Far from everybody lived in commie blocks. And commie blocks varied widely from what you think as commie block in a major city to a weird things with missing an

Far from everybody lived in commie blocks. And commie blocks varied widely from what you think as commie block in a major city to a weird things with missing and/or ad-hoc utilities in rural parts. And commie regimes tried to stop people from moving to cities to have enough workforce to work in terribly inefficient farms. So rural parts made up much much bigger part of population.