(continued from part 3)
Life in the USSR: Stalin and beyond
As to rural areas, I can offer some personal experience in addition to the government statistics.
In the summers of 1951, 1956, and 1962, I vacationed on the beaches of the Black Sea (Northern Caucasus). My parents took me there in 1951, and I went on my own the other two times. Our trains stopped for a long time at multiple railway stations along the way. In the 1950s many locals brought food to sell to the passengers. There were boiled, fried, and smoked chickens; boiled eggs, home-made sausages, hot pastries with a multitude of fillings like fish, meat, liver, and mushrooms, and so forth. In 1962 their only offers were hot potatoes and pickles.
In the summer of 1957, I participated in a student concert brigade, organized by the Leningrad area Komsomol Committee. 1)Komsomol is a political organization for youth, Union of Communist Youth, comprised of young people 14 – 28 years old; in 1977 it had over 36 million members. RV
We floated down the Volga River on a wooden barge and gave performances in the near villages. There was not much entertainment in rural life back then, so virtually everyone who lived there came to the local club building for our concerts. The faces and clothes of the people we saw were no different than those of city folk. The dinners we were treated to after shows implied that there was no shortage of good food in villages.
In the beginning of the 80s, I went to a health spa treatment center in Pskov region. One day I walked to a nearby village to get some fresh milk. On the way there I met a talkative old lady who quickly disillusioned me. She told me how poor the village life came to be after Khrushchev’s prohibition of personal husbandry and cuts of personal gardens, and how people referred to their past as precious years. That was the time when meat disappeared from the tables of people in villages, and once in a while they could get milk from their collective-farm for young children.
Before, there was enough meat not only for villagers’ own table, but also to sell at farmers’ markets. Those sales were families’ main income, not the paychecks they received for their jobs in the collective-farm. It is worth noting that, according to the Central Statistics Administration, in 1956 every person living in rural area of Russian Federation consumed over 300 liters of milk a year; 80-90 liters in cities. The Central Statistics Administration of USSR terminated its classified budget study in 1959.
Various manufactured goods were in great supply in 1950s. As an example, average blue-collar families purchased three pairs of shoes per person a year. All of these products were manufactured domestically (shoes, clothes, dishes, toys, furniture, and so forth) in range and quality far superior that of the following years. A vast majority of merchandise was produced by a non-government sector of cooperatives called the artels. 2)Artel is an old Russian word for cooperative enterprises, Russ. Арте́ль. RV
Interestingly, artel products were distributed through the wide net of government-run stores. As soon as new fashions emerged, they were immediately tracked down and in a matter of a few short months were offered for sale in sufficient quantities. “The Elvis Presley shoes” are a great example. In the middle of the 50s, shoes with thick white rubber bottoms were the rage; after the extremely popular rock-and-roll singer. I bought them myself without any trouble in the fall of 1955 by simply going to the regular department store and picking out a pair, along with another popular item – a tie with a bright design on it.
The only thing not always available was popular records. Nevertheless, I pride myself on owning most of the popular American jazz singers and musicians: Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, and Glenn Miller. Elvis Presley was the only one I remember having to look for because his records were in short supply at the stores; I ended up buying the tapes at the market. They were made on a used x-ray film (we called it “on bones”).
I cannot think of anything that was imported at the time. Clothes and shoes were manufactured in small numbers in a great variety of styles. Besides, tailored clothing and shoes were very popular, which supported constant appearance of new tailor shops, sewing businesses, and shoe-making enterprises. There were also many individual tailors and shoemakers conducting business as sole proprietors.
Fabrics were by far the most popular merchandise. To this day I remember the names of varieties that were in high demand: drap [thick woolen cloth. RV], cheviot [soft thin wool fabric. RV], boston [high quality pure wool fabric, usually dark colored. RV], krepdeshin [100% silk fabric of a very special quality. RV].
1956 – 1960 was the time when private cooperatives had been destroyed. Most of the artels became government-controlled entities; some were terminated, while others operated illegally. Patented personal proprietary business activities were prohibited. The volume and assortment of merchandise production reduced drastically right away. That was the time when the first imports of commodities began. Imported goods were overpriced, of poor variety, but in high demand nevertheless.
I would like to further illustrate the life in the USSR in 1950 and tell a little more about my own family. There were four of us. Father: 50 years old, Department Head in a large Architectural Design and Construction Planning Company. Mother: 45 years old, geological engineer at the Leningrad Metro Construction Company. Son: 18 years old, high school graduate. Son: 10 years old. Our family income had three sources: salary (father’s 2,200 rubles and mother’s 1,400 rubles), quarterly bonus for meeting the deadlines (usually 60% of the size of salary), and a separate bonus for overtime. I am not sure if my mother received an overtime bonus, but I do know that my father’s overtime payment was routinely issued once a year. In 1955 it was 6,000 rubles and remained about the same in other years.
I vividly remember the evenings my dad brought his yearly bonus home. He would spread out the 100 ruble bills on our dinner table much like the cards in a game of solitaire, and then we would celebrate the occasion with a special grand dinner. Our average monthly income was 4,800 rubles; 1,200 per person a month.
By Prof. Valeriy Antonovich Torgashev
as published on nstarikov.ru
Russian source:
https://nstarikov.ru/vspominaya-sssr-23233
Link active as of November 27, 2022. [RV]