Debunk the idea that "living standards in the USSR were bad"
Debunk the idea that "living standards in the USSR were bad"
I'm not talking like during WW2 or prior. I am talking about during the Cold War, pre-Gorbachev.
9 comments
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https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1646771/pdf/amjph00269-0055.pdf
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1646824/pdf/amjph00253-0110b.pdf
ETA: In research published after the twentieth century, Elizabeth Brainerd used archival and anthropometric data to provide a detailed analysis of living standards in the U.S.S.R., admitting that for all their faults, the Soviets still achieved
Remarkably large and rapid improvements in child height, adult stature and infant mortality [and] significant improvements likely occurred in the nutrition, sanitary practices, and public health infrastructure.
She also states that
the physical growth record of the Soviet population compares favorably with that of other European countries at a similar level of development in this period.
And finally,
The conventional measures of GNP growth and household consumption indicate a long, uninterrupted upward climb in the Soviet standard of living from 1928 to 1985; even Western estimates of these measures support this view, albeit at a slower rate of growth than the Soviet measures.
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To add to what others have already said:
There's that declassified CIA report which says Soviet citizens ate or at least had access to more calories than their US counterparts by the 1980s.
Then there's the fact that housing was effectively free.
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This documentary might help paint a picture even if it's not your main source of statistics and such: The Human Face of Russia (1984) - society and everyday life in the 1980s USSR
The filmmakers are from Australia and they go to various places in the Soviet Union asking people about typical quality of life questions like price of rent, bus fare, work, having a look at farms, etc.
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I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
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Universal Healthcare, something no American has ever known.
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I really don't get my buddy who said he'd like to move to the US. Although after a short discussion he admitted it'd be a horrible place to live long-term. I think that propaganda in media a lot of us consumed since childhood romanticized this horrible country. It took me like two, three years to unlearn this bs and good associations to see the US for what it is lol...
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They weren't, but it's still a pretty big contrast between the 60s (which started of course in 1953) and even the mid-late 70s. The problems didn't start with Gorbachev
9 comments