I love learning about accounts like this because some of it is so alien to the way things work in the Western capitalist system. I grew up later but still saw some tail end of communism and some things like
* You were told which job you would get
* You would be assigned an apartment to live in. Imagine going to the DMV but instead it's a housing office where you'd get a place
* You could opt out of paying for a TV subscription but then a government agent would come to put a seal on the TV. They put a couple of pieces of lead around the electric plug, and crimp them on with a special tool that stamped a tamper-evident pattern. Just wild!
* In the early days I am told there would be frequent "work actions" where workers at random companies would be asked to go outside and do manual labor where needed e.g. when clearing right of way for a railroad, laying ties, etc.
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
* You were told which job you would get
* You would be assigned an apartment to live in. Imagine going to the DMV but instead it's a housing office where you'd get a place
* You could opt out of paying for a TV subscription but then a government agent would come to put a seal on the TV. They put a couple of pieces of lead around the electric plug, and crimp them on with a special tool that stamped a tamper-evident pattern. Just wild!
* In the early days I am told there would be frequent "work actions" where workers at random companies would be asked to go outside and do manual labor where needed e.g. when clearing right of way for a railroad, laying ties, etc.