There's not really enough space here to elaborate, so very briefly: 1) basically yes, but ... (the story is really too long) 2) hell no! What do you mean by "

There's not really enough space here to elaborate, so very briefly: 1) basically yes, but ... (the story is really too long) 2) hell no! What do you mean by "assigned"? If after University you got the job in a different city (not very common arrangement, and normally this different city would be some place you would never consider as a first choice for living), you could get a room in a shared apartment, in which you would get stuck forever, even after you got married. But still, there was a chance to get a separate apartment eventually (with family and kids, certainly). But if you stayed in your native city - (90% of cases) situation was really dire... long story. (BTW, you couldn't move to another city afterwards either, except by way of marriage. There were some loopholes for workers though. Again, I'd need a "switch" statement with some "cases" to elaborate. 3) Never heard of such things. Don't remember paying for TV at all, and under no circumstances they would cut it off: TV was the main instrument of propaganda). 4) Work actions, as you call them, were normal occurrence, and some types of these actions were a lot of fun. Though gathering potatoes under the rain was not very enjoyable by itself, we were always provided with the supply of technical spirits (diluted to 40%) to keep our morale high :) EDIT: I used the term "technical spirits", b/c that's how the stuff was called in Russia - it's the supply of low-quality (rather stinky) spirits allotted to computer center allegedly for cleaning electrical contacts, but was never used for that purpose b/c it had much more important applications, including (but not limited to) as alcoholic drink and a medium of exchange