Homes
The vast majority of people in Magnitogorsk live in huge apartment style housing. Most of this housing was constructed in the 1960s and 1970s as the construction of housing finally caught up with the demand. The local government began bulldozing the barracks and impromptu housing that had developed during the mad dash to build the plant. Below we see a shot of the development as it looked in the 1970sShopping
The apartment buildings were all constructed in a pre-fabricated style where most of the large portions were constructed off site. These pre-fab pieces were then put together in modular fashion and large apartment buildings can be put together much like Lego toys. A common complaint with this type of construction is that it is extremely impersonal and that the living spaces do not feel very humane or comfortable. In the early days of apartment construction, a common method to differentiate the apartments' identical appearances was to paint them different colors. This measure accounted for only a limited amount of success in making apartments more desirable.
Housing supply in Magnitogorsk is still tight, many children live with their parents until they obtain a job that issues a housing voucher, and still more children live with their parents for some time after their mairrage. This problem may not be of tremendous importance in the future, however, because many of the city's youth are fleeing for better opportunities in Moscow and in the West.
Residents of Magnitogorsk do not say they are going shopping, they refer to it as "hunting". This is a result of the chronically poor supply of consumer goods under the Socialist system in Russia. While supply is getting better in the post-Soviet era, it still remains spotty because most consumer goods must travel great distances by train to reach their markets. Hunting for goods was often an all day affair. Stores were always out of one or more necessary good and therefore on any day when a shipment of new supplies would come in, the word of mouth network would kick in and send shoppers rushing to the store to buy all that they could afford. This binge-bust cycle is still evident, particularly in the older residents who have lived through the most hardship, but with the new open market system, consumer goods come more regularly, though at higher prices. Below we see the counter at a typical market under the Soviet system, with artificially low prices and a group of shoppers crowding the back of a truck, hoping to get what they came for before it runs out.
Many people had to travel great distances to get to stores as well, communist plans did not account for sufficient shopping facilities when they designed their cities. The response to this was the rise of personal marketeering and a black market system. Personal marketeering arose from the loosening of restrictions under Perestroika and it allowed people to sell goods that they had produced entirely in their own homes. These people would then congregate in small semi-formal market areas to sell vegetables, dairy products and craft items.
Black markets sold goods that were forbidden under the communist trade policy. The black market was responsible for selling imported clothes, electronics, candies, perfumes and even auto parts. Prices were high for imported and home produced items, but the availability was much more consistent than government goods.
With the fall of comunism, more of the semi-formal markets have sprung up wherever convenient in the city, usually on main routes of transportation and near large housing complexes. In addition, many of the formal markets have expanded and become profitable. Still, shopping in Magnitogorsk is far more arduous than in the United States, or other advanced market economies.
The Socialist City was to be a city where everyone could have access to the finer elements of culture. In this vein, Magnitogorsk was relatively well endowed with facilities of high culture as well as other types of entertainment. Magnitogorsk is home to a Circus, the Magnitogorsk Opera House, the Metallurg hockey team and many cinemas. The Magnitogorsk Opera house has only recently re-opened its doors after the opera was disbanded following the fall of the USSR. This is regarded as a good sign of times to come, as the opera is highly regarded in Russia. The Communist party was constantly working to promote its adjenda through museums and through the standard interpretation of history, as a result Magnitogorsk is graced with many museums on a relatively short span of history since the October Revolution.EducationAbove are the Metalurg Hockey Logo and also a Picure of the Circus. Below is one of the many Communist museums in Magnitogorsk. 
Educational opportunities in Magnitogorsk are relatively good. Education has always been considered a right, and is provided free of charge. This includes both primary education as well as secondary universisty education. Roughly 1/3 of the population of Magnitogorsk has been to some form of higher education, which is about the same ratio as the US. The traditional system of education stresses technical competence and ability because most of the graduates were immediately siphoned off into mill and engineering careers in heavy industry. The education system is one of the means of upward mobility for many of Magnitogorsk's young people. Traditionally this upward mobility was confined to the city itself, few people were able to secure jobs outside of the city and the steel mill apparatus. Teachers graduating from the Teacher's College were often assured several years teaching in one of the local villages, from which return to the city was often hoped for. The only spots in Magnitogorsk that offered any reasonable chance of relocation to other cities were party jobs or jobs as mill bosses. These positions, as one might expect, were not easy to come by. This trend is changing somewhat, loosened controls in all areas of the country allow people to move more freely and to gain apartments based on market situations rather than on regulations
.
The large image to the upper right is the front facade of the Metallurgical and Technical Institute and the smaller image directly above is the front of the Magnitogorsk Teacher's College.
Public Health
One issue affects the wellbeing of citizens of Magnitogorsk more than any other is the pollution. Air and water pollution levels are extremely high in the city and surrounding countryside as a direct result of the steel mill. Many levels of contaminants such as sulfur and heavy metals reach levels of up to 50 times the acceptable level in certain areas of the city. These high levels of pollution combine to produce many different maladies. Skin cancer, malignant blood diseases and diabetes are common. The hardest hit are the children in the city. The local hospital estimates that only 1% of all children in Magnitogorsk are in good health, with the rest falling short. This extremely sick population makes matters difficult at the local hospitals. Many patients are not admitted for treatment unless they are in critical condition and there are long waiting lists for hospital stays. Hospitals too are crowded and in poor condition. Many of the rooms hold far greater numbers of patients than they were origionally intended and doctors and nurses are chronically overworked.
