It's good where we are not. This thesis is perfectly suited to comparisons of eras, countries and settlements. Especially when it comes to a place and time in which a person has never been. But it just so happened that now in modern Russia there is a generation born and raised in the USSR. Therefore, the debate about which country lived better does not subside.
In modern Russia, the majority of the population knows firsthand how life was in the USSR. It would seem that under such circumstances, there is nothing easier than comparing living conditions in the Russian Federation and the former Soviet Union. Interview people of the older generation, and the answer will be ready. However, experts consider this method to be extremely subjective.
Age factor
With age, a person, unfortunately, grows old. At the same time, not only his body changes, but also his psyche. Older people tend to have a conservative mindset. They also tend to idealize their past. After all, the most valuable thing in their life was associated with the USSR. Their childhood with a 10k popsicle. Their youth with their first innocent kiss and a sip of port for a ruble two. And their youth with the birth of their first child in anticipation of a free apartment and other socialist benefits.
There were, of course, big problems as well. Many Soviet children had almost no idea about chocolates, marmalade and marshmallows. And they did not even know about the existence of bananas and oranges. For years, boys and girls have been saving up money for imported jeans in order to buy them for big money from speculators. And the queue for the promised free housing sometimes lasted for decades. But now all this has remained far in the past and has given way to a completely different, sometimes frightening new.
Insidious statistics
To compare two times, you can also try to resort to the help of statistics. But even here there are a huge number of pitfalls. It is impossible, for example, to compare the level of wages in the USSR and the Russian Federation. In USD the salaries of Soviet citizens were not measured. And it is not possible to find any other equivalent either. The communists, who constantly prove the advantages of the socialist system, are very fond of using food as such, reminding everyone of how many centners of bread and tens of kilograms of sausage could be bought with a Soviet salary.
And in this they are right. Bread in the USSR was almost free and therefore many fed livestock with it. And meat products were so cheap that in most regions of the vast country they were not available for free sale. What can we say about the cheapness of black caviar and other delicacies that most Soviet people have never seen before.
At the same time, in order to buy, for example, the most inexpensive domestic car, an ordinary Soviet worker had to pay his salary for several years. Imported cars were not sold at all.
They will not say anything in terms of comparing the living standards of the two states and indicators of the gross domestic product. Supporters of the Soviet system will proudly say that the GDP in the Soviet Union was much higher. More steel and pig iron were smelted, and hundreds of new industrial enterprises were built every year. But for what and for whom they were built, for the Soviet people it was often a big mystery. For example, the Soviet footwear industry as early as 1978 came out on top in the world for the production of footwear in the country per capita. At the same time, the overwhelming majority of the urban population of the USSR wore imported shoes, because the mountains of Soviet shoes, boots and sandals were ugly, unfashionable and of poor quality. Such examples can be cited indefinitely.
But the indisputable advantage of life in the USSR, in the opinion of probably all of its former citizens without exception, is the peace of mind. Old people who are wise in life now say: “Yes, they lived poorly, poorly. We did not go abroad to rest. We stood in line for a deficit. They endured wretchedness and rudeness. But there was nothing to be ashamed of, because the whole country lived like that. But they were not afraid of unemployment, inflation, rising prices and crime. And they were very proud of their country."
Probably, in their own way, they are right. But now you don't have to choose which of the two countries to live in. One of them is forever in the past.
