vastly different. you pay off your apartment as you work. the apartment is owned by the state corporation you work for. the corporation has very little power to let you go. its more like a very favourable home loan

> you pay off your apartment as you work

You do, if you buy the apartment and get a loan/mortgage. If you're renting from the government, you're just renting... you didn't become an owner of the apartment here, until the end of socialism, a new capitalist government, and politicians not wanting to deal with the upkeep of those buildings.

Before 1991, you were renting as you are renting now in any other (capitalist) country (although with proper rules and protections.. so like in eg. austria, germany, etc). You didn't get to keep it.

you keep repeating yourself without providing any sources. here is a quote from scholarly article on the topic that counters what you are saying

   Yugoslavia’s blue-collar workers were less likely to receive a socially owned flat than white-collar and skilled workers who were systemically favoured in the allocation process (Živković 1968; Bobić and Vujović 1985; Petrović 2004; Le Normand 2012; Archer 2016). Housing allocation thus forged novel social inequalities, a phenomenon observed by scholars in other state-socialist contexts (Szelenyi 1983; Bodnár and Böröcz 1998; Kulu 2003; Pelikánová 2012; Fehérváry 2013, 74–75; Gentile and Sjöberg 2013; Harris 2013, 112; Dalakoglou 2017, 137). In contrast to capitalist societies where wealthier strata were more likely to own their own home, in socialist states like Yugoslavia white-collar employees and managers were significantly less likely to own property than poorer workers, instead enjoying the more prestigious use of a socially owned flat. This was arguably more advantageous than property ownership as socially owned flats ‘ … were acquired without incurring personal costs, while in terms of their use, inheritance and even trading there were practically no differences between the holders of tenancy rights to state/socially owned housing and private owners’ (Petrović 2004, 270).

- Archer, Roy: The moral economy of home construction in late socialist Yugoslavia

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02757206.2017.1...

> were acquired without incurring personal costs, while in terms of their use, inheritance and even trading there were practically no differences between the holders of tenancy rights to state/socially owned housing and private owners’ (Petrović 2004, 270).

I have no idea where the author got this... this was maybe(!) true for very high ranking party members, but for normal people, there was no inheritance and trading, and the use was the same as with any other rental apartment. Also maybe only in what was left of yugoslavia in 1991 and then turned into 'serbia and montenegro'. If you died, the apartment went back to the state. To trade it (move elsewhere) you needed a good reason (usually, more kids or more rarely a new job).

I was born in yugoslavia and lived here/there until the fail, and now still live in the same city, just in a new country. My parents got a social apartment, I got born and they got another apartment and moved (1->2 bedroom apartment). They couldn't get a bigger one before, because 2 people meant 1 bedroom apartment, 3 people, two bedroom one. They couldn't even choose the floor (noone wanted the ground level or top level ones). No trading, no inheritance, no ownership until 1991 and the jazbinsek law, where every renter could buy off the apartment from the government.

so i know also from personal experience that inheritance existed. when my grandfather (certainly not some high ranking party member) passed away in the mid 80s the rights to the apartment went to my grandmother. she was in retirement at the time. my uncle also lived with her at the time. he was a university student. besides having this social apartment my grandfather and my grandmother also built a house in a village near by. when the system collapsed and after the war there was a buy program similar to what you describe and she was able to purchase the apartment

So, she lived in the apartment, and stayed there after he died?

Or did she live in another apartment, and when he died, she got his, better(?) apartment?

If someone dies and you get to stay in an apartment, that's not inheritance, just continuing to rent that apartment.

you said that once the owner dies the dwelling goes back to the state. in fact i dont know of any case of a family being kicked out of home after the principal holder died