To give you some idea, GDR was seen as almost totally west from USSR. Anything "made in GDR" was immediately seen as super high quality. Getting visa to visit GDR was next-to-west hard.
USSR had much worse conditions as a starting point. On top of that, it was an empire that had assimilation as one of it's goals as well as military targets to meet. Thus playing field for citizens was far from level. For example, even whole "strategic" cities were much nicer to live in that a regular cities. Better food, more exotic food options, better housing, more entertainment... You name it.
The whole approach of state-owned housing is not catastrophic. If you can build reasonably fast. USSR couldn't. After all, catastrophic productivity is what brought the red empire to it's knees. Why it was so bad is another topic though.
USSR had much worse conditions as a starting point. On top of that, it was an empire that had assimilation as one of it's goals as well as military targets to meet. Thus playing field for citizens was far from level. For example, even whole "strategic" cities were much nicer to live in that a regular cities. Better food, more exotic food options, better housing, more entertainment... You name it.
The whole approach of state-owned housing is not catastrophic. If you can build reasonably fast. USSR couldn't. After all, catastrophic productivity is what brought the red empire to it's knees. Why it was so bad is another topic though.