Soviet Studies, 29(2), 214-237. The problem of Soviet slums has, of course, always been veiled in secrecy. Obtaining loans was extremely hard, and the State Bank did not offer them to individuals, so acquiring all of these elements would have been even harder than initially thought. There was an enormous amount of crime the 1920s including banditry and organized crime families (as in the US, probably worse). Not very surprisingly, the children of the most elite personnel of all, the members of the Politburo, and also their spouses have tended to find "jobs which place them in the upper ranks of the intelligentsia, but not necessarily over the elite threshold. Ozornoy (1992) mentions that indeed that happened until the 1950s, but since then, little convergence has happened. Poverty in the former Soviet Union was most prominent in the working population. Although reference is still not necessarily to elite personnel,it is illuminating that 62.9 percent of persons employed in "skilled mental work" or serving as "managerial personnel" in a Leningrad machinery factory in 1967 were children of specialists with higher education; 78.0 percent of the children of managerial personnel and 62.9 percent of the children of highly-skilled scientific technical personnel in Leningrad machinery enterprises in 1970 were either specialists or full-time students in advanced institutions; and 49.0 percent of "highly skilled personnel in . The percentages of literacy were 65.4 for males and 36.7 for females (above the age of seven years). Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the soaring poverty rates have steadily declined. Matthews, M. (1986). But the Soviet Union does have an official poverty line of 78 rubles a month. However, the Soviet government signed itself out of existence in 1991. Let's stop for a moment and define what extreme poverty actually means. Regional Studies, 25(5), 381-393. The short answer is that the Soviet Union was extremely good at eliminating extreme poverty. I. Shkaratan 1973, p. 297). This is dubius, given the … Advanced: Economic History of the USSR (Nove) for the historic details, Allen's book for a more quantitative view, Janos Kornai's The Socialist System for an in-depth overview of socialism abstracted from any particular country. Yesterday as I was going through the article one last time I remembered some paragraphs about privileges of the elites, but I couldn't find them because I was looking in Matthews' book. After a protracted period of preoccupation with merit under Stalin, measures to "rectify" the university social structure were initiated by his successors, but seemingly with only limited effect. I still remember buying some orange and grapefruit juice for a friend's birthday party the only time I ever shopped in a Beryozka (~1989). What occupations did they have? The sharp fall in the per capita provision of urban housing during the first Five Year Plans, for example, necessitated special provision for managers and outstanding workers. How many elites were there, going by this definition? IN the paper he cites two Gini coefficients, using different data, methods, and different years. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the soaring poverty rates have steadily declined. Millions of people fell below the poverty line overnight. He claims that deriving the actual figures from official data is close to impossible. But still, if one considers that such an amount supposes 10% of a wage, it is still extremely expensive. The Khrushchev leadership endeavoured to increase housing stocks, but it still had to urbanise rapidly in the interests of economic growth, and most housing privileges were retained. No one was allowed to have more than one house, except for dachas, but those were only legally usable in summer. The USSR remained a secular state from 1945 until its dissolution. Abortion and family planning in the Soviet Union: public policies and private behaviour. - 22 comments, over 1 year old. Some of its contents can be glanced from here. The USSR managed to reduce inequality and poverty with respect to pre-revolutionary times, and it did deliver in bringing a level of equality comparable to that of Nordic social democracies. Clothing was quite expensive in the Soviet Union, and a winter coat, which seems like a basic thing to have if you happen to live in Russia, was extremely expensive, and could consume a whole month worth of salary or more for an average worker (120-200 roubles). Income Distribution in the USSR in the 1980s. One of the most successful forms of social benefit reform was pairing conditional cash benefits with behaviors that encourage social mobility. Maybe if a rationing system ensuring 100% coverage were implemented, it would have severely affected the portion of production dedicated to individual choice. At least that's what I observed in the late 80s. Compare with column 7, based on a sample of what poor New York families had for diet. 97% of the surveyed considered clothes to be a problem or an acute problem. Find out how Russia ranks internationally on Economy > Poverty. He had never had grapefruit juice in his life. Home Russia & Former Soviet Union As official data warns of rising poverty levels, Russia’s Black Friday spending DOUBLES compared to 2019 28 Nov, 2020 12:57 References. 114ff; 0. But this, he warns, could potentially change with the decrease in growth that the USSR was experimenting at the time. ., 1989). Why not simply pay higher money incomes to the persons in question, and allow them to procure in the market the corresponding material benefits? For the masses of poor peasants and workers in smaller towns, this would have been even worse. This sounds as an unfair comparison: perhaps the poor in the USSR still enjoyed better conditions of living given that the State massively subsidised education, housing, healthcare, and pretty much everything else. […] The Soviet Union: Poverty and inequality […]. Mervyn Matthews, 52, teaches Soviet studies at the University of Surrey in What did this poverty amount to, in practical terms? Social services that the government provided tended to be poor in quality in order to meet a universal standard. Most of what is known about poverty in the Soviet Union is gathered into a single book, the clearly titled Poverty in the Soviet Union, by Mervyn Matthews (1986). The cost of the furniture was around 1000 roubles, and that of 'cultural goods' (TV, radio, television, refrigeration, bicycle, camera, watches, and sport items) was around 400 roubles (In 1979). Get the facts and compare to other countries! Poor people cannot usually buy living space in cooperative housing projects because, compared with the nominal rents in the state sector, such housing is extremely expensive. Like with food, the model budgets allocate a certain amount of money to a certain amount of clothing. While this persistence of status across time goes against the principles of socialism, its extent was lower than in the West, claims Bergson. Aspects of Poverty in the Soviet Union 14-19 MERVYN MATTHEWS, University of Surrey V. Housing Quality and Housing Classes in the Soviet Union 20- 24 HENRY W. MORTON, Queens College VI. The nations continue to move from a centrally controlled state economy to a privatized economy. This was barely enough to sustain two people under the rational budget. The collapse of the Soviet Union resulted in large declines in GDP per capita, of about 30 to 35% between 1990 and the through year of 1998 (when it was at its minimum). That budget required earnings of 2x133.2 roubles, and this figure matched the average gross wage by 1976. Buy the print book Check if you have access via personal or institutional login. Matthews wrote a whole book about the elites in the USSR, but I haven't been able to access it online. Detailed tabulated data for the 1980s can be found in Alexeev (1993), which I reproduce below: I forgot to add some key paragraphs from Bergson about some privileges that elites had. Additionally, crime, corruption and unemployment became increasingly prominent. Matthews, like the other authors, tries to put together his data from several sources, including not only scarce official reports, but also individual Soviet research papers, emigres surveys, and even _samizdat._Chapter 1 is dedicated to present the main sources, and explain what one can learn from them. The data he uses in his article comes from official Soviet sources, with a peculiar catch: the government itself doesn't publish the income distribution statistics directly, but they do publish several data items that can be used to put it together. Income inequality under Soviet socialism. A possible defence of the Soviet Union is to appeal to equality and basic needs. By the time I left the Soviet Union, people were actively avoiding Soviet cash in favor of foreign and durable goods (as payment for services). The situation was similar in secondary schools. 14 Views . In Moscow, couples were found to have a poverty rate of 12-15% (Sample size of 100-388 families in 1977 and 1979). (1991). Why despite of having the explicit goal of ending poverty and the State commanding the resources of the whole economy they didn't manage to end poverty. One is an estimate calculated from McCauley's data and the other from Ofer-Vinokur's papers that he references. Soviet Living Standards in Comparative Perspective 28-32 GERTRUDE E. … So far we have seen an overview of inequality in the aggregate of the USSR. Matthews also notes that the US poverty threshold, 32.8% of median income, a relative poverty measure, would put most of the Soviet population in the category of poor. The poor, for instance, have fewer chances of acquiring the better-quality accommodation erected by powerful organisations or enterprises, and are more likely to end up in meaner flats belonging to local Soviets. ° Rural poverty is greater than urban poverty. The escalation of national violence and the avalanche of national economic grievances, however, seems to have convinced Gorbachev that poor economic conditions could be underlying ethnic tensions. Bergson provides us with a table from Matthew's. Poverty headcount ratio at $5.50 a day is the percentage of the population living on less than $5.50 a day at 2011 international prices. To estimate, compare, distinguish, discuss, and trace to its principal sources everything. The nations continue to move from a centrally controlled state economy to a privatized economy. Basic: Red plenty mc-auley-alastair.-economic-welfare-in-the-soviet-union.-poverty-living-standards-and-inequality Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t7ds2705f Ocr ABBYY FineReader 11.0 (Extended OCR) Page_number_confidence 95.07 Ppi 600 Scanner Internet Archive HTML5 Uploader 1.6.4. plus-circle Add Review. Home Russia & Former Soviet Union Three decades after Soviet collapse, Russia tells UN it’s eliminated ‘extreme’ poverty, but millions still require govt help 27 Jun, 2020 16:33 Neither his opening speech nor the Resolution adopted by the 19th Party Conference in June 1988 stated a reduction of regional economic disparities as a desirable goal. Made me want to re-read Red Plenty. The USSR allowed inheritance, subject to some taxation, but that wasn't a main source of intergenerational inequality. . McAuley discusses the advantages and weaknesses of these datasets (Family budget surveys, income surveys, earnings censuses, and earnings surveys). Here I concern myself with Part I of the book, that focuses directly on what it means to be poor in the USSR. … In addition, scarcity of supply would have meant that not all of those items could have been purchased. As a result, the new governments introduced welfare-to-work programs to build self-sufficiency among the people. Their minimum budget pointed to a figure of 51.4 roubles per person for a family of two with two children. After the collapse of the Soviet Union cities and towns were in poverty. Economic growth has been most lucrative for helping people in the former Soviet Union escape poverty. It could be easily argued that the reason why these changes did not happen was the lack of political will. For example, a labor market reform that had a major impact was engaging the private sector in employment. McAuley does provide tables with his estimates, but what is of interest here for comparison purposes are summary statistics like the Gini index, and yours truly ~~is too lazy to manually calculate them ~~knows that those are available in later papers. With regard to reducing inter-republican economic disparities, Gorbachev initially suggested that budget allocations for social needs ought to be related to the efficiency of a region’s economy, i.e. The fact that the study of poverty wasn't an ongoing activity - as poverty officially, like unemployment, didn't exist- surely made it more difficult for the State to deliver on their promises of a guaranteed existence for everyone. Poverty in the Soviet Union: the life-styles of the underprivileged in recent years. The USSR formed in 1922 following the first successful communist revolution in world history. But the USSR is mostly Russia and Ukraine in terms of population. Thirdly, the allocation system has over time developed subtle informal mechanisms which work to the detriment of the less privileged citizens. This has not happened for several cogent reasons. I have been referring to the money incomes of elite personnel. One might wonder why this was the case. Both numbers are not that different, as you can see in the table below. Some findings of his were that inequality (Measured by the decile ratio) decreased by around 40% in the 1956-65 period, achieved by a faster increase of the earnings of the poor (144%) compared to those of the richer citizens (38%). From The New York Times By CELIA W. DUGGER Despite the common perception that the gulf between rich and poor has widened in the former Soviet Union, a World Bank study released yesterday found that poverty has fallen sharply across the region and that inequality has lessened since the financial crisis in Russia in 1998 and 1999. Officially, the poverty level in the Soviet Union for an urban family of four is about about 206 rubles a month, or $340. Poverty; Moscow; Soviet Union; Europe; Mikhail Gorbachev; A post-Soviet generation endures poverty, chaos, opportunity. And that amount is staggering: In the best estimate, including state farm workers, around 40% of the entire population in 1967 would be considered as poor by the Soviet standards of 1974. As a result of decentralized government services, the demographics of a specific state or region received better-suited services. This, together with the fact that inflation rates are low, allows McAuley to retroactively calculate poverty rates in 1967, for he has data for that year. Secondly, the provision of superior accommodation has long been used as a reward for service to the state, or as an incentive to work harder. Absolutely right. Bergson makes the observation that judging from the previously mentioned Ofer-Vinokur work, the number of elites would increase if instead of main job income one considers total income. The authors point out, though, that if looked from the point of view of how many more rubles they are making, the gains in absolute terms are equal for all groups. While in larger settlements in Russia (1975) 87.6% of housing had cold tap water, only 10.3% of smaller settlements enjoyed this. We commonly find situations in which groups at the bottom of the income scale in one land are rich beyond the wildest dreams of average, or well-to-do citizens in another. Post-Soviet Union countries also knows as post-Soviet states. Great set of posts Artir. By Western standards, he argued, 86 percent of the Soviet population is poor. Be the first one to write a review. Those elites are considered by Matthews (we'll get to his work later) as those who earn at least 400-500 rubles a month, 3.1-3.8 times average 1972 pay of all Soviet wage earners and salaried workers (WESW)* In the passing, he makes the interesting observation that 10% of WESW had earnings below the minimum wage of 60-70 rubles per month in the 1971-73 period. These newly independent states also improved through reform to social benefits. David, H. P. (1974). 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