Say I'm the son of a man who's just died in 1981, would their "possessions*" go to me or would they go to the state? Would my father write a will? What would happen to the stuff we used after he died?
*Yes I know you didn't really possess anything in the USSR, I just don't have a better word for it.
*Yes I know you didn't really possess anything in the USSR, I just don't have a better word for it.
But you did "possess things", why wouldn't you? Don't think the USSR was some fairy tale (or nightmare) land where magical property-less communism existed, don't think basic things and facts of everyday life didn't in a large part work the same as elsewhere.