To add to the recollection of the opening theme:
"Life's getting better; spring's coming soon
Nine feet of snow - and it's only June.
Look @ our ........, look at our luck,
Papa's a head waiter - and Mama drives a truck!
Chorus: .........
Living in Moscow; living in Moscow gets better every day - hey!
Plenty of friends here: vodka and wine,
Such a big family - some of which is mine.
Shoulder to shoulder, close as can be,
There's 9 in my apartment - and there's no room for me!
Chorus (reprise)"
This was a CBS limited run series that ran during the year of the Bicentennial late summer/early fall. I don't recall how many episodes were taped but a mere 5 episodes of this parody of Soviet life aired. Although it was popular, the State Department apparently ordered CBS to discontinue the series under political pressure of the then Soviet Union. It featured the most unusual family unit - at least for 1976: the father Ivan Petrovsky worked as a head waiter in a major Moscow hotel, his wife Olga drove a truck. Also in the 1 bedroom apartment were: their son Nikolai who was an astronaut, Nikolai's wife Sonya, their daughter Svetlana who was a ballerina, their younger son Sascha who appeared to be in grade school, Olga's former husband Vladimir who appeared to do zip but give opinions, Olga's mother Tatiana who drove subway trains and Raoul Sanchez - a Cuban exchange student who boarded there - plus a never seen but sometime heard dog named Rasputin that appeared confined to a room behind closed doors.
I also remember the late great Lou Jacobi's Ivan character frequently calling someone a "yutz" - which probably was a catchphrase meaning fool. A decade later the late great Estelle Getty used it in her Sophia character on "The Golden Girls". I've used that word myself to this day. To me the funniest were Lou Jacobi (Ivan) and Phil Leeds (Vladimir - his "husband-in-law" - the former husband of Ivan's wife Olga) - the two actors and characters complimented each other well in their comedy, closely followed by Christopher Hewitt, the Federov character that appeared in each episode as a different KGB buttinsky type official (one episode he was an unemployment agency official, another episode he oversaw the Petrovsky family's being interviewed by American TV reporter Tom Skyler - an obvious take off on real life Tom Snyder - as a typical Russian family to make sure the family were portrayed as upper middle class, lending them appliances for the broadcast that they were obviously unfamiliar with [(e.g. Olga putting dishes in what she & Ivan thought was a dishwasher but was actually a washing machine!]).
The series gave American typical sitcom plots what they felt would be a Soviet twist - possibly cutting too close for comfort to the Soviets who in turn pressured the US State Department to have the plug pulled on the series - a shame - wish the episodes could be found some place.