"Interest in Housing" (Cont'd)

Busy taking an interest in housing last week were the King of England (see p. 25), the Duke of Windsor (see col. 1) and Joseph Stalin.

Under the patronage of the Dictator, co-operative bodies of Soviet citizens have obtained loans from the State aggregating 80% to 90% of the capital required for the many apartment houses they have built throughout Russia, most of, these loans being repayable over 60 years. In all, the State has loaned its cooperative citizens more than 1,500,000,000 rubles, or at the State's official figure $300,000,000.

The Dictator's interest in housing led him to conclude last week that this has been a mistake. Decrees went forth from the Kremlin informing the co-operatives that they have not 60 years but six months in which to complete repayment. This was the Dictator's way of saying that the State will seize the housing. "The 1,500,000,000 rubles of State funds which have been loaned to the co-operatives." declared the Kremlin's official communique, "have been practically turned into private property of members of the cooperatives, who thus at the expense of the State became privileged owners of living space, with insignificant investments of their own."

Those who knew anything about Soviet housing could have told the Dictator any time in the past several years that such has been the case, but it is characteristic of Joseph Stalin's most drastic decrees that they are usually issued with a tone of just having learned the awful truth. Last week's decree ends one of the last, most treasured private rights of many Soviet citizens, that of being masters in their own homes to the extent that they have had a voice in a collective which was master. Hereafter control passes to the local Soviet, thus to the party, and the ordinary Russian is now going to find the question of his lodging turning on his political standing as a citizen faithful to Stalinism.

Commissars and high party officials still need loans from the State for the private houses and estates they are building or have built in imitation of Stalin's (TIME. Oct. 4). The Kremlin's decree last week, while abolishing loans to cooperatives, carefully guards the housing rights of Communist bigwigs and anyone else who can get permission from a local Soviet to build himself a private house. Armed with such permission, on which the project must be certified as a "small house" (what constitutes "small" being undefined), the fortunate Communist can still apply for and get a five-year building loan from the State bank.

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