Nostalgia for the Soviet Union is especially strong in modern Russia, as evidenced by numerous state and non-state polls. Even worse, in the last 10 years there has been an increase in interest in the Soviet past among young people aged 20-35. There is a real dividing line in society according to the points of view: "the USSR did not even have toilet paper" and "the USSR was the kingdom of universal justice." However, today we will not talk about the dispute between the right and the left, but about the most important thing - a product with absolute liquidity.
Money is a commodity with absolute liquidity - everyone needs it at all times. Since its nature, a person likes to compare "then" and "now", and therefore it is time to ask the question: where were the salaries higher? In fact, comparing salaries in the USSR and the Russian Federation is a thankless task. The reason for this is not only the change in the purchasing power of different currencies over the past 30-40 years. The real reason is that the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation are two fundamentally different socio-economic systems, with different attitudes towards issues of ownership of the means of production and issues distribution of benefits.
A person's work is paid for. However, part of a person's labor is alienated from him in favor of the owner of the enterprise. In the capitalist system, this alienated labor goes primarily to advertising budgets, financial speculation, the development of production, and into the pockets of private owners. In the socialist system, labor alienated from the worker goes primarily to the development of production and the replenishment of social consumption funds. It was these public consumption funds that provided in the USSR conditionally “free” and universally accessible medicine, education, low cost of utilities, support for trade unions, etc.
A simple example: in modern Russia, it can take up to 20% of the salary to pay for a “communal apartment”. In the Soviet Union, about 1% of the salary was spent on this. In other words, if a Soviet person somewhere did not receive "real money", he was returned in the form of numerous social benefits. Let the quality leave much to be desired, but such a system for a long time made it possible to avoid a radical split into rich and poor in society. The degradation of the CPSU after the 20th Congress and the transformation of the party elite into a new bourgeoisie is a separate issue.
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But enough Marxist propaganda! What's with the grandmothers?! You can very roughly recalculate Soviet salaries for modern ones, either in terms of the dollar, or in terms of goods. The average salary in 1980 in the USSR was 185 rubles. The official dollar exchange rate was 60 kopecks. The internal ruble of the USSR was not traded on external exchanges, a separate ruble currency was used for this, de facto the domestic ruble was not a participant in the global financial market, and therefore the rate for it was set the way it was needed country. So it turns out that, in terms of modern ones, a Soviet citizen received somewhere between 17-20 thousand rubles. True, if we take into account changes in the purchasing value of the dollar, then the Soviet RFP can already jump up to 40-50 thousand rubles in terms of modern ones.
Where better to conduct recalculations by goods. The cost of a loaf of white bread was 20 kopecks. For a salary of 185 rubles, 925 loaves were obtained. If you take the average price of modern white bread at 30 rubles, then you get something around 27,750 rubles. True, this method of calculation is not without drawbacks. So, if we recalculate the RFP in the USSR to the modern one at the cost of lunch in a canteen for 1 Soviet ruble and compare it with a similar modern lunch, then the RFP in recalculation will give the order of figures of 50-60 thousand rubles.
If you want to know even more interesting things, then you should read about why in the Soviet Union did strange triangular glass bottles.
Source: https://novate.ru/blogs/220422/62786/