GalleryA Good Flat for Every Family
How do things stand as regards such an important matter as housing? In Estonia this problem was aggravated by the fact that more than a third of the urban housing was destroyed in the war.
After the war, especially in recent years, enormous sums have been invested in housing construction.
Between 1946 and 1958 state-run building organisations erected 1,700,000 square metres1 of residential floor space in the cities and towns of the republic. Furthermore, another 250,000 square metres were built by factory and office workers themselves with the help of state loans.
New towns have sprung up in the shale mining area—Kokhtla-Yarve, lykhvi, Akhtme and several big factory residential quarters.
However, there is still a shortage, both because of war-time damage and because of the rapid increase in the urban population, which today accounts for 56 per cent of the total population against 34 per cent in 1940.
The Communist Party pays great attention to housing. The Soviet Union's housing problem will be solved in the next ten to twelve years. A vast amount of housing is already going up in Estonia, and still more will be put up in the next seven years.
In Tallinn large-scale housing construction is to take place in the district of Mustamäe, a picturesque spot far away from factories and mills where there are plenty of parklands and the air is fresh and unpolluted.
The new housing estate here—some 525,000 square metres of floor space—will cover an area of 875 acres.
This will be a "satellite town" with its own theatre, accommodating 800 people, cinemas, a big department store, a market place with arcades, restaurants and cafes, various shops and stores, tailoring and dressmaking establishments, a stadium with grandstands seating 6,000, an indoor swimming pool and other sports facilities.
A motor road will link up Mustamäe with Kharku Lake (a little over a mile away), which will be turned into a tourist and holiday centre.
The new satellite town will have a population of 50,000 to 60,000. The people will live in four- to five-storey houses, with each family having a separate flat.
Another 740,000 square metres will be put up by private housebuilders with the help of state loans.
Altogether more than 2,300,000 square metres of urban housing will be erected, twice as much as in the previous seven years and equal to more than half of all the urban housing Estonia had by the beginning of 1959.
Many houses are also to be built in the countryside. In the next seven years 17,000 are to go up, against 1,500 in the past seven years.
| 1 | 1 sq. metre = 10.76 sq. feet. |
Soviet Booklets, London, England, in December, 1959, as part of the series
"THE FIFTEEN SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS OF TODAY AND TOMMORROW."
We do not endorse the Soviet account of historical events or their circumstances contained therein as factual.
