technical feats.

What soviet citizens did have was dachas, or summer cabins.

>>64316056
I have been on the Tbilisi metro and its deep as fuck

>>64316432
>>64316056
Often the depth is just due to fucked up geography and soil.

>>64315816
Deliberate.

>>64315840
Steal rails on the balconies would be much cheaper than solid concrete blocks but wouldn't provide concealment or cover.

For every commie block that collapses, there will be 9 more standing, or standing partially and every one of them is nightmare mode to clear for any attacker.

Getting buried alive, or crushed to death by rubble is just part and parcel of war. Calling it a death trap is like calling a basement a death trap if it gets hit in a bad spot with heavy artillery, or takes a direct hit from a large bomb and collapses. In war the harder the cover, the better.

And besides, if a wooden roof, or wooden top floor collapses on you it's going to kill you the same as a concrete floor collapsing on you. You'll still have thousands of pounds coming down on you even with wood.

>>64316136
Kommunalkas (communal apartments) and workers barracks were predominant pre-Stalin.

>>64316227
It extends all the way back to Lenin. In order to rapidly industrialize you need a colossal amount of labor, far more than existing urban housing could provide, so to house a rapidly expanding urban population everyone got shoved into shitty, quickly produced housing.

>>64315816
outer walls were for low income housing to be wind breakers for the inner buildings(richer people) to live more comfy

Panel houses are bad as defensive structures, they tend to fold in and collapse after an explosion. More modern frame houses are much better.

>>64316136
barracks

>>64317191
>having a bomb detonate of the side of the building and partially collapse it is worse that the bomb flying through the wall and detonating inside

>>64317203


I mean, there are higher-quality structures for about the same price, if not cheaper. These days, developers are almost exclusively building frame houses, so if they're doing that, it must be cheaper than panel houses, and frame houses are much more resilient to shocks and don't fold in. Concrete panel houses are the worst defensive construction after plywood american houses.

>>64317224
Developers are building structures with the highest markup, that's the whole point of capitalism.
If people will pay $200k for a concrete box and $400k for a framed house you build the framed house even if it's more expensive to build.

Also about Pavlov's house - these old city houses were all made of solid bricks, and the walls had to be a couple of feet thick to keep the houses warm in the winter, as they didn't have styrofoam and mineral wool back then. I think that even one meter of solid brick will not meet thermal efficiency requirements of modern building codes in these regions.

So essentially they were natural fortresses.

>>64317240
People don't really care in the economy segment

>>64317267
AI or ELS?

>>64317270
AI of course sir

>>64315816
They copied the design from western europeans and and then built them on top of seized villages that used to surround historic city centers.

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>>64316320
>A Metro 2033 scenario is likely optimistic cope, but it never happened so it's impossible to say for sure if this type of preparation would have had no value at all.
werent vast majority of warheads meant to be air bursts? Penetration was only reserved for the known bunkers like ural or kremlin

>>64316430
> and farmers lived shitty lives.
depends where you look at. inside vatnikstan SSR yes, country villages were the den of shit. But in places like the baltic SSRs kolhozes were relatively wealthy, compared to their surroundings, and the country people lived pretty well off. With good access to luxury like milk, dairy products, fresh produce etc. Certainly better then the city factory ghettos

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>>64315840
>communist ideology that "everyone should have the same kind of accommodation" (which somehow always translated into "everyone as equally shitty accommodation").

>>64316293
It's a bit weird you need to say it like this. You've never heard of the servant's entrance? They're ubiquitous in any upper/middle class housing build before the 40s in America and Europe.

>>64316387
Never trust a.commie.

>>64316968
>Steal rails on the balconies would be much cheaper than solid concrete
>refined steel is cheaper than mixing dirt.

>>64317261
>mineral wool
How does this idom get profiled?

>>64316345
>Money was poured to make them a propaganda structure
It worked. Moscow metro looks insane compared to any public transit project I've ever seen even 75 years later.

>>64318177
It's not an idiom that's literally what the material is. Wool made from mineral (rock).

It's actually a natural material that's pretty good. Much better than the pink panther shit they throw in spec homes.

>>64318177
In english please?

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I've been doing a little surface level research about East Germany. Holy fuck, every Soviet policy towards that place was fueled by nothing but spite.
>"Let's ship all this industrial equipment back to da Motherland!"
>Half of it never gets used
>"Let's rip up all the railroad tracks, electrification and signalling systems!"
I get that WW2 happened, and that results in understandable emotional responses in the Soviet leadership; but at some point, you gotta let your vassal state improve itself.

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>>64318271
And in the end, East Germany was still a more developed country than most of Russia is even today.

>>64318138
Apparently you took great offense to his statement.

>>64318623
And you to the insinuation I did? Nah. It's just funny when people make things up in their head to get mad at.

Growing up in a post-sovok country brick buildings were always preferred to the concrete panel housing. This was usually because they were warmer and NOT built by the Soviets. They also had higher ceilings and generally better layouts with more space. Former Khrushchevkas turned into single-family units (formerly communal dormitories with facilities shared between families) were a coin flip.

The only thing that panel houses had over them was elevators.

I'm American and lived in a real commie block that I think was 10 or 9 stories high. It really wasn't bad at all.

>>64318703
>someone mentions in passing about typical communist shittiness
>OMG U VIRGIN
Totally not upset or anything.

>>64318171
Sand can get expensive. Theres a reason the chinks are out there digging in the ocean

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>>64318271
that was part of it but its how zegroids act in every foreign land they managed to worm their way in. They steal everything that aint bolted down and usually that too. Also everything they touch turns to shit. Just look what they did to the 700+ prusso-german city of konigsberg (after they raped/killed/deported everybody)

>>64315883
>also they weren't shitty, at least not when they were built
that's not true
t. lived in a commieblock

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>>64320075
I lived in a commie block in Poland and it was quite comfy and nice. You were surrounded by greenery, pharmacy and preschool were 1 minute away,local marketplace was 5 minutes away. The commieblocks were designed for community. They are highly sought after today in Poland, because modern developers don't put infrastructure in their developments.School was 10 minutes away by foot and so was the swimming pool. Mind you this was a 4-5 storey block not the 10 story one.
Honestly having lived in UK later on in my life, the commie blocks were way above British housing.

>>64320071
>Just look what they did to the 700+ prusso-german city of konigsberg
The city was leveled by Western Allied bombing

>>64320119
fantastyczna opowiesc mordo
>You were surrounded by greenery(..)
i'll give you that
>modern developers don't put infrastructure in their developments
i'll also give you that
however we're not talking about whatever close amenities would be there or how central planning thought the whole district should look like, the topic was about the build quality, and the quallity suffered often, you will not deny me this argument. crooked walls, low quality plaster, incorrectly installed an/or low quality windows, issues with plate joinery, issues with thermal insulation, and so on.
also a lot of those buildings were internally insulated with asbestos which had to be removed from a alot of those buildings at great cost. so no, i will not agree at all that panel blocks were better than what's today; if we argue about pure build quality? on the contrary.

>>64320119
I have definitely heard of Polacks complaining about black mold in old Commie Block apartment buildings.

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>>64315816
>Was it intentional for commie blocks in the ways they were designed by the Soviets to double as defensive installations?

absolutely "YES"

>>64320179
>crooked walls, low quality plaster, incorrectly installed an/or low quality windows, issues with plate joinery, issues with thermal insulation, and so on.

All of this happens in modern developments if not more.

>also a lot of those buildings were internally insulated with asbestos which had to be removed from a alot of those buildings at great cost

UK has bigger issue with asbestos than Poland did.

https://theconversation.com/how-asbestos-exposure-continues-to-be-a-dire-health-risk-25-years-after-it-was-banned-232426

Worryingly, despite the known dangers of asbestos, it remains a common material in many UK school buildings. According to a 2019 Department for Education survey, more than 80% of state schools in England and around 60% of schools in Scotland and Wales still have asbestos “present on their estate”

>>64320360
The U.K is (very thankfully) not representative of the entire western world.

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>>64320164
so was most of germany. yet most of it does not look like absolute shit after the post war recovery and rebuilding

>>64318703
What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little bitch? I’ll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I’ve been involved in numerous secret raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and I’m the top sniper in the entire US armed forces. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of spies across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You’re fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that’s just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the United States Marine Corps and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little “clever” comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn’t, you didn’t, and now you’re paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all over you and you will drown in it. You’re fucking dead, kiddo.

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>>64320424
>so was most of germany
Most of Germany wasn't touched by Allied bombing.

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>>64318221
>It's actually a natural material that's pretty good
I looked it up and I don't see much of a difference between it and the pink stuff aside from it being molten-down rock instead of fiberglass. Is it more easily biodegradable or something like that?

>>64318703
You talk like a woman. Post tits or butthole FAG.

>>64318831
I really do not understand how people live in cities at all. The commie block in the stans was comfy enough minus smog but i always hated being surrounded on all sides.

>>64318271
>east germany

that got turned into poland former central germany, once one of the most densely populated areas in germany and one of the most prosperous ones in germany got turned into a shithole with a collapsing population

>>64320119
That's because they've gone about retrofitting the commieblocks to actually modern standards. You should see the ones they've renovated in Estonia.

>>64315816
>>64316218
Not in the USSR but in other places they were, Pyongyang in particular was deliberately built as a fortress.

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>>64318703
>>64318138

>>64320360
>All of this happens in modern developments if not more.
and? that makes it a non-issue then?
>UK has bigger issue with asbestos than Poland did.
and? that makes it a non-issue then?

>>64320434
>>64320717
>>64321534 (samefag alert)
PROVE YOU ARE A SEAL!! I CALL BULLSHIT ON YOU! 300 CONFIRMED KILLS? BULLSHIT! You WILL be investigated for Stolen Valor as of this morning. You just committed a Major FELONY by making threats of violence against Civilians utilizing US Navy weapons! I have exposed 100+ POS like you trying to ride OUR accomplishments on the Battle Field. You have my word as a US Army, 101st Airborne Ranger/Veteran, your ass is now mine, little lying bitch boy!!!!!!! Your STUPID ASS is going down FAST.

>>64318156
>You've never heard of the servant's entrance?
Not in a "the country of laborers and farmers"

>>64318204
Well yeah, commies know their propaganda.

>>64318716
>Former Khrushchevkas turned into single-family units (formerly communal dormitories with facilities shared between families) were a coin flip.
You are confusing "kommunalka" (communal dormitories) with "khrushchevka" (khrushchev-era commieblocks).

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>>64320119
>You were surrounded by greenery
a couple months per year, which turned into picrel for most of the year

>>64323845
Yeah but that is independent of the system, the modern developments unless very luxurious have little trees and flower beds simply because it is expensive to maintain.

>>64324416
>because it is expensive to maintain
Nah, because everyone wants to keep the borders the same, so the city grows in population without growing in area, which pushed up the land price to insane levels and when it's up there you can't justify using land for a greenery and trees instead of housing or other real estate. That's literally the main point.

Also, that soviet planning was shit. It "worked" only during the soviet restricted gulag life, where you didn't have anything.

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>>64320267
Americans complain about mold in Polish commie blocks too.

>>64324450
>that soviet planning was shit. It "worked" only during the soviet restricted gulag life, where you didn't have anything.

Commie era housing planning is considered superior to modern planning in Poland.

>>64324578
Bullshit.

>>64324450
> soviet restricted gulag life, where you didn't have anything.
Life in communist Poland wasn't a gulag dude, nor were you banned from owning something or even having your own company. That was only the period in 50s.

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>>64324582
There you go, don't shoot the messenger

https://www.morizon.pl/blog/architektura-i-urbanistyka-w-prl/

>>64315877
This is what happens when kids learn about the world solely through first person shooters

>>64324578
Only by closeted commie "urbanists", fuck them

>>64324582


Many pre-fabricated concrete panel housing estates were equipped with well-designed service infrastructure, as well as recreation and green areas. The local infrastructure included "Millennium" schools, department stores, community centers, and playgrounds. The value of their modernist spatial planning can be especially appreciated from a contemporary perspective.

The buildings erected during the Polish People's Republic period are spaced at such a distance from each other that residents don't look directly into each other's windows—a standard that is often not followed in modern construction. After 1989, these housing estates fell victim to uncontrolled infill development and also to wild, colorful thermal modernization. This is why many of them are today an example of spatial and aesthetic chaos.

>>64324639
>t. brutalist

>>64324639
Bruh, those neighborhoods of commieblocks were glorified barracks to keep the cattle in while it's outside its place or labor. Don't get me started on the fucked up nature of the apartments themselves or how commies managed to make even leaving your commieblock something where you wait in line for. Nah, the neighborhoods didn't have shit, because the soviet system deemed normal stuff as "excessive" or even "bourgeois". Yes, there's you shitty kindergarten and there is your shitty school. There's your shitty parody of a supermarket and there's your shitty "corner store" without normal food. Slightly farther you can find your shitty movie theater with shitty soviet movies. And so on. Oh and go and wait in a mega queue on a shitty bus stop while waiting for your shitty soviet bus to take you to your shitty soviet job far away from your shitty soviet neighborhood.
There's a fuckin' reason why post 1991 all that crap disintegrated instantly, because people wanted options, they wanted more than one of thing, they wanted good stuff, they wanted good, services, recreation and so on and the first thing it stumbled upon is that there was no fuckin' place for it, there was no real estate to house those newly created businesses, because they did not exist in USSR. Because it fuckin' sucked.

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>>64324578
>Commie era housing planning is considered superior
enjoy your line for the bus stop, faggot

>>64324704
Some modern housing developments don't even have a bus stop

>>64324670
>Bruh, those neighborhoods of commieblocks were glorified barracks to keep the cattle in while it's outside its place or labor.

I lived in one, and you are full of bullshit

>>64324670
>There's a fuckin' reason why post 1991 all that crap disintegrated instantly,
Nope, they are still here and commie block apartments are much sought after by buyers

>>64324760
>I lived in one, and you are full of bullshit
My birth certificate with a hammer and sickle proves your point to be a lie

>>64324768
You are autistic. The model of life disintegrated, not the actual commieblocks.

>>64324776
And mine with PRL stamp proves I am right

>>64324785
Nah, you are just closeted commie faggot

I just want to remind everyone that the only good communist is a dead communist.

>>64324970
I've never actually thought about it that way, but it makes a lot of sense.

>>64324970
and water is wet

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what is the best way to design civil residential areas to best aid in defense while not overly restricting civvie-stuff? Obviously, as has been pointed out itt, pre-fab panels are not the way to go, and brick-house are pretty solidly superior by comparison. What about other aspects of how they're designed? How should the layouts of individual buildings be constructed to maximize deniability? How should streets be laid out to best confound and hinder an invading army?

>>64325169
>deniability
*defensability
not even phone-posting, i'm just that retarded.

>>64325279
kek

>>64323485
What is the purpose of the tires?

>>64325169
Not letting the enemy reach your cities to begin with. Modern war strategy is built on bypassing and cutting off cities, not slogging through them block by block. Sacking cities to plunder them isn't really the main objective of wars nowadays. The best way to defend a city is just to make it difficult to cut off from resupply.

>>64328572
Path markers for when there's half a feet of snow and nobody's plowing it because nothing works

>>64328653
Are a bunch of tires that much cheaper than a handrail or concrete bollards?

>>64328762
They're likely old local garbage someone had to get rid of.

>>64328572
Three main features:
- decoration, yes the drab soviet shit looked so grim that BS DIY decorations like these were considered good;
- path markers, since often the roads and paths were very loosely defined and people wanted to highlight them;
- a more modern feature is preventing people from driving in and parking;

>>64328606
>The best way to defend a city is just to make it difficult to cut off from resupply.
well in that case, how would you do that? There's some obvious shit like not placing it on an island and stuff like that. What about underground railways? Good way of moving stuff in and out without it getting bombed to smithereens (or not with ease at the very least). Of course, the enemy could theoretically flood or gas them, but that would require them to have a certain level of access to those tunnels in the first place, meaning that they've already given-up on cutting the city off or are so far behind the front-lines that they've practically succeeded already. Besides, there's way to engineer around those kinds of issues anyways, isn't there?

>>64315816
Houses have always been ractangles and big rectangles have always been the shape of walls.
Try not to think so much.

While commiblocks may seem shit today, they actually established a standard in housing we take for granted today. Things like big windows in every room, toilets, bathrooms, ventilation, electricity access to sunlight or central heating were a big step up over the townhouses that preceded them. Living in old buildings in post industrial revolution cities was so hellish many capitalist countries decided to tore them all down and replace with commieblock-style buildings. Just read any XIX book, they're full of depictions of basically favelas where people die of malaria and typhus.

>>64329744
fuck off Le Corbusier

>>64316387
I've seen both in person and parts of London are the worst between them.

>>64317098
Nobody is going to clear them retard, we're simply going to shatter them with nuclear fire. Seeing as "existing" is precarious enough.

>>64316227
>True. There were parts of Russia which simply weren't properly caught up with the industrialized world yet by 1950, places where people didn't have electricity, indoor plumbing (or even outdoor plumbing), if even paved roads. A concrete shitbox with lights and running water? That'd be a stout upgrade for some.
There are *still* parts of Russia without indoor running water and electricity.

>>64329833
Then you haven't seen the bad commieblocks. The big issue with them aren't even structural issues: aluminum based wiring, gaps in the concrete panels, no thermal insulation, no normal ventilation, almost no sound proofing, bad design of water piping and everything else. No, the worst part about them is the ghettofication they produce. When you build a relatively small in terms of land area high-rise with 110 apartments, you'd be looking at about 400-500 or more people living in a very concentrated amount of space. People which you can't filter based on their sane behavior and life. People which will always include at least 3-5% of insane retards who'll shit up the commieblock. And you won't have any legal recourse against them. And then you get the "broken window theory" play out, since seeing the fucked up state of things a chuck of inert normies, who didn't do shit before, will also start shitting up place and then you're done. The whole commieblock is like an concentrated ghetto neighborhood condensed into a concrete tower. Don't even get me started about what would happen around the high-rise.

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it was actually Auguste Perret who gave the idea to Khrushchev when the latter visited Rouen and Le Havre in Normandy on official visit during the late 50's after WWII.
Perret was one of the first to use concrete in his architecture endeavors to rebuild the French cities with apartments and to perpetuate the Art Deco movement he was part of.
when returning back to Moscow the Soviet delegation took this into consideration and standardized it on a scale much larger and also removed the "art" out of it, to make it purely functional.

>>64320578
Mineral wool can be formed into much denser mats that hold their shape well even vertically, and is also less irritating to the skin.

>>64316430
>I am convinced that farming is the most capitalistic endeavor known to man because no communist country ever managed to make it work despite some truly impressive technical feats.
Dude Soviets literally confiscated peasants land and horses during collectivisation in 30s so peasants could not have self sustaining households. In USSR for peasants it was literally illegal to have more land in personal use them 0.012 acres (for context in US homestead was 120-160 acres).

>>64330933
There is an interesting and instructive book about how the similar process of de-peasantization took place in the United States, The Grapes of Wrath or something like that. Though the author used to say that he downplayed a lot of things.

I went to Moscow and rented a couple apts before Air BNB was a thing. The huge blocks have multiple entrance points designed so that each one can be monitored by your nosy bubushka KGB informer so each entrance may only give access to 6 apts or a couple on each floor. Next entrance over repeat. The defensive design perk is most people have an out security door then a nicer actual door, so you’d be breaching two doors not one, and the outer one is pretty heavy. The usual access control and monitoring choke points.

>>64331019
>In 1948 The Grapes of Wrath [the 1940 film] was allowed to play in Soviet cinemas because of its propaganda value, which was presumably to heighten awareness of the desperate misery of the Okies under the most advanced system of capitalism on the planet. After several weeks, however, the film—given the unbiblical title of The Road to Wrath—had to be withdrawn. Soviet audiences were apparently extracting the wrong lesson, since they could see for themselves that even the most dispossessed of America’s rural proletariat were shown driving automobiles.

>>64331474
It was strange to me in 2020, KEK. I mean reading about dirt poor farmers with no shoes having a car? That's a serious cultural shock.

>>64315816
no they were built to be cheap and efficient to heat centrally in winter

>>64320528
>Most of Germany wasn't touched by Allied bombing.
Your map literally shows the opposite.

My grandma survived the allied bombing of Dresden (and later married a german-american pilot, kek) and she spent the twilight of her life dreaming about the future of technology and space travel. Meanwhile the sovjet survivors dream of being surrounded by concrete plates with some electrical infrastructure. I feel bad for them, they wrested victory from the hands of my ancestors only to live in squalor while I'm just one click away from buying two cars without going into debt.

>>64315931
insulation is important and thats why houses and apartments tend to be smaller in Nordic countries too. Big blocks connected to district heating are cheap and efficient wherever there is real winter

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>>64329833
>>64330706
London does have a few 'what the fuck were they thinking' buildings.

Many large cities in the Western world also built apartment complexes as a way to accommodate the population and improve their quality of life.

>>64331601
>I feel bad for them, they wrested victory from the hands of my ancestors only to live in squalor while I'm just one click away from buying two cars without going into debt.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan

>>64331656
My family witnessed the reunification of germany and we have to tardwrangle east-germans due to generational trauma to this very day, don't tell me it was all the Marshall Plan. The difference lies in human conditioning.

>>64320075
For standards of the time when average person in those countries lived in essentially slums, in rubble of pre-war housing or in wooden huts in the countryside the commie blocks really weren't that bad. The construction quality was low, but not China low and with time and work they can and mostly were turned into very good housing.
The "horror stories" mentioned by others and how they look in Russia is more a testament to lack of maintenance rather than being a bad idea.
I do renovations in a lot of post-commie blocks and while there's rarely a single straight wall inside, most of them just need some solid insulation, new wiring and a paint job to be just fine.

>>64316439
>Often the depth is just due to fucked up geography and soil.
not in this case though
and in many others

subway stations are VERY often intentionally designed to act as bomb shelter as well
because it takes very little effort to make them viable for it (a little more expensive ventilation and doors)

>>64331617
Yup. The exterior walls of some of those new blocks can be a foot or two thick from all the insulation.
A tall block can also benefit a lot from its scale, making it very cost-effective to install things like an exhaust air heat pump at the top to collect heat from the outgoing ventilation air, and dump said heat back into the building's hot water supply.

The amount of insulation is almost a problem now since these buildings leak so little heat that the material will almost never dry if it gets wet somehow.
Which tends to happen since large-scale construction is an extremely dumb and corrupt business, and the inspectors can't possibly check every little detail for deviations from the approved design.

>>64331679
Its majority of times a tenant problem. Mentioned in one anons ghettofication post. Once the human rot sets in, it drives out normal people and attracts more rot

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>>64331641
our commieblocks > your "apartment buildings"

Commieblocks are the ultimate poverty trap. They allow poor nations to spam apartments easily, but poor nations can't maintain a gorillion commie blocks. All the bonuses to commie blocks become irrelevant in the first world because westerners can build nicer large scale apartments that can be maintained.

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any large modern building is incidentally a great defensive position. a large steel and concrete structure with multiple internal routes of movement and firing positions

>>64331679
>or in wooden huts in the countryside
lol if only, many lived in "zemlyankas", basically dugouts in the ground, or "barracks" (special stalin era housing for proles)
also, commies limited the ability of people to build their own homes

>>64331617
>Big blocks connected to district heating are cheap and efficient
Not in USSR infrastructure, up to 70% of the heat was lost in transit. It was "efficient" in that the price of fuel was artificially cheap (which sometimes caused fucked up results), so nobody cared about losing 70% of heat into the ground, while also requiring less labor to handle heating in a more distributed manner, i.e. less manual labor and such.

>>64331767
>it drives out normal people
not in USSR it didn't, since there wasn't generally a market for housing, people don't leave a commieblock for another commieblock because it got fucked... because they can't or they can't afford it, or because most of them are fucked kek