Real USSR » average salary

Work and Travel

eugenia — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 21:50:46 +0000

Hard work and no play

A good-sized Soviet factory usually consisted of up to a hundred industrial divisions, with 200–800 workers in each. They had to be accommodated, fed, and often educated, and typically to the Soviet way of doing things, that often wasn’t handled very well. So if you ever wondered what it would be like to be a young engineer at a large factory in the Soviet Russia — please read on.

Eat

The team leaders, heads of departments and the executives of any factory would dine separately and their cafeteria would differ significantly from the one for the regular staff. An executive canteen would have nice tablecloths, waitresses, paper napkins, flowers and subdued music. The menu would be extensive and could include trout, lamb and pork cutlets, plenty of meat in borsht and fresh croutons for the soups. Well, the working class canteen would be exactly the opposite.

Lining up to up

The idea of conveyer type service was borrowed from the US as it allowed letting many staff through in a timely manner. Well, that wasn’t the case in a typical Soviet canteen. There would often be queues, lack of clean trays, shortage of tables and rude staff – oh, those workers of Soviet canteens! Usually a middle-aged lady with bad temper and poor manners; they were said to be taking the nice cuts of meat and poultry home. One day there could be a book written on the tricks of the Soviet canteen workers – what they did to balance out the shortages! For instance, if you want to keep half a kilo of sour cream to yourself, you cannot simply dilute the rest with water – that could show up if the inspection came to check. No, they would use a cheaper yoghurt (kefir) or rancid milk – and often the sour cream served in those canteens was as liquid as milk. The menu was also unimaginative, with very little meat in soups or stews, but with plenty of over-cooked pasta and over boiled potatoes.

Drink

A regular Soviet factory worker would receive 1 rouble from his wife for the daily spends. Why the wife and why so little? The problem of alcoholism was an acute one. Since the jobs were very demanding physically and drinking was often the only known way of relaxation (not to mention the peer pressure!), it was impossible for the workers not to drink. Of course, bringing alcohol to work was not allowed, but there were ways around it. Like, pay a goods driver to bring you a bottle with a delivery. Or, even better, ethanol – used widely as a solvent, or a as cleanser for machine parts, it was a very popular drink.

Beer queue, circa 1987

As everyone was paid monthly, pay day drinking was part of industrial culture – the joke went that it was drinking “for the reason”, unlike any other day.

Alcohol and alcoholism were certainly berated; and the punishment was two-fold: moral and material. The drinkers were openly reprimanded at staff meetings; satiric caricatures were drawn and displayed, but if nothing helped, the punishment became more tangible: no bonuses, time off in winter (there was even a joke: You’ve got to hate warm beer and sweaty women, take some time off in Feb!) and potentially even medical rehabilitation. However, it was very rare for a drunkard to be fired: the country needed all labour force it could have.

Stay

The accommodation for factory workers was provided and almost free; the only thing was that it was of a peculiar character. The accommodating houses of communal living were of three types: male, female and family-oriented. The last type was probably the most decent of all, as a family would usually get a room of their own. The singles had to share: usually not the most capacious room would have to fit between two to three single beds. Nothing was private: if we said that the space allocation was about 5sq m, this would not mean per person – that would mean per room, and one was lucky to be able to share with friends! There would be a couple of showers for the floor, and maybe a couple of toilets. Typically guys would not be allowed even to stay overnight – event to visit the gals was forbidden! The kitchen was communal with a few cooking stoves/ovens – borsht or meatballs often went missing if left unattended!

The law and order would be guarded by a Commandant — and this is not a figure of speech, this was actually an official title! A woman in her late 50s, usually with a mean character and a lot of unresolved issues, this lady would be very susceptible to bribes and all sorts of favour – for allowing a visitor, for coming in after the doors were locked (and they were usually locked by 10pm, with no access granted. The latecomers might as well had sleep on the street, for what a Commandant would care!).

This is what is could look like, brand new.

Work

So how come that the Soviet manufacturing went belly up? The prime reason for it was the inability to sustain any competition. The items for everyday use (TV sets, washing machines, even cars or irons) were not user-friendly and just outright ugly. The situation was even more complex with heavier manufacturing. Anybody who had visited a factory which built planes in late 1970s or early 1980s would recall what a gloomy look it had. The technological rules were broken as much and as often as it could only be: the only help was an extremely high number of manual controllers.

The waste rates were as high as 80% of the total items produced. Hardly any metal was cast: the majority was about the metal cutting, which was ineffective and costly. The technologies which were getting a wider use in the West (lasers, blast moulding, precise cast) were still unheard of. Robots were still exotic as; nothing was automated. All the machinery was Soviet-made, often dated back to 1930s and 1940s. All graphics and design was done manually, with pencils, erasers and slide rulers. Even the finishing touches for plane parts were often done manually, with a metal file, sand paper and some polish paste.

Production line

The story goes that there was even a joke: American R&D scientists were scheming against the Soviet manufacturing, until the CIA cracked a spy. The spy said:

— Do you know what you need to do to kill the Soviet manufacturing?

— What?

— Nothing!

And indeed, those factories were only good for their times of Cold Wars, when the resources were unlimited but nobody would demand a cost-benefit analysis or even a ROI report. Not anymore, so rest in peace, “Made in the USSR”.

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Myth Busting: Free Medicine, You Say?

eugenia — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 01:56:30 +0000

Mid 1980s. Image courtesy of Life magazine.

Whenever there is a heated argument whether things were better during the USSR times, this statement invariably pops up as a mighty ace: At least they had free medical care in the Soviet Union! This is supposed to bring the opponent to the knees and make them beg mercy and forgiveness for betraying the Great October achievements.

Well well well. Let’s have a close look at what really was free then.

After the events of October 1917, the Bolsheviks chose to nationalise all hospitals and medical practices previously founded by various state and charitable organisations. This would have been a feasible plan, had they not chosen to class all doctors as “rotten bourgeois” which meant that they had to emigrate from the “Red Terror” or face death.

Even Vladimir Lenin in a letter dated of Nov 1918 wrote to an acquaintance: Please go abroad to see a doctor – they have wonderful specialists in Switzerland and Vienna… Our so-called doctors are fools.

In early 1920s various medical experiments became popular and acquired great support of the state: without much of a theoretical base or substantial research, a lot of time and money was poured into genetical experiments to breed a new type of person – of a Socialist kind.

Al in all, the years in which the Bolsheviks were starting off were very tough: the country was in a run-down state after the WWI; there was a severe famine; pandemics of cholera, typhoid, malaria; as well rising numbers of people dying of various infections and malnutrition. From a health perspective, the state of many medical practices and hospitals was borderline catastrophic. The buildings were getting old without any hopes for repair; central heating often failed; medical supplies were insufficient and irregular. The food supplies were often short, and the burial of the dead was an issue as well.

The state spending on medicine was low to start with, and it was gradually declining: it was 3.9% of the total budget in 1927; 3.6% in 1928; 3.5% in 1929 and 3% only in 1930. The severe skill shortages in the health industry were imminent, and there was a strong urban focus in health providers’ locations – given that the supply was already short, the villages were even worse off.

In the late 1920s industrialisation, as per Stalin’s orders, aimed at developing the heavier industrial machinery production – so the times which what was already bad was turning even more foul. Bureaucracy was starting to settle in, while the budget cuts continued (2.5% of the total budget in 1932, 2.7% in 1933). On paper, as often in the USSR, things looked if not rosy but at least decent: the attention was drawn to preventative measures and the importance of the population’s health; whereas in reality it was very ugly.In our old post about the life in the 1920s, the images of those time were indeed scary, if you remember.

During the Second World War, the main beneficiary of medical help was, understandably, the army – the rest of the population, fair to say, was abandoned. Various types of typhoid, TB, dysentery, malaria, cholera and even plague were not uncommon– the diseases were spreading very rapidly due to the poor supply of drugs and increasing numbers of migrants.

When the war was over, the main efforts (as well as financial means) were generated towards rebuilding the towns and getting the economy back up – and as always, there was no room for medicine research and development. The health industry salary bands were among the lowest in the country. In 1940 the doctors were earning 255 roubles per month, as compared with 399 roubles average. In 1955 it was 521 roubles against 711 average. In August 1945 a group of doctors sent an open letter to Stalin describing the abhorrent situation in the health industry. It mentioned the factory workers with high-school qualifications were earning 1300–1400 roubles per month, whereas the hospital manager, a doctor with 8 years of education and years of experience would be fortunate enough to earn 800 roubles.

A paramedic on call.

The change was brought upon by Nikita Khrushchev, who was slowly setting new goals and getting his government to redevelop many facets of Soviet life. But the late fifties were also the times when the famous free Soviet medical care system stopped being free. The doctors became less covert in taking cash from patients in exchange for medical services, for medical supplies, for drugs. The less-qualified medical staff (nurses and caregivers) were making some extra cash by providing extra-nice services to patients – for 10 roubles per night you could have a nurse by your bed taking care of you – obviously, all other patients would have been neglected. Midwives in birthcare institutions were bribing the fathers – one would pay a one off 25 roubles for the girl and twice as much for the boy as to “take them home”.

Among the key problems were:

Alcoholism and drug use – extremely widespread.
Bad ecology – due to heavily exploited plants and factories, many towns were below par – the Southern republics, Moldavia, some parts of Ukraine, industrial central Russia and Siberia.
Food shortages – especially in the rural areas and small towns with the population of less than 100,000 people; as well as the appalling quality of food.
Extremely high rates of abortions (100 for every 1000 women in the age of 15–49; or 200 abortions for every 100 of births). Also, the actual procedure was a very primitive one which lead to the death of a woman in almost 25–30% of cases.
Health and Safety in employment – extremely high industrial accident rates
Road death tolls

Also, in early 1980s the widespread of sexually transmitted diseases started to take its toll. In 1970 more than 12% of women of reproductive age were diagnosed and treated from STD, many of whom suffered from syphilis. In 1987 the first case of HIV was registered, after which the disease had escalated to the point of people panicking.

The Soviet doctors had all the pressure to catch up with their Western counterparts, and they did their best, given the circumstances. The first successful heart transplant attempt did not happen until March 1987, which was almost 20 years after the American debut. Such a significant delay was not just due to the budget cuts and low financing – the appropriate legislative framework was missing, and so was the concept of organ donors.

This is how the free Soviet medicine had met the death of the Soviet state. It almost seems like the 70 years of the 20^th century did not provide any move forward – despite the antibiotics, vaccination and hundreds of thousands of graduate doctors, the overall state of the health industry was just ever so slightly better than at the end of the Tsar times. And then, of course, the typically Soviet traits of doing things: bureaucracy, corruption, the notoriously abhorrent levels of customer service and the low priority that the state would give the health industry.

This does not deny the Soviet doctors their achievements – over the course of 70 years, there would have been plenty – but nothing was easy and nothing was certainly free.

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Check? Mate! A Chess Computer

eugenia — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 12:43:16 +0000

The console

A reader of our blog has sent us some photos of the chess computer he dug out at his home: made in late 1980s, this was the game to play.

The game had no chess figurines included

The game, named Intellect 02, was one of the many made in the USSR for sole chess games. The simple software worked by enumerating the possible moves and the wait time for the computer to respond was up to 30 seconds. In late 198o it cost about 160 rubles, which was half an average monthly salary. After six months of active use, it was reported to have software problems. However, those who had them remember it with great fondness.

This is the real computer. It has a 16-bit based CPU, memory, and it supports input-output devices.

Made in 1991

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Soviet Automobile Industry — Part 1 of 2

Dmitry Yakimenko — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 09:01:40 +0000

Let us start with some sad news. Objectively, the automobile industry in modern Russia is way behind the rest of the world, with a 10 to 15 year progress gap. Lagging behind in technology, low and inconsistent quality of parts and assembling are the actual problems of all car plants in Russia. But was it all the same back in the Soviet times? Today we are going to try and answer this question.

Lada 1300/1.2 or VAZ 2101

Back in remote 1945, the year of the Victory in Second World War, just one day before the Triumph Parade in Moscow the team of Soviet engineers introduced new model M-20 “Pobeda” (eng.: Victory) to Stalin. Stalin was dissatisfied. “That is definitely not our best victory”, — he said with a frown. Nevertheless in the fall of 1945 the car mass production commenced.

Soon, in 1947, “Pobeda” was awarded the medal of the World Car Exhibition in Brussels and shortly afterwards these cars were exported to Western Europe. “This car is a real Russian tank. It does not care about bad roads, … its cabin is warm and convenient…” – was written in one Belgian car review article.

Pobeda cabriolet

“Pobeda”, designed during the Second World War, became the world trend setter. Its most distinguishing feature was the absence of the wheel arch skirts. Later this innovation was widely used in the design of many cars made in the USA and Europe. This can be easily proved by comparing “Pobeda” to 50-s Volvo: the fronts look very similar.

Volvo replica of Soviet Pobeda

“Pobeda” was produced in the USSR from 1946 till 1958 in two modifications of the cabin – sedan and cabriolet; a 4WD option was available. Even after the phase-out, the manufacturing rights were purchased by a Polish manufacturer “Warsaw”, which carried it on till 1974 (sic!).

Willis

Soviet off-road vehicles of that time were introduced by the model GAZ-67. The brisk military jeep looked quite similar to American “Willis” but from the technical point of view, it was an analogue of GAZ-61 designed in 1941, and thus, was an exclusive Soviet development. This car was in the military inventory of the USSR and friendly nations of Eastern Europe. In the winter of 1967 under –50 degrees Celsius two-car race of GAZ-61 started from Russian Yakutsk through to themost Northern point of the USSR Cape Dezhnev. This result was repeated only in 1998 when later models were specially developed and equipped.

GAZ 61–417

In 1956 the new Soviet car “Volga” GAZ-21, also awarded by the Brussels Exhibition, was introduced. The first modification of “Volga” GAZ-21G had an engine from “Pobeda” and a three-speed gear box. In 1957, this car was modified — now to an automatic transmission (sic!). It was a great success for the USSR automobile industry at the time. It was a fine car with a figurine of a deer on the bonnet and five-pointed star on the radiator, with a roomy comfortable cabin, powerful engine and automatic transmission (never introduced in USSR before). Unfortunately, the level of car maintenance of that time was not high enough to service and repair automatic transmissions, and as a result, the production was cut down after only 300 cars were produced.

Volga GAZ-21

To replace GAZ-21, the Soviet engineers introduced GAZ-21P where the only difference was the absence of automatic transmission. By 1959 the five-pointed star on the radiator was replaced by vertical slots in the grid. Three years later the figurine of a deer also vanished distressing the potential buyers. Instead the car was modified with a new engine with 75 horse powers (an even more on export modifications).

Volga GAZ 21

The actual price of this masterpiece of the Soviet automobile industry was about 10,000 rubles. Interesting to mention, an average salary of a Russian worker was 120 rubles per month. According to the statistical data of 1970 only 2 households out of 100 owned a automobile. Dig it.

Source: www.contr-tv.ru

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