Guy I worked with years ago came from the USSR. He would tell me, "In the Soviet Union, the government pretended to pay us, and we pretended to work."

One thing that wasn’t mentioned was the produce they grew on their garden plots. I can see why these were so important when groceries were such a big part of the budget.

I see now why workers would find it necessary to "carry" things (from the work place) to help support themselves.

Ok, this is very interesting...I thought back to 1975 when I was a single working mother of 2 little boys. I earned $1000/mo, and these were my monthly expenses: rent for a 2-bedrm house, nice yard, good neighborhood, $325; day care, $225; utilities including phone, $100 max; gas for my car (used & paid for), no more than $20; food plus household supplies was about $200. That left me with $130 a month for car insurance, our health insurance, and clothes, shoes and toys and stuff for the kids. So It's pretty comparable, but the glaring difference is that I had the ability to earn more. Indeed, I went to a career-training school and earned a certificate that allowed me become a licensed psychiatric nurse. After that I earned close to $3000/mo after taxes, and my expenses stayed the same.

I feel like the soviet currency was more like a government issue NFT.

You know I bought a new dinner table for the kitchen today. My apartment is old there's still some old furniture left here that was bought by my parents in USSR. So my old dinner table was from the 80ies. It was perfectly functional, just old and dirty and chipped all around. So I was walking a mall and saw this dinner table - a very similar design, similar materials, exactly the same size. And I bought it for around 2500 rubles. Well my salary is around 100k rubles after taxes. The table isn't a burden at all. In fact I believe it's astoundigly cheap. It's a piece of furniture that will last at least 10 years. And it costs like filling up a car (ok gas is cheap here, bad example) or like a ticket to the opera (damn, opera is also cheap here), or like buying food for one week. So now having watched this video of yours I went to investigate how much did my old soviet table cost in the 80ies when it was bought. I could not ofcourse find the exact price of that particular model but a dinner table in the 80ies was in the price range of 120 to 140 rubles. And that was one months wages or even more for a person with an engineering job like mine. Buying a dinner table in the 80ies was a todays equivalent of buying a fancy hunting shotgun or a cool gaming PC or a pretty nice bicycle. These price facts about USSR never ceased to amaze me. People had to save up to buy clothes or simple furniture. Today it's no big deal for me to replace house appliances. If a washing machine goes bust I can just order a new one and have it installed the next day and I won't feel any financial pressure even if I will be a little pissed. But in USSR you'd be hard pressed to replace even a pair of pants. But to add insult to injury money wasn't probably all the cost that you had to pay in the USSR. Today I order a washing machine and the only question I'm asked is when would it be convenient for me to take the delivery. In the USSR you first had to find the product you needed in store. That could have been as simple as just wasting a lot of time visiting stores. But oftentimes it meant greasing some palms, offering small bribes, calling in favors, using social connections. Money wasn't all there was to it.

I think a lot of people, especially those dealing with current events, really have come to realize everything in life has a cost. You house may be cheap, but what of heating? What of food? What of plates to put the food on? The clothing on your back that eventually wears out and needs repairs or replacements? It all adds up and especially in hard times, that does not come cheap.

In the USSR it's Peace, Land and Bread. In USA its Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

I recall hearing the saying that the most effective form of contraception was the salary of a junior engineer (120 rubles per month)

My mom paid around 30 rubles per month to my school in 1980s. School was free, yet breakfast, lunches and dinner were not, it was an "expanded day" boarding school, I did not live there all the time, but returned home each evening. Another 10 or 11 rubles went to my ticket - all kinds of public transport (busses, trolleybusses and trams) in my city, except trains.

she sounds exactly like my mum and the numbers resemble the reality of living in my hometown at the end of soviet unions miserable existence. This and the transition period in Poland were rough, especially with my parents divorced. My mum had been working extremely hard in multiple jobs, never complained. Even though I knew it’s not good. This has had an enormous impact on me growing up. It’s hard for people to wrap their heads around it but we had only one max two set of clothes, and typically no extra expenses. I didn’t have my own money. In fact it wasn’t until adulthood when I realized I was hungry. It was so regular for me to feel weak and fatigued at the later time at school; I hated when PE was scheduled for the morning because I would be spent for the rest of the day, especially if math was one of the last classes (I remember feeling quite wacky and like easily amused but impossible to focus). Anyway, despite having higher education, my mum had to travel to Germany to clean houses to earn barely enough money for me to go to University, despite it being free (thanks Germany, you’ve always been a life saver for me!!!

My parents were both (American)engineers and they went to the Soviet union in the 90s or 80s. They were at some kind of theater. You know the kind that has the like balcony level seats and then like the lower level seats and they were with a tour group. They were buying these bottles of champagne because they were like less than a dollar American just to shoot the corks up in the air because the people in the balcony were having a really fun time catching them. They did this with multiple multiple bottles and apparently they were quite drunk and quite rowdy. The next day, the tour guide explained that was pretty inappropriate, because each one of those bottles was something like an average person, weekly or monthly salary and they were just shooting them off for fun

For a modern comparison , cuban base salary is 2500 cuban pesos (20ish usd) , a pound of pork chops is 170 pesos, a pack of 12 sausages is 230 pesos, a pack of 30 eggs is 300 pesos. Average electrical bills is 400 pesos , average water bill is 75 pesos. No wonder people take stuff from their workplace to make it out

One thing to note is that academic workers in the US, other than tenured professors, do actually tend to earn close to minimum wage or otherwise working class salaries in real terms. It's part of the reason for the radicalization of academia and the highly-educated in recent years.

Another great video as usual. The things that stick out to me as wild is learning about all the stuff I thought would have been just provided in the USSR people had to pay for. I thought education, electricity, and especially medicine would have just been provided and your salary would have more or less just been your spending money but this video really did a great job showing how a citizen could get nickel and dimed back to nothing. Great job Comrade

Czechoslovak and Hungarian food products were the luxury commodities on the comercon black market

For a little more perspective, according to these numbers, you'd be looking at the cost of a pound of potatos to be $8-9 USD per pound (roughly). You get the same potato for $.50 per pound at Walmart. $1.25 for organic potatoes.

It seems unfair to compare things to the USA IMO, especially back in the day. If you compare it to Britain, in the 80s we all rented our TV's from Rumbelows and most people took their own sandwiches to work, eating in a cafe daily is pretty unthinkable in the UK for most working people, then and now.

When I went to the butcher in East Germany we skipped the Queue as the Family I was connected. Got a special underneath the counter 😊 Never have I been hated by eyes as that experience 😮 The people queuing where pissed

Hi Ushanka ! Many people from my country Cyprus studied in the USSR. In Leningrad, Lvov, Kharkov, Volgograd..etc doctors, civil engineers.

You may not compare the ussr then with usa now. You have to compare the ussr then with usa then.

My budget: House payment-$1210 Lights- $325 Food - $400 Beer- $400 Miscellaneous -$200 Income- not quite enough.

Excellent video. In the Socialist Republic of Romania it was the same with rent, which was cheap, although if you wanted to buy an apartment, the down payment and monthly payments weren't cheap at all. My parents had to gather money from some relatives in order to afford the down payment, and the monthly payment was about 1/4 of our monthly income. Appliances were also pretty expensive and they had to get them in monthly installments. That was in the mid 1980s, when stuff was sliding downhill fast due to some really bad decisions by the leaders of the country, even by communist standards. By the late 1980s people were getting paid, but it was pretty pointless since all food items with few exceptions were rationed. The rations were meager, for example bread was limited to half a loaf per day per family member. Other staples were not always available, so when someone heard that eggs, cheese, baloney, oil, sugar or meat was going to be supplied to a store, the queue was very long even before the supply truck arrived; sometimes it didn't or brought just a small amount, so people at the back of the queue wouldn't get anything. So there were money but you couldn't find stuff to buy with it. People had a lot of that leftover money by 1990 because they couldn't spend it. When price controls were removed in the early 1990s this led to hyperinflation. The government made things worse by running the printing press in order to keep zombie factories alive, instead of privatizing them quickly, like the Poles and Czechs did. We went from around 30 lei for the dollar (black market exchange, the real exchange rate) to over 30,000 to the dollar in about 7 years.

ok - in this age of inflation, a list of Eggs, butter, cheese, meat potato and apple (and a bit of bread) sounds unbelievably like what I will be doing from now on! No wonder if food was so expensive, Moloko was given to the hard , dangerous working man as a bonus!

You forgot the costs to study in Usa and the debts. How low is the minimum wage in Usa? What do you have if you are jobless?

When you said construction worker in Michigan, my eyes lit up. You were very informative and made me paranoid hahaha.

In Romania it went really sideways starting 85 or so, but the problem here was that you had money but all the stores where empty. I remember when they would have in stock Chinese flashlights and they will only sale one per person and two R20 batteries, but the flashlight took 3 :))) Another thing is they rationalized the bread, you could get only half of loaf per person and to add salt to the injury they only sold the bread after 24 hours from it being made in order to decrease consumption. Chocolate, chewing gum, pens, pencils, pencil sharpeners got solf once in a blue moon and you had to stand in line for hours.

I'm not sure but I remember reading that #SovietUnion spent something like 25% of GDP to military, that might be one reason to #Soviet poverty and the other explanation is that socialism/communism doesn't work.

In the Soviet Union you would get free education and healthcare and apartment, you had everything that you needed for normal life not to bad for a country that was devistated in worl war to, and the effects of cold war and western contryes.

I'm a 4th generation American (going by most recent immigrant that I know of). My family left Russia during the Inter-War Period and never looked back.

As a young Canadian adult this sounds roughly familiar to me, just replace food costs with housing costs and the rest of the breakdown ain't all that different besides a few quirks here and there. In America it might not be so bad as here yet but I think most of Westren Europe today is similar at least. The West is rich but it's only the old with all the riches while the opportunity to catch some for yourself has been degraded to shit.

@sergei there was an article in the daily mail newspaper about Aston Villa football club travelling to Kyiv in the 80s I think they played dynamo Kiev for the uefa cup. The players were describing how bad the facilities were it was hilarious how bad the hotel was.

The perfect system is actually a combination between the Soviet communism and American capitalism

After watching your videos it's just solidifying my opinion that both systems sucks badly in different ways

7% of income for housing??? Here (NYC) it is easily 33% with close to 50% not unheard of.

Yet housing in USSR was on shortage. There would be waiting queues to get offirdable housing and only very few got it. A lot of people lived in housing setups where family lives in single room sharing single kitchen with multiple other families. Not to mention a lot of people lived in villages working on communal farms without any opportunities to move up.

Another good video. Great explanation and completely new insight.

People in USSR were happy they didint need to blame them selfs from wrong moves in stockmarket.

Sergei, please stop putting that clip at the end of your videos. I know you are very proud of his kind words, but your fans have already heard it a dozen times and it's very long (for an outro). That being said, love your work. I've seen every one of your videos!

I still have a pack of the old cigarettes with the long paper filter you would pinch. And a match box from the early 1900s with the Tsar on it. Love these videos, keep up the great work!

Sounds like one of the major differences is that, with housing being provided by the state, housing was not operated on a for-profit basis, with the provider charging up to the maximum that the market will allow. Housing costs in the USA tend to be speculation-driven, whereas service costs (daycare for the kids, for example) are driven by how cheap the business can pay the daycare workers.

I was 6 yo at 1980 and dreamed about a Moon Rover toy on batteries - Lunahod. This Moon Rover had a price 36 rubles in local toys shop. My parents were soviet engineers, making 120 rubles per month each. And they could not afford buying a toy for almost 30% of a monthly salary.

Great information. Very interesting!

Regarding the year your parents purchased the refrigerator for 250 rubles, can you please ask your parents what year that was and also if they knew what the exchange rate for $USD/Ruble was at that time? I'm trying to get an idea of purchasing power parity

My both parents had PhDs and weren't getting paid in months. We lived in one room apartment and slept on couches

This was perceived as a problem in Czechoslovakia too, that University-level education was not rewarded with higher wages over, let's say, coal or uranium miners, who were basically privileged class. There are 2 buts though: University education was, and still is, free. You never needed to pay off student debts like in USA. Second thing, it can be argued, that miner or welder will die decades sooner than architect or doctor, and will be unable to work sooner as well. Meanwhile, a doctor may still work or teach when he's over 80, if he wants.

11:07 Nice picture. The food looks delicious. The funny thing is, I can just smell that vinyl table cloth from here! As far as I know, they always have that same typical smell that reminds you of old kitchens.

"Buying everything on payments" sounds like the average American that has 3+ credit cards.

No competition in the USSR, the State monopolize everything. There was no market.

There was more money in circulation than there were goods to purchase.

1:43 It is mind boggling to think that you would have to purchase a refrigerator on payments when both your father and mother were working full time.

Clothes and especially shoes were extremely expensive. A pair of Czechoslovak or Yugoslavian shoes could fetch several salaries. And even Soviet shoes were expensive costing anywhere 150Rubles and upwards

Also what is lost in this is freedom of choice. It’s not like you can shop around for houses, different brand goods, food or cars. You literally had no choices. You couldn’t spend more to get better products. Or spend less and get cheaper products.

My family also lived in CCCP but in Czechoslovakia and now we live in Slovakia so there was the life way better than in Ukraine or rural Russia as my wife confirmed from Zakarpatska oblast where her family lived. My grandma said that after ww2 life was hard but than in 60 or 70s everything improved they had car even though it was very expensive to get one but they worked hard and earned some extra money if possible and one huge difference plot of land that Thier house was built on was actually owned by them and so in Ukraine back than my wife's family built small house in village but land was owned by the government so it was only given to the owner of house to live on and after 1995 they had to buy it from government back and there was only few years to do that and that is still a problem currently that lot of poor ppl in villages live on the government owned lands, it would be interesting to see video about that

today average salary in brazil (around 400USD) is not enough to pay rent and eat. A decent house/apartment would cost around 200-300USD(whitout bills), impossible to live alone too. The question is, you can have private propertie and try your lucky, i guess it was not possible in ussr

The cost of having children in the Soviet Union should have been heavily subsidized. The cost is why there is a demographic collapse in Russia and other countries that were in the Soviet Union. Let’s say education costs ,lunches,and a yearly clothing allowance with a set home food allowance in money the demographic would be strong and bright. The sad thing is the cost to subsidize children would have cost very little and could be used to promote economic growth and development.

I appreciate your taking time to bring the Russian and American people closer together. I live in Michigan and i always wanted to know how my fellow human lives in the Soviet Union. Im thankful for having had found your channel. Its a eye opener to see the difference and the similarities of the two systems

When EVER someone uses the term “free” you clearly know that they are miss-informed!!!

Interesting. A few questions... 1 do they have to buy lunch at work or can they brown bag it? Obviously that's the best place to cut down on expenses for this family. Also, do they ever get raises? Do you get more money for more years of experience? Crazy how expensive food and public transportation was.

It seems like they made up for the really inexpensive housing by over charging on other stuff-especially the cafeteria.

It is strange how so many old people in eastern ex-Soviet countries view the Soviet times as the time of plenty. I did not know that people with decent jobs had so little money to spend on stuff. I thought just that luxury items like cars, foreign perfumes, jeans, stockings etc. were out of reach for average Soviets, but I did not expect that they had to regulate basic stuff like hobbies and other basic extra costs so much.

Why? You got a dacha and can steal from your job; you are rich then correct? 💭

A saying I heard growing up “In Soviet Union you have a lot of money but nothing to buy. In America you have a lot to buy but no money”

For comparison, our family of three spends around 400-500 Euros per month on food, we buy nuts, meat, salmon (this one only on discount), cheese (currently Camembert is my favourite), vegetables and mushrooms, pastries, sometimes chocolate and ice-cream, and I mean real European chocolate, not just a sugary bar or "stuff" that Americans or Brits would have. I earn around 1140 Euros per months, my wife earns around 950-1000 Euros, as we live in relatively poor (by EU standards) post-Soviet country.

I remember visiting a Russian friend who lived in a 2 room apartment with their mother in the 80's. Near empty stores and long lines for vodka. The Russian mob was moving in on everything. I knew a guy who was murdered in his parking lot when he refused their demands. His business was a popular night spot in Moscow called Trent-mos. Combining the city he was from, Trenton, NJ and Moscow.

Now tell us about poverty in cap countries: from US to Haiti.

Next time we gotta compare two blue collar workers life, one from US and other from USSR.

Eye opening costs, thanks for explaining

I think he didn't take inflation in america as a considerations

Interesting video. I think in Sweden it is in between the USSR and the US. You could make more money by studying and get a better job but it wouldn’t pay that much more and your taxes would be very high but schools and healthcare and such is practically free. The cost of childcare depends on your income but is heavily subsidised. We pay 10 times more for housing than childcare. Compared to in the 70s income inequality is still fairly low but the big difference is wealth inequality. Money made through capital is taxed less than work and this means some people get very rich. Since I was born in the 80s and especially in the last 20 years I’ve seen people becoming more and more rich driving expensive cars etc to a much higher extent. But for the lower class life has not improved nearly as much and the quality of healthcare and schooling etc seems to always get worse and worse. There is a constant lack of money for all kind of welfare that seems to just get worse over time. We are becoming more like the US for good and bad. Certainly some people are very happy about having Tesla cars while others struggle to afford the bus. There is no minimum wage but I make about 65% of the median salary. 60% is the line for relative poverty. About 13 bucks per hour minus 35% tax and then add 25% VAT on everything except food which has 12% VAT. Compared to the US after all taxes it might be less than minimum wage. And yet we still manage fairly well with a not too old car and a good house modern things such as iPhones and computers etc. barely any money for things such as restaurants and such though. Even more so after the inflation that is getting worse and worse and is at about 20% for food now. Keep in mind that in USD my salary was higher several years ago in 2015 one USD was worth 40% less than now so I actually made around 18 bucks per hour back then despite having a lower salary in SEK. In terms of purchase power I’ve lost so much over the last few years. I hope the currency will improve in value again soon.

As a vegetarian, I see where to save a ruble every day (and probably still get, or have, to eat meat in the cafeteria/childcare lunches). Anyway I guess vegetarianism wasn't a popular lifestyle choice in socialism. However, meat has historically always been a luxury item, and having major quantities of meat every day is a relatively new thing for the average population.

At the very end of the video you mentioned that every worker was paid in cash, no paychecks in the USSR. That begs the question, what kind of banking system was used in the Soviet Union? How different were Soviet banks from western banks? That would be an interesting video.

Low wages and high prices will keep everyone poor

Fascinating!

What was that old Soviet worker line????? "They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work".

Good day comrade, long time watcher here. I wanna say thank you for describing all the intricate details pertaining to Soviet life. Before finding your channel i had a much different idea of how society operated in the USSR. I was curious about something 🤔 What happened after a mother had a child? Did she have to stop work to raise the kid? Was there a form of Maternity leave?Were strictly stay at home mothers a thing? Were there daycares? If so, did you have to pay for them like kindergarten?

The moral of this story is that even in the soviet union nobody wants to babysit other people's kids. Although it may be worth twice my mortgage not have to deal with any kids for a few hours a day 😁

This is so cheap seems like perfect place to retire like I make 700$ a week in Toronto and am 29 , 1 cad is 55 rubbles so I take 1 million here turn into 25 mill rubbles and that last me my whole life plus a house here is 1 million dollars over there it's 5k like dam

Biography, especially autobiography is a very good way to learn history.

Awe, come on, translate the pamphlets and put them into context for us! I love the artwork -- very USSR Norman Rockwell -- but I'd love to know what they are advertising and a bit of context.

0:43 I know a _Cool Hand Luke_ reference when I hear it.

Thanks for the info..! I always assumed that in socialist countries, child care was free - or, at least, very affordable. I know a bit more about the former East Germany, and childcare / kindergarten certainly did not cost a lot there. Who would have imagined that in the great Soviet Union it was different?! Truly a shock..! 😮

'we had no cheques'. I feel like the USA is the only place in the world still using cheques

That was a real struggle for them, just trying to feed themselves day to day, let alone having to buy clothes for the children as they grow. I imagine children had to put up with a lot of hand-me-down clothes from older siblings. Probably the women got skillful at what we call "make-do and mend" - repairing tears in clothes so that they can still be worn instead of throwing them out, and letting down hems on skirts and trousers, so that they would still fit the children as they continued to grow. I do admire them for being so resourceful. Sergey has said how his own mother would bake pies to sell to workers for their lunches, to provide an income for the family when the company couldn't afford to pay its workers.

I will always respect a good Cool Hand Luke reference...

2:11 the Buran shuttle

Im a telecom engineer and im still poor

Tbh it's jot fair to describe white collar workers getting nearly the same payment as blue collar ones as "problem". In socialist society it's not a problem, it's a feature that hard, dirty jobs are rewarded as well as white collar intellectual ones. And we can see something similar in tge US when plumber or electrician working powerlines would be rewarded highly then some paperpusher with college or even university degree. Obviously, in the US a competent degree holder should get more then a janitor, but that's in part because graduate payed for the education. Took overpriced loan usually. But in USSR you had no option to commercially get a degree, you should've been selected, allegedly on merit, to be able to earn one. So the idea is that you're tallented, society pays for your education, so then by working for similar wage as a janitor -- you're paying society back. And you get to work in clean office environment, while janitors get do deal with some gross stuff. P.S. I'm not advocating for socialism here. It's arguably shitty system, but the idea is much more reasonable then it's implementations iRL. IMO, that cause of humans flaws, which capitalism exploits, but socialism turn blind eye to and acts as if those flaws do not exist.

10 rubles for the bus per month. Thats 200 bus rides. seems like a lot

Not much has changed. I earn 800 $ per month and spend 1,500. How? Do not ask! Or, better to say: Find a way, comrad, find a way.

Great were headed to that, but with expensive housing

Loved the pictures of Santa Claus, the mathematician with an abacus the lady cleaning the bomb and what I presume are vodka bottles on all the kitchen tables

You can't consume something that no one has produced.

Sergey, probably, your famely had income below average because my dad had salory about 300 rubles in Grozny and about 500 rubles in West Siberia then he was worker in oil industry around 70-th and 80-th.

Пусть всегда будет солнце 🌞

Sergei $1500/month to feed family in the U.S.? Whaaaaaat? Too much. I think I spent maybe $450 for seven of us.

I can not imagine Kindergarden was not free. I know it was for free in Romania and never heard it cost something (out of the parents pocket) in any communist country. Maybe she sent her kids to a a private Kindergarten. There were women who took care of children, semilegally.

$350/month for cigarettes? What kind of cigarettes are we talking here????

3:02 Blue collar workers tend to be trade school grads and no college. They do more labor-intensive work and work on an hourly basis. White collar usually refers to college grads who work in an office and obtain a salary. You said your dad was an engineer, that wouldn't be considered blue collar, but you said he was part of a union- that's blue collar.

Why did soviets not use checks? That seems dangerous for a business to have all that cash to hand out