There's no free lunch!

<< Nowa Huta is a planned community for workers in the nearby steel mill, and was well-designed and built, those apts would go for big bucks in some US cities, they aren't tacky nor cheaply built, and the town area is very well-planned with park areas, a market space, playgrounds, etc. Yes, they didn't dawdle in building it or waste time, and workers came from around the country, but it didn't happen overnight--I think 2 years. It was quite impressive, actually, and that is one of the most interesting things I've done in Krakow. There aren't a lot of planned cities like that. >>

Wow, that could have come from Le Corbusier himself. Those apartments were horrid - small, poorly designed, poorly made, minimal plumbing, lack of electrical power even for the time, far away from central Krakow. The whole point was to keep the residents a short from the factories in which they worked so they'd never leave the area nor want to. Of course, the Communist pollution controls were Dickensian, the workers didn't "come from around the country" they were forced to move. The park areas were small, the playgrounds poorly kept and the markets understocked. But don't let the facts get in the way of your Soviet hagiography.