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In Leningrad in our cooperative building an attorney, also a Jew, maybe about 50 years of age, lived with his wife under us on the 7th floor in a one -bedroom apartment. He had a daughter, who lived with her family in another apartment far from us.

After some time, the district committee CPSU gave the attorney a government two-bedroom apartment. In Leningrad the situation with housing was difficult. If you wanted to be on a waiting list to receive a government apartment, your family would have to have less than 3 square meters (96.82 square feet) of living space for each person in their room (apartment). (The living square meter area did not include the area of the kitchen and bathroom). For a last apartment you had to wait maybe 10 years.

If you wanted to be on the list for a cooperative building apartment you would have to have less than 6 square meters (387.6 square feet) per person in your dwelling.

Khrushchev was famous because he permitted the building of cooperative apartments for sail to individuals. (In the Soviet economy that meant he gave the command to the ministry to organize the construction program).

We had to pay a down payment of 40% of the total cost of the apartment. After that we had to pay monthly for 20 years. (In some good cooperative buildings it was necessary to pay all the money in to the building.) After giving the down payment we very often had to wait 1-2 years for the building to be constructed.

I want to tell you that the monthly payment for service in the government apartment was less than in the cooperative apartment for the same square meters. (You also had to pay a fee for the monthly debt of the cooperative apartment). Before Khrushchev's time, the situation with housing was critical.

In my situation we lived in our one bedroom apartment with 5 people. We had 30.08 square meters for 5 people. We had to build a cooperative studio apartment for the family of our daughter. We had a big problem because for one person we had more than 6.0 meters (6.02). My wife brought a special letter from her plant, where she was a good worker that was signed by the director of the plant and secretary of the party committee of the plant and the leader of the trade union committee. That letter allowed her to be included on the list for the apartment.

About the attorney, when he received the government two-bedroom apartment, he relinquished his one-bedroom private cooperative and received back his money for the apartment.

After receiving such a valuable apartment, the attorney was no longer acting independently in the role as an attorney in the court. He had to give whatever decision the district committee CPSU wanted from him when they made a specific request. In other private cases the attorney could decide as he wanted to do.

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