Calculating the earnings of people in different eras in different economic systems is a thankless task. Even if we are talking about such a recent phenomenon in the historical perspective as the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, it is possible to make approximate conversions through the US dollar, having previously agreed on several important points.
Recalculation problem number one
The main problem of converting wages in the USSR to modern means is that money in the Soviet Union is not exactly money in the usual sense. And all because, even despite the Kosygin reforms of the 1965-1970s, when the concept of value was introduced into the socialist economy (i.e., a step was taken towards capitalist economy, which was not the case from 1917 to 1965), money in the USSR, in fact, was government receipts that reflected the worker's contribution to the social economy.
The difference is that the state tightly controlled not only the money supply, but also its turnover. This was expressed, among other things, with "reinforced concrete" prices, which were stamped on almost any product. Another important point is the absence of foreign currency within the country. For foreign economic settlements, the Soviet economy did not use the same currency that was used in the country. Inside the USSR, the ruble acted for the population and enterprises; on the stock exchange and foreign markets, the USSR traded in foreign currency ruble. It was calculated in a special way with reference to the gold content in foreign currencies.
In very simple terms: to recalculate the salary of a Soviet person per dollar, in order to then recalculate it to the salary of a modern Russian - calculations with a very large number of assumptions.
Recalculation problem number two
Rather, it is not a problem, but a "feature" of the socio-economic structure of the two state systems. On the one hand, the majority of Soviet people earned really little. However, this was primarily due to the action of public consumption funds. This is an organization that alienates a significant part of his earnings from the worker to create public goods. These public goods were expressed in the USSR: free school, free kindergarten, free higher education, free medicine (the vast majority of operations), free housing, very small utility bills (it took about 1% of the salary), loans in the only bank in the country at 1-2%, static prices and some other less noticeable things.
In the bottom line, if salaries today have grown relative to the USSR, then the standard of living has fallen. And the only thing that has really increased is the property stratification of the population and the debt load of its bulk. Raise your hand, kids, who doesn't have a mortgage or a car loan yet.
In very simple terms: a significant part of his earnings was taken from a Soviet person in order to build an apartment for him and possibly develop production. A significant part of his earnings is taken from a modern person in order to fill the pockets of the owners of the enterprise and possibly develop production. But with the apartment and everything else, spin now as you like.
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And yet, how much will it be?
The Soviet Union lasted almost 74 years, if we take into account its history when it was one of the RSFSR. It is quite obvious that after the Civil War in 1923 the standard of living was not at all the same as during the industrialization years of the 1930s with 14-17% economic growth. And in the 1940s, the standard of living was not the same as in the "Brezhnev stagnation". Therefore, let's take the highest point of development shortly before the rapid decline - the early 1980s.
The average salary in the country was 185 rubles. The US dollar at that time was equal to 60 kopecks. If you convert to today's Russian rubles through the dollar, you get something about 20 thousand rubles. However, by themselves, these numbers do not say anything. The first is that consumer baskets are different in the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation, and the second is that the purchasing power of currencies has changed a lot over the past 35-40 years. Including the purchasing power of the US dollar. The latter collapsed by about 2.5 times, according to Boris Raizberg's book "Economy and Purchasing Power". So, recalculating the salary of a Soviet person to the salary of a modern Russian, you can plus or minus multiply the result by another 2-2.5, thus receiving 50 thousand rubles.
Much more accurate is the recalculation using consumer prices then and now. In the early 1980s, you could eat in an ordinary cafe for 1 ruble. Today the same lunch will cost about 300 rubles. If you recalculate the prices, it turns out that the average salary of a Soviet person was 55 thousand rubles.
If you want to know even more interesting things, then read about what was the official salary the leaders of the Soviet Union.
A source: https://novate.ru/blogs/051221/61477/
