I receive about a hundred letters every day. Among the reviews, criticism, words of gratitude and information, you, dear readers, send me your articles. Some of them deserve immediate publication, others a careful study.
Today I offer you one of these materials. The topic covered in it is very important. Professor Valery Antonovich Torgashev decided to remember what the USSR was like in his childhood.
Post-war Stalinist Soviet Union. I assure you, if you did not live in that era, you will read a lot of new information. Prices, salaries of that time, incentive systems. Stalin's price cuts, the size of the scholarship of the time, and much more.
And if you lived then - remember the time when your childhood was happy …
First, I will cite the letter that the author attached to his material.
“Dear Nikolai Viktorovich! I follow your speeches with interest, because in many respects our positions, both in history and in modern times, coincide.
In one of your speeches, you rightly noted that the post-war period of our history is practically not reflected in historical research. And this period was completely unique in the history of the USSR. Without exception, all negative features of the socialist system and the USSR, in particular, appeared only after 1956, and the USSR after 1960 was absolutely different from the country that was before. However, the pre-war USSR also differed significantly from the post-war one. In the USSR, which I remember well, the planned economy was effectively combined with the market economy, and there were more private bakeries than state bakeries. The shops had an abundance of a variety of industrial and food products, most of which were produced by the private sector, and there was no concept of scarcity. Every year from 1946 to 1953. the life of the population improved markedly. The average Soviet family in 1955 fared better than the average American family in the same year and better than the modern American family of 4 with an annual income of $ 94,000. There is no need to talk about modern Russia. I am sending you material based on my personal memories, on the stories of my acquaintances who were older than me at that time, as well as on secret studies of family budgets that the Central Statistical Administration of the USSR conducted until 1959. I would be very grateful to you if you could convey this material to your wide audience, if you find it interesting. I got the impression that no one else remembers this time except me."
Respectfully yours, Valery Antonovich Torgashev, Doctor of Technical Sciences, Professor.
Remembering the USSR
It is believed that 3 revolutions took place in Russia in the twentieth century: in February and October 1917 and in 1991. Sometimes 1993 is also called. As a result of the February revolution, the political system changed within a few days. As a result of the October Revolution, both the political and economic system of the country changed, but the process of these changes lasted for several months. In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed, but no changes in the political or economic system took place this year. The political system changed in 1989, when the CPSU lost power both in fact and formally due to the abolition of the corresponding article of the Constitution. The economic system of the USSR changed back in 1987, when a non-state sector of the economy appeared in the form of cooperatives. Thus, the revolution did not take place in 1991, in 1987 and, unlike the revolutions of 1917, the people who were in power at that time carried it out.
In addition to the above revolutions, there was one more, about which not a single line has been written so far. In the course of this revolution, fundamental changes took place in both the political and economic systems of the country. These changes led to a significant deterioration in the material situation of almost all segments of the population, a decrease in the production of agricultural and industrial goods, a reduction in the range of these goods and a decrease in their quality, and an increase in prices. We are talking about the revolution of 1956-1960, carried out by N. S. Khrushchev. The political component of this revolution was that after a fifteen-year hiatus, power was returned to the party apparatus at all levels, from the party committees of enterprises to the Central Committee of the CPSU. In 1959-1960, the non-state sector of the economy was liquidated (industrial cooperatives and farmers' household plots), which ensured the production of a significant part of industrial goods (clothes, shoes, furniture, dishes, toys, etc.), food (vegetables, livestock and poultry products)., fish products), as well as consumer services. In 1957, the State Planning Committee and the line ministries (except for the defense ministries) were liquidated. Thus, instead of an effective combination of planned and market economies, neither one nor the other has become. In 1965, after Khrushchev was removed from power, the State Planning Commission and the ministries were restored, but with significantly curtailed rights.
In 1956, the system of material and moral incentives for increasing production efficiency was completely eliminated, introduced back in 1939 in all sectors of the national economy and ensuring in the post-war period the growth of labor productivity and national income is significantly higher than in other countries, including the United States, solely due to own financial and material resources. As a result of the elimination of this system, equalization in wages appeared, and interest in the end result of labor and the quality of products disappeared. The uniqueness of the Khrushchev revolution was that the changes lasted for several years and passed completely unnoticed by the population.
The standard of living of the population of the USSR in the post-war period increased annually and reached its maximum in the year of Stalin's death in 1953. In 1956, the incomes of people employed in production and science declined as a result of the elimination of payments that stimulate labor efficiency. In 1959, the income of collective farmers was sharply reduced due to the cutting of personal plots and restrictions on the keeping of livestock in private property. Prices for products sold in the markets are going up 2-3 times. Since 1960, the era of a total shortage of industrial and food products began. It was in this year that the Berezka foreign exchange shops and special distributors for the nomenclature, which were not previously necessary, were opened. In 1962, state prices for basic foodstuffs increased by about 1.5 times. In general, the life of the population dropped to the level of the late forties.
Until 1960, the USSR held a leading position in the world in such areas as health care, education, science and innovative industries (nuclear industry, rocketry, electronics, computers, automated production). If we take the economy as a whole, then the USSR was second only to the United States, but significantly ahead of any other countries. At the same time, the USSR until 1960 was actively catching up with the United States and just as actively moving ahead of other countries. After 1960, economic growth rates have been steadily declining, leading positions in the world are being lost.
In the materials offered below, I will try to describe in detail how ordinary people lived in the USSR in the 50s of the last century. Based on my own recollections, stories of people with whom life has confronted me, as well as on some documents of that time that are available on the Internet, I will try to show how far from reality modern ideas about the very recent past of a great country.
Oh, it's good to live in a Soviet country
Immediately after the end of the war, the life of the population of the USSR began to improve dramatically. In 1946, the wages of workers and engineering and technical workers (ITR) working at enterprises and construction sites in the Urals, Siberia and the Far East were raised by 20%. In the same year, the official salaries of people with higher and secondary specialized education (engineers and technicians, workers in science, education and medicine) increased by 20%. The importance of academic degrees and titles is rising. The salary of a professor, doctor of sciences is increased from 1600 to 5000 rubles, an associate professor, a candidate of sciences - from 1200 to 3200 rubles, a rector of a university from 2500 to 8000 rubles. In research institutes, the academic degree of a candidate of sciences began to add 1,000 rubles to the official salary, and a doctor of sciences - 2,500 rubles. At the same time, the salary of the union minister was 5,000 rubles, and the secretary of the district party committee was 1,500 rubles. Stalin, as Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, had a salary of 10 thousand rubles. Scientists in the USSR at that time also had additional incomes, sometimes several times higher than their salaries. Therefore, they were the richest and at the same time the most respected part of Soviet society.
In December 1947, an event occurs that, in terms of its emotional impact on people, was commensurate with the end of the war. As it was said in the Decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) No. 4004 of December 14, 1947, “… from December 16, 1947, the card system for the supply of food and industrial goods is canceled, high prices for commercial trade are canceled and uniform reduced state retail prices are introduced for food and manufactured goods ….
The rationing system, which made it possible to save many people from starvation during the war, caused severe psychological discomfort after the war. The range of rationed food items was extremely poor. For example, in bakeries there were only 2 varieties of rye and wheat bread, which were sold by weight in accordance with the rate specified in the cut-off coupon. The selection of other food items was also limited. At the same time, commercial stores had such an abundance of products that any modern supermarket could envy. But the prices in these stores were out of reach for the majority of the population, and food was purchased there only for the festive table. After the abolition of the rationing system, all this abundance turned out to be in ordinary grocery stores at quite reasonable prices. For example, the price of cakes, which were previously sold only in commercial stores, dropped from 30 to 3 rubles. Market prices for food fell more than 3 times. Before the abolition of the rationing system, manufactured goods were sold under special orders, the presence of which did not yet mean the availability of the corresponding goods. After the abolition of the cards, a certain deficit of industrial goods remained for some time, but as far as I remember, in 1951 this deficit was no longer in Leningrad.
On March 1, 1949 - 1951, further price reductions occurred, an average of 20% per year. Each drop was perceived as a national holiday. When prices did not fall again on March 1, 1952, people felt disappointed. However, on April 1 of the same year, the price reduction did take place. The last price reduction took place after Stalin's death on April 1, 1953. During the post-war period, prices for food and the most popular industrial goods fell on average by more than 2 times. So, for the eight post-war years, the life of the Soviet people has noticeably improved annually. In the entire known history of mankind, no country has seen similar precedents.
The standard of living of the population of the USSR in the mid-50s can be assessed by studying the materials of studies of the budgets of families of workers, employees and collective farmers, which were carried out by the Central Statistical Office (CSO) of the USSR from 1935 to 1958 (these materials, which in the USSR were classified as "secret", published on istmat.info). The budgets were studied in families belonging to 9 population groups: collective farmers, state farm workers, industrial workers, industrial engineers, industrial employees, primary school teachers, secondary school teachers, doctors and nurses. The most well-to-do part of the population, which included employees of defense industry enterprises, design organizations, scientific institutions, university professors, workers of artels and the military, unfortunately, did not fall into the field of view of the CSO.
Of the groups listed above, the highest income was received by doctors. Each member of their families had 800 rubles of monthly income. Of the urban population, industrial employees had the lowest income - 525 rubles a month for each family member. The rural population had a per capita monthly income of 350 rubles. At the same time, if the workers of state farms had this income in explicit monetary form, then the collective farmers received it when calculating the cost of their own products consumed in the family at state prices.
All groups of the population, including the rural population, consumed food at approximately the same level of 200-210 rubles per month per family member. Only in the families of doctors did the cost of a grocery basket reach 250 rubles due to the higher consumption of butter, meat products, eggs, fish and fruit while reducing bread and potatoes. The villagers consumed the most bread, potatoes, eggs and milk, but significantly less butter, fish, sugar and confectionery. It should be noted that the amount of 200 rubles spent on food was not directly related to family income or a limited choice of food, but was determined by family traditions. In my family, consisting in 1955 of four people, including two schoolchildren, the monthly income per person was 1200 rubles. The choice of products in the Leningrad grocery stores was much wider than in modern supermarkets. Nevertheless, our family's expenses for food, including school lunches and lunches in departmental canteens with parents, did not exceed 800 rubles a month.
The food in the departmental canteens was very cheap. Lunch in the student canteen, including soup with meat, a second with meat and compote or tea with a pie, cost about 2 rubles. Free bread was always on the tables. Therefore, on the days before the grant of the scholarship, some students living on their own bought tea for 20 kopecks and ate bread with mustard and tea. By the way, salt, pepper and mustard were also always on the tables. The scholarship at the institute where I studied since 1955 was 290 rubles (with excellent grades - 390 rubles). 40 rubles from nonresident students went to pay for the hostel. The remaining 250 rubles (7,500 modern rubles) were quite enough for a normal student life in a big city. At the same time, as a rule, nonresident students did not receive help from home and did not earn extra money in their free time.
A few words about the Leningrad gastronomes of that time. The fish department was distinguished by the greatest variety. Several varieties of red and black caviar were displayed in large bowls. Full assortment of hot and cold smoked white fish, red fish from chum salmon to salmon, smoked eels and pickled lampreys, herring in cans and barrels. Live fish from rivers and inland waters were delivered immediately after the catch in special tank trucks with the inscription “fish”. There was no frozen fish. It appeared only in the early 60s. There were a lot of canned fish, of which I remember gobies in a tomato, the ubiquitous crabs for 4 rubles a can and a favorite product of students living in a hostel - cod liver. Beef and lamb were divided into four categories with different prices, depending on the part of the carcass. In the department of semi-finished products, splints, entrecotes, schnitzels and escalopes were presented. The variety of sausages was much wider than now, and I still remember their taste. Now only in Finland you can try sausage reminiscent of the Soviet one from those times. It should be said that the taste of cooked sausages changed already in the early 60s, when Khrushchev prescribed soy to be added to sausages. This prescription was ignored only in the Baltic republics, where even in the 70s it was possible to buy a normal doctor's sausage. Bananas, pineapples, mangoes, pomegranates, oranges were sold in large grocery stores or specialty stores all year round. Our family bought ordinary vegetables and fruits from the market, where a small increase in price paid off with higher quality and more choice.
This is how the shelves of ordinary Soviet grocery stores looked in 1953. After 1960, this was no longer the case.
The poster below is from the pre-war era, but cans of crabs were in all Soviet stores in the 1950s.
The above-mentioned materials from the CSO provide data on the consumption of workers' foodstuffs in families in various regions of the RSFSR. Out of two dozen product names, only two positions have a significant variation (more than 20%) from the average consumption level. Butter, with an average consumption level in the country in the amount of 5.5 kg per year per person, was consumed in Leningrad in the amount of 10.8 kg, in Moscow - 8.7 kg, and in the Bryansk region - 1.7 kg, in Lipetsk - 2.2 kg. In all other regions of the RSFSR, the per capita consumption of butter in workers' families was over 3 kg. A similar picture is for sausage. The average level is 13 kg. In Moscow - 28.7 kg, in Leningrad - 24.4 kg, in the Lipetsk region - 4.4 kg, in Bryansk - 4.7 kg, in other regions - more than 7 kg. At the same time, the income of the families of workers in Moscow and Leningrad did not differ from the average income in the country and amounted to 7,000 rubles per year per family member. In 1957 I visited the Volga cities: Rybinsk, Kostroma, Yaroslavl. The range of food products was lower than in Leningrad, but butter and sausage were also on the shelves, and the variety of fish products, perhaps, was even higher than in Leningrad. Thus, the population of the USSR, at least from 1950 to 1959, was fully provided with food.
The food situation has deteriorated dramatically since 1960. True, in Leningrad this was not very noticeable. I can only remember the disappearance from the sale of imported fruits, canned corn and, which was more significant for the population, flour. When flour appeared in any store, huge queues lined up, and no more than two kilograms were sold per person. These were the first stages that I saw in Leningrad since the end of the 40s. In smaller cities, according to the stories of my relatives and friends, in addition to flour, the following disappeared from sale: butter, meat, sausage, fish (except for a small set of canned food), eggs, cereals and pasta. The assortment of bakery products has sharply decreased. I myself saw empty shelves in grocery stores in Smolensk in 1964.
I can only judge the life of the rural population by a few fragmentary impressions (not counting the budget studies of the Central Statistical Administration of the USSR). In 1951, 1956 and 1962, I took a summer vacation on the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus. In the first case, I went with my parents, and then on my own. At that time, trains had long stops at stations and even small halt stations. In the 50s, locals came to the trains with a variety of products, including boiled, fried and smoked chickens, boiled eggs, homemade sausages, hot pies with a variety of fillings, including fish, meat, liver, mushrooms. In 1962, only hot potatoes with pickles were taken out of food for trains.
In the summer of 1957, I was part of a student concert brigade organized by the Leningrad Regional Committee of the Komsomol. On a small wooden barge we sailed down the Volga and gave concerts in coastal villages. There were few entertainments in the villages at that time, and therefore almost all residents came to our concerts in local clubs. They did not differ from the urban population either in dress or in facial expressions. And the dinners we were treated to after the concert testified that there were no problems with food even in small villages.
In the early 80s, I was treated in a sanatorium located in the Pskov region. One day I went to a nearby village to taste the village milk. The talkative old woman I met quickly dispelled my hopes. She said that after Khrushchev's 1959 ban on keeping livestock and cutting back plots of household plots, the village was completely impoverished, and the previous years were remembered as a golden age. Since then, meat has completely disappeared from the diet of villagers, and milk is only occasionally given out from the collective farm for small children. And before that there was enough meat both for personal consumption and for sale on the collective farm market, which provided the main income of the peasant family, and not at all collective farm earnings. I would like to note that according to the statistics of the Central Statistical Office of the USSR in 1956, each rural resident of the RSFSR consumed more than 300 liters of milk per year, while urban residents consumed 80-90 liters. After 1959, the CSO ceased its secret budget research.
The provision of the population with industrial goods in the mid-50s was quite high. For example, in working families for each person, more than 3 pairs of shoes were purchased annually. The quality and variety of consumer goods exclusively of domestic production (clothes, shoes, dishes, toys, furniture and other household goods) was much higher than in subsequent years. The fact is that the bulk of these goods were produced not by state enterprises, but by artels. Moreover, the products of the artels were sold in ordinary state stores. As soon as new fashion trends emerged, they were instantly tracked, and within a few months fashion items appeared in abundance on store shelves. For example, in the mid-50s, a youth fashion emerged for shoes with thick white rubber soles in imitation of the extremely popular rock and roll singer Elvis Presley in those years. I quietly bought these domestically produced shoes in an ordinary department store in the fall of 1955, along with another fashionable item - a tie with a bright color picture. The only commodity that was not always possible to buy was popular records. However, in 1955 I had records bought in a regular store, almost all the popular American jazz musicians and singers at that time, such as Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Glen Miller. Only Elvis Presley's recordings, illegally made on used X-ray film (as they said at the time, “on the bones”) had to be bought from the hands. I do not remember any imported goods at that time. Both clothing and footwear were produced in small batches and featured a wide variety of models. In addition, the manufacture of clothing and footwear for individual orders was widespread in numerous sewing and knitwear ateliers, in shoe workshops that are part of the fishing cooperation. There were many tailors and shoemakers who worked individually. The most popular goods at that time were fabrics. I still remember the names of such popular fabrics at that time as drape, cheviot, boston, crepe de chine.
From 1956 to 1960, the process of liquidation of industrial cooperation took place. Most of the artels became state-owned enterprises, while the rest were closed or became illegal. Individual patent production was also prohibited. The production of practically all consumer goods has sharply decreased, both in terms of volume and in terms of assortment. It is then that imported consumer goods appear, which immediately become scarce, despite the higher price with a limited assortment.
I can illustrate the life of the population of the USSR in 1955 using the example of my family. The family consisted of 4 people. Father, 50 years old, head of the department of the design institute. Mother, 45 years old, geological engineer of Lenmetrostroy. Son, 18 years old, high school graduate. Son, 10 years old, schoolboy. The family's income consisted of three parts: the official salary (2,200 rubles for the father and 1,400 rubles for the mother), a quarterly bonus for fulfilling the plan, usually 60% of the salary, and a separate bonus for extra work. Whether my mother received such an award, I do not know, but my father received it about once a year, and in 1955 this award was 6,000 rubles. In other years, it was about the same size. I remember my father, having received this award, laid out many hundred-ruble bills on the dining table in the form of solitaire cards, and then we had a gala dinner. The average monthly income of our family was 4,800 rubles, or 1,200 rubles per person.
550 rubles were deducted from this amount for taxes, party and trade union dues. 800 rubles were spent on food. 150 rubles were spent on housing and utilities (water, heating, electricity, gas, telephone). 500 rubles were spent on clothing, footwear, transport, entertainment. Thus, the regular monthly expenses of our family of 4 were 2,000 rubles. Unspent money remained 2,800 rubles per month or 33,600 rubles (one million modern rubles) per year.
Our family's income was closer to the average than to the top. So the higher incomes were for workers in the private sector (artels), who accounted for more than 5% of the urban population. The officers of the army, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Ministry of State Security had high salaries. For example, an ordinary army lieutenant, a platoon commander, had a monthly income of 2600-3600 rubles, depending on the place and the specifics of the service. At the same time, the income of the military was not taxed. To illustrate the income of workers in the defense industry, I will cite just an example of a young family I know very well who worked in the experimental design bureau of the Ministry of Aviation Industry. Husband, 25 years old, senior engineer with a salary of 1400 rubles and a monthly income, taking into account various bonuses and travel expenses of 2500 rubles. Wife, 24 years old, senior technician with a salary of 900 rubles and a monthly income of 1500 rubles. In general, the monthly income of a family of two was 4000 rubles. There were about 15 thousand rubles of unspent money left a year. I believe that a significant part of urban families had the opportunity to save 5-10 thousand rubles annually (150-300 thousand modern rubles).
Cars should be distinguished from expensive goods. The range of cars was small, but there were no problems with their purchase. In Leningrad, in the large department store "Apraksin Dvor" there was a car showroom. I remember that in 1955 cars were put up there for free sale: Moskvich-400 for 9,000 rubles (economy class), Pobeda for 16,000 rubles (business class) and ZIM (later Chaika) for 40,000 rubles (executive class). Our family savings were enough to purchase any of the above vehicles, including ZIM. A Moskvich car was generally available to the majority of the population. However, there was no real demand for cars. At the time, cars were seen as expensive toys that posed a lot of problems to maintain and maintain. My uncle had a Moskvich car, which he drove out of town only a few times a year. My uncle bought this car back in 1949 only because he could arrange a garage in the courtyard of his house in the premises of the former stables. At work, my father was offered to buy a decommissioned American Willys, a military SUV of that time, for only 1,500 rubles. My father refused the car, as there was nowhere to keep it.
For the Soviet people of the post-war period, it was characteristic of the desire to have as much money as possible. They remembered well that during the war years, money could save lives. In the most difficult period of the life of besieged Leningrad, a market functioned where any food could be bought or exchanged for things. The Leningrad notes of my father, dated December 1941, indicated the following prices and clothing equivalents in this market: 1 kg of flour = 500 rubles = felt boots, 2 kg of flour = Arakul fur coat, 3 kg of flour = gold watch. However, a similar situation with food was not only in Leningrad. In the winter of 1941-1942, small provincial cities, where there was no military industry, were not supplied with food at all. The population of these cities survived only by exchanging household goods for food with the inhabitants of the surrounding villages. At that time, my mother worked as a primary school teacher in the ancient Russian city of Belozersk, in her homeland. As she later said, by February 1942, more than half of her students had died of starvation. My mother and I survived only because in our house since pre-revolutionary times there were quite a few things that were valued in the village. But my mother's grandmother also starved to death in February 1942, as she left her food for her granddaughter and four-year-old great-grandson. My only vivid memory of that time is a New Year's gift from my mother. It was a piece of brown bread, lightly dusted with granulated sugar, which my mother called cake. I tried a real cake only in December 1947, when I suddenly became rich Buratino. In my children's piggy bank there were more than 20 rubles of small change, and the coins were preserved even after the monetary reform. Only from February 1944, when we returned to Leningrad after the blockade was lifted, did I cease to experience the continuous feeling of hunger. By the mid-60s, the memory of the horrors of the war was smoothed out, a new generation entered life that did not seek to save money in reserve, and cars, which had tripled in price by that time, became scarce, like many other goods.
I will name some prices in 1955: rye bread - 1 rubles / kg, a roll - 1.5 rubles / 0.5 kg, meat - 12.5-18 rubles / kg, live fish (carp) - 5 rubles / kg, sturgeon caviar - 180 rubles / kg, lunch in the canteen - 2-3 rubles, dinner in a restaurant with wine for two - 25 rubles, leather shoes - 150 - 250 rubles, Tourist 3-speed bike - 900 rubles, motorcycle IZH-49 with 350 cc engine cm - 2500 rubles, a ticket to the cinema - 0.5–1 rubles, a ticket to a theater or a concert - 3–10 rubles.
Post-war Stalinist Soviet Union. If you did not live in that era, you will read a ton of new information. Prices, salaries of that time, incentive systems. Comparisons of the standard of living in the USA and the USSR.
After reading this material, it becomes much clearer why in 1953, when Stalin was poisoned, people cried openly …
Let us try to assess the living standards of the population of the USSR in 1955 by comparing the family budgets of Soviet and American families consisting of four people (two adults and two children). Let's take 3 American families as an example: the average American family in 1955 according to the US Census Bureau, the average American family in 2010 according to the US Department of Labor, and a specific American family from Virginia who agreed to share their 2011 budget.
From the Soviet side, let us consider the budgets of rural and urban average families in 1955 of four people based on the materials of the Central Statistical Administration of the USSR and my own family in 1966, when I kept daily records of family income and expenses.
Since two countries and three time periods correspond to different monetary units, when considering all budgets, we will use the Stalinist ruble of 1947. In 1955, this ruble in purchasing power was approximately equal to the modern dollar or 30 current Russian rubles. The 1955 American dollar corresponded to 6 Stalinist rubles (at the gold rate - 4 rubles). In 1961, as a result of the Khrushchev monetary reform, the ruble was denominated 10 times. However, by 1966, an increase in state and market prices led to a decrease in the purchasing power of the ruble by about 1.6 times, so that the Khrushchev ruble became equivalent not to 10, but to 6 Stalin's rubles (at the gold rate of 1961, 1 dollar = 90 kopecks).
Some explanations for the above table. Education in a school attended by children of the third American family (6 and 10 years old) is free. But for school lunches ($ 2.5), school bus, and after-school attendance, you have to pay $ 5,000 a year for each child. In this regard, it is incomprehensible that statistical American families do not have school expenses. In the USSR in 1955, a hot school breakfast cost 1 ruble, the school was near the house, and the extended day group was free. The higher food costs for a wealthier American family are due to the fact that some of the food is bought in the "green" store at higher prices. In addition, daily meals during work cost the head of household $ 2,500 a year. The family's entertainment includes a traditional weekly dinner in a restaurant ($ 50 for the dinner itself and $ 30 for a nanny who is sitting at home with the children), as well as swimming lessons for children in the pool under the guidance of a coach (once a week - $ 90). Household expenses for cleaning the premises twice a month and for the laundry cost $ 2,800, and for shoes, clothes and toys for children - $ 4,200.
The third Soviet family from the above table should be classified as poor rather than average. I was a full-time graduate student. My income consisted of a scholarship of 1,000 nominal Stalin rubles and half of the junior research assistant's rate of 525 rubles. The wife was a student and received a scholarship of 290 rubles. No taxes were taken on scholarships and salaries less than 700 rubles. My daughter was only two years old, and she was still small for kindergarten. Therefore, a nanny lived in the family constantly, receiving 250 rubles. The range of purchased products was very diverse. Fruits accounted for more than a third of the cost of the grocery basket. The budget notes do not show the desire to limit costs. For example, taxi costs were reported several times a month. The family of four, including a nanny, lived in a two-room cooperative apartment, acquired in 1963 when I had just married and was working as a senior engineer in a defense enterprise. Then my savings for two years of work after graduation were enough to pay the initial payment for an apartment in the amount of 19 thousand Stalinist rubles (40% of the total cost). In the summer of 6 weeks we rested on the Black Sea coast of Crimea, where we went with a tent, set up directly on the shore. Note that the wealthy American family discussed above could only afford a week's vacation on the seashore in North Carolina, and $ 3,000 spent on this vacation went beyond the family's annual budget. And a poor Soviet family of three with an annual budget of 13 thousand modern dollars (far below the poverty line by today's American standards) consumed a variety of organic food, paid off a mortgage loan, seas.
Previously, we considered a typical young Soviet family of the mid-50s of two people (husband - 2 years after a technical college, wife - 2 years after college) with a net monthly income after taxes of 3400 rubles or 100 thousand modern rubles. The net income of a similar Russian family in the rare case when a husband and wife work in their specialty will be no more than 40 thousand rubles in Moscow or St. Petersburg, and in the provinces it is still 1.5 - 2 times lower. Feel the difference!!!
So, the material standard of living of the population of the USSR in the mid-50s was higher than in the USA, the richest country of that time, and higher than in modern America, not to mention modern Russia. In addition, the population of the USSR was provided with benefits unthinkable for any other country in the world:
a network of dairy kitchens that provided free meals for infants under 2 years of age;
a wide network of preschool institutions (nurseries and kindergartens) with a minimum payment of child support - 30-40 rubles per month, and for collective farmers it is free;
children's music schools, which allow children to receive musical education and identify musical talents at an early stage;
free after-school groups;
Houses of culture and Palaces of culture, providing leisure for adults;
a wide network of sanatoriums, rest houses, tourist centers, which provided treatment and rest for free or for a small fee, available to all segments of the population;
guaranteed housing and work in a specialty, maximum social protection, full confidence in the future.
A few words about paying for education in Stalin's time. In 1940, tuition fees were introduced in the upper secondary school, universities and technical schools. In Moscow, Leningrad and the capitals of the Union republics, the cost of education in the senior classes was 200 rubles a year, and in universities and technical schools - 400 rubles a year. In other cities - 150 and 300 rubles per year, respectively. In rural schools, education was free. An analysis of family budgets shows that these amounts were symbolic. In 1956, tuition fees were canceled.
According to official statistics, the living standard of the population of the USSR grew continuously until the moment of its collapse. However, real life had nothing to do with these statistics. For example, the price of a typical lunch (lagman, pilaf, flatbread, green tea) in my favorite Moscow restaurant "Uzbekistan", which I visited whenever I visited Moscow, was in Khrushchev rubles: 1955 - 1, 1963 - 2, 1971 - 5, 1976 - 7, 1988 - 10. The price of a Moskvich car: 1955 - 900, 1963 - 2500, 1971 - 4900, 1976 - 6300, 1988 - 9000. For a quarter of a century, real prices have increased 10 times, and incomes, in particular, engineers and scientists have decreased. Since the mid-60s, the richest people in the USSR were not scientists, as it was before, but trade workers and the nomenclature.
From each according to his ability, to each according to his work
At the end of the 30s, the above slogan, which characterizes the economic essence of socialism, acquired constructive features devoid of subjectivity and began to be widely implemented in all spheres of the national economy of the USSR, ensuring unprecedented rates of development of the country in the post-war period. The initiator of the development of a method for increasing labor efficiency, which I called MPE, was most likely L. P. Beria, who, being the party leader of Georgia in the 30s, turned it in just a few years from a very backward into one of the most economically developed and prosperous republics of the USSR. To implement this slogan, one did not need to possess any economic knowledge, but one should be guided only by ordinary common sense.
The essence of the proposed method consisted in dividing any collective activity into planned and over-planned ones. Planned activity consists in performing a certain amount of work in a given time frame. For planned activities, the employee receives a monthly or weekly salary, the amount of which depends on his qualifications and work experience in the specialty. Part of the salary is issued in the form of quarterly and annual bonuses, which ensures the employees' interest in fulfilling the plan (if the plan is not fulfilled, the entire team is deprived of the bonus). The management usually has the ability to vary the amount of the bonus, encouraging the hardworking and punishing the negligent, but this has little effect on the efficiency of the team. All over the world, employees are engaged exclusively in planned activities. But in this case, the employee has no opportunity to show his abilities. Only sometimes a smart boss can accidentally notice these abilities and move an employee up the career ladder. But more often than not, any going beyond the limits of a certain work plan is not encouraged, but punished.
The genius of the MPE developers was that they were able to regulate the concept of over-planned work for most types of collective activities and develop a system of material and moral reward for this work devoid of subjectivity. MPE allowed each employee to realize his creative potential (from each according to his ability), to receive appropriate remuneration (to each according to his work) and, in general, to feel like a person, a respected person. Other members of the collective also received their share of the remuneration, which eliminated the envy and labor conflicts that were characteristic of the Stakhanov movement.
My career began in the fall of 1958, when, as a 4th year student at the Leningrad Electrotechnical Institute, I began to work part-time as a technician at the OKB-590 experimental design bureau of the Ministry of Aviation Industry. By this time, the MPE had already been eliminated, but the excellent moral climate in the collective of the organization, which had developed thanks to the MPE, remained until the beginning of the 60s. The topic of MPE quite often arose during informal communication with colleagues who had been working in the OKB since the 1940s, and ended with the traditional resume - "what a bald bastard" (meaning NS Khrushchev). My father, who in the post-war period was engaged in the design and construction of highways, and during the war years was the commander of a sapper battalion, and, in particular, in the winter of 1942, created the famous Leningrad "road of life", also told me about the MPE. In 1962, a casual fellow traveler on the Leningrad-Moscow train told me about how the MBE was used in universities and research institutes.
All the work of the design organizations was carried out according to the orders of the relevant ministries. In the assignment accompanying the order, the planned indicators of both the project and the designed object were indicated. These indicators were: the timing of the project, the cost of the project (excluding the salary fund), the cost of the projected facility, as well as the main technical characteristics of the facility. At the same time, the assignment provided a bonus scale for exceeding planned targets. For shortening the design time, reducing the cost of a project or design object, improving the most important parameters of the object, specific values of the premium were indicated in rubles. Each order had a bonus fund exclusively for over-planned work in the amount of 2% of the project cost. Unspent money from this fund was returned to the Customer after the completion of the project. For some particularly important orders, the premium scale could include cars, apartments, and government awards, which were also not always in demand.
For each project, the management of the organization appointed a leader, as a rule, who did not hold an administrative position. The project manager recruited a temporary team to carry out the project from employees of one or more departments of the organization with the consent of the heads of these departments. Sometimes this team could include employees of other organizations participating in the project. The project manager appointed one of the team members as his deputy. In the process of working on a project, the leader could exclude any member from the team. Each member of the team, regardless of the position held, initially received 1 point, characterizing the share of his participation in the work on the project. The leader received an additional 5 points, and his deputy - 3. In the process of work, the leader could add to any project participant from one to three points, depending on the contribution to the project. This was done openly, explaining the reasons to the entire team. Rationalization proposals that provide above-planned project indicators were evaluated at 3 points, and applications for inventions - at 5 points. The authors shared these points among themselves by mutual agreement. By the time the project was completed, each participant knew the amount of bonuses due to him, depending on the number of points scored and the total amount of the over-planned bonus for the project in accordance with the well-known bonus scales. The amount of the prize was finally approved at a meeting of the state commission carrying out the acceptance of the project, and literally the next day all project participants received the money due to them.
In the case of projects with a large budget, completed over several years, the cost of one point could be tens of thousands of rubles (tens of thousands of modern dollars). Therefore, all members of the team had great respect for the people who ensured the receipt of such high awards, which created an excellent moral climate. Quarrels and lazy people either did not initially get into the temporary team, or were excluded from it during the work on the project. Individuals who scored a large number of points in various projects quickly moved up the career ladder, that is, the MPE was an excellent mechanism for selecting personnel.
In order for the MPE to start working in the industry, an original approach was used. The planned indicators of enterprises annually included an item on reducing the cost of production by a certain number of percent due to the improvement of technology. To stimulate this work, a special bonus fund was created, similar to the two percent fund of design organizations. And then the same scheme was applied. Temporary teams were created with the same scores, whose task was to reduce the cost of certain products. At the same time, the members of these collectives also performed the main work. The results were summed up at the end of the year and bonuses were paid at the same time. The enterprise was given the right for at least a year to sell products with a lower cost at the old price and from this money to form an over-planned bonus fund. As a result, labor productivity in the USSR in those years grew faster than in any other country. The effectiveness of the use of MBE at manufacturing enterprises is illustrated by the following table, which shows how the cost of weapons produced during the war was reduced, when, it would seem, there were no opportunities, apart from intense production, to also improve technological processes (data taken from the book by A. B. Martirosyan “200 myths about Stalin ).
In general, the cost of various types of weapons for 4 military years has decreased by more than 2 times. But most of the samples were put into service several years before the start of the war, and the Mosin rifle had been produced since 1891.
In scientific activity, there are no quantitative criteria for assessing the effectiveness of research performed. Therefore, the extra R&D work carried out on the orders of various enterprises or its own department was considered to be above-planned work carried out at the research institute. In these additional R&D, in contrast to the main ones, there was always a salary fund. This fund was managed by the head of research, appointed by the administration of the institute. As in previous cases, a temporary team was created to carry out research work and points were assigned, which the head of research work could increase to individual performers in the course of work. In accordance with the points from the corresponding research fund, money was paid to the team members on a monthly basis. These payments were formalized as a supplement to the basic salary. But very often it turned out that the bonus significantly exceeded the basic salary, especially since all members of the team, except for the head of the research work and his deputy, initially received the same points, regardless of their positions, academic degrees and titles. This produced an interesting psychological effect. For those employees who had not been part of any temporary team for a long time, it was unbearable to see that their colleagues receive significantly more monthly than they do. As a result, they, as a rule, were fired, thereby improving the quality level of the research institute employees.
In universities, pedagogical activity was considered the main one, and scientific activity was considered above-plan. All research work in universities was carried out according to the same MBE rules as additional research work in research or academic institutes.
It was not possible to apply MBE for teachers and medical workers, most likely because their activities are not collective. However, the notion of over-work has proven to apply to these categories as well. Teachers' salaries were set based on an 18-hour workload per week. But with a large number of students, a workload of 24 hours or even 30 hours a week was allowed with a corresponding increase in salary. In addition, there were allowances for additional work, such as class guidance. Doctors and nurses could work an additional hour and a half or even two times. Therefore, as follows from the CSB research, the income in the families of doctors was one and a half times higher than in the families of workers, and secondary school teachers had the same income as that of engineering and technical workers in industry.
To eliminate the MPE, which occurred in 1956, did not have to make much effort. It is just that with the financing of R&D and R&D, any wage funds, both bonus and conventional, were canceled. And the bonus scales, temporary teams and points immediately lost their meaning. And the production enterprises excluded from the planned indicators a decrease in the cost price, and, accordingly, the possibility of creating a bonus fund for improving technologies disappeared, and there was no longer any incentive for this improvement. At the same time, limits were introduced on the amount of remuneration for rationalization proposals and inventions.
The main feature of the MPE was that when using it, not only did the creative activity of a large number of people increase, and talents were revealed, but also the psychology of all team members, as well as relationships in the team, changed. Any member of the team was aware of his importance to the overall process and readily performed any part of the work, even if this work did not correspond to his status. Mutual benevolence, the desire to help each other were completely typical features. In fact, each member of the team considered himself a person, and not a cog in a complex mechanism. The relationship between superiors and subordinates also changed. Instead of orders and instructions, the boss strove to explain to each subordinate what role the work assigned to him plays in the common cause. With the formation of collectives and the formation of a new psychology, the material incentives themselves receded into the background and were no longer the main driving force. I believe that the MBE developers were counting on just such an effect.
Although I came to OKB-590 in 1958, 3 years after the MPE was canceled, the moral climate in the team remained for a long time even in the absence of external stimuli. A characteristic feature of the laboratory where I worked was a complete lack of subordination and friendly relations between all employees. Everyone addressed each other by name, including the head of the laboratory. This was facilitated by the small age difference between the laboratory staff, the oldest of whom was less than 35 years old. People worked with great enthusiasm simply because it was fun to work. The working day lasted from 9 am to 10-11 pm, and on a purely voluntary basis and without any additional payment. But no one controlled the time of arrival and departure of employees. For mild illnesses, it was not required to issue a sick leave. It was enough to call the head of the laboratory and report the reasons for not showing up for work.
The creative atmosphere characteristic of all divisions of our organization was largely determined by the personality of its chief V. I. Lanerdin. OKB-590 was created in 1945 by personal order of Stalin with the aim of developing advanced computer technology for aviation. Stalin appointed a 35-year-old non-partisan engineer Lanerdin, who at that time worked in the United States, providing the supply of aviation equipment to the USSR under the Lend-Lease program, as the head of the new OKB. Lanerdin was fluent in English and German and was well versed in electronic technology installed on American aircraft, including the latest developments. One of the first divisions of the Design Bureau was the Bureau of Technical Information with a staff of translators, which subscribed to all foreign magazines that had at least some relation to aviation and electronics, and later to missile and computer technology. Apparently, Lanerdin daily looked through all the new arrivals in the BTI, since his recommendations on the need to familiarize themselves with specific publications often appeared on the tables of employees, including privates. In the first section there was a large secret library, where documentation and samples of the latest foreign developments, obtained by our intelligence on direct orders from the OKB, were kept. Lanerdin was personally involved in the selection of personnel for his organization. In September 1958, at the exit from the lecture hall of the institute, where the last lecture of that day was held, a respectable man approached me, a fourth-year student, and asked if I would take some time for a private conversation. Without asking any questions, he offered me an interesting part-time job in a defense enterprise with a free part-time job as a technician (350 rubles a month) and said that he would guarantee distribution to this enterprise after graduation. And he added in passing that the company is located next to my house. When I came to get a new job, I learned that this respectable man was the head of the enterprise V. I. Lanerdin.
In the post-Stalinist period, non-partisan leaders of enterprises, especially defense ones, became undesirable. For a number of years, the ministry tried to find a reason to remove Lanerdin from his post, but all tasks, including those that seemed unrealizable, were carried out even ahead of schedule, as was the case during the MPE. Therefore, at the end of 1962, OKB-590 was simply liquidated, and the team, along with the subject matter, was transferred to OKB-680, the head of which was the complete opposite of Lanerdin and even spoke with difficulty in Russian. The new organization ended up with a tough regime. For being 5 minutes late, the quarterly bonus was deprived. To leave the organization during working hours, the permission of the deputy was required. chief of the regime. At the end of the working day, it was forbidden to remain in the organization. Nobody was interested in the results of the work. And being in the party became a prerequisite for career growth. And in OKB-590 I never heard the word "party", and even the premises of the party committee were not in the organization.
The situation with the liquidation of effective enterprises of the defense industry during these years was not uncommon. In the fall of 1960, OKB-23 of one of the leading Soviet aircraft designers V. M. Myasishchev, who, by the way, was successfully developing a strategic bomber with an atomic engine, was liquidated. Myasishchev was appointed head of TsAGI, and the OKB-23 team was reassigned to VN Chalomey, who was engaged in the creation of rocket technology. Chalomey's deputy at that time was a recent graduate of the institute, Sergei Khrushchev.
They say that everything ingenious should be simple. MPE was a prime example of this ingenious simplicity. Temporary teams, points that objectively determine the labor participation of each employee in the work of the team and a relatively small bonus fund - this is the whole essence of MPE. And what was the effect! Perhaps the main result of the MPE should be considered the transformation of a large number of ordinary people into bright creative personalities capable of making independent decisions. It was thanks to these people that the country continued to develop after the abolition of the MBE until the early 60s. And then their abilities turned out to be unclaimed in the stifling atmosphere that had developed by that time, the main motto of which was "keep your head down."
It is possible to harness a horse and a quivering doe in one cart
It is believed that the planned and market economies are incompatible. However, in Stalin's times, they were combined more than successfully. I will cite only a small excerpt from the interesting material of A. K. Trubitsyn "On Stalin's Entrepreneurs", which I found on the Internet.
"And what kind of legacy did Comrade Stalin leave to the country in the form of the entrepreneurial sector of the economy? There were 114,000 (one hundred and fourteen thousand!) Workshops and enterprises of various directions - from the food industry to metalworking and from jewelry to the chemical industry. They employed about two million people. which produced almost 6% of the gross industrial output of the USSR, and artels and industrial cooperation produced 40% of furniture, 70% of metal utensils, more than a third of all knitwear, almost all children's toys. Moreover, this sector had its own, non-state, pension system! Not to mention the fact that the artels provided loans to their members for the purchase of livestock, tools and equipment, the construction of housing. And the artels produced not only the simplest, but such necessary things in everyday life - in the aftermath In recent years, in the Russian outback, up to 40% of all items in the house (dishes, shoes, furniture, etc.) were made by artel workers. The first Soviet tube receivers (1930), the first radio systems in the USSR (1935), the first television sets with a cathode ray tube (1939) were produced by the Leningrad artel "Progress-Radio". The Leningrad artel "Joiner-builder", having started in 1923 with sledges, wheels, clamps and coffins, by 1955 changed its name to "Radist" - it already has a large production of furniture and radio equipment. The Yakut artel "Metallist", created in 1941, had a powerful factory production base by the mid-50s. The Vologda artel "Krasny Partizan", having started production of resin-gum in 1934, by the same time produced three and a half thousand tons of it, becoming a large-scale production. The Gatchina artel "Jupiter", which has been producing haberdashery trifles since 1924, in 1944, immediately after the liberation of Gatchina, made nails, locks, lanterns, shovels, which were badly needed in the ruined city; by the beginning of the 50s, they produced aluminum dishes, washing machines, drilling machines. and the press."
After reading this material, I remembered that next to my house in the very center of the Petrograd side of Leningrad there was a large Palace of Culture of the Promcooperatsii (later the Lensovet Palace of Culture), built before the war. It housed a large cinema, a hall for concerts and theatrical performances, as well as many art studios and other rooms for a variety of activities in sections and circles. And I also remembered how in 1962, during my stay on the beach in the Abkhazian village of Pitsunda, I was the only and not very attentive listener to the monologues of a casual acquaintance who had worked for more than 10 years in the fishing cooperation system, and after the liquidation of this system he wanted to speak out about the painful … At that time, I was not very interested in economic issues, and for many years I did not think about it. But it turned out that some of the information was stuck in my memory.
I have already mentioned that in 1960 a food crisis began in the USSR, caused by purely subjective factors. Leningrad, Moscow, as well as the capitals of the Union republics, this crisis touched less than the rest of the country's cities. However, I can list quite a few products popular in my family that disappeared during this period. In addition to flour, the following disappeared from sale: buckwheat, millet and semolina, egg noodles, braided rolls called “challah”, as well as crispy “French” rolls, Vologda and chocolate butter, baked and chocolate milk, all types of semi-finished meat products, chop and boiled pork, crucian carp and mirror carps. Over time, flour, cereals, semi-finished meat products reappeared on sale. And most of the products listed above are absent in stores and at present due to the loss of recipes, or completely different products are produced under the old names (this applies to almost all modern sausages, including the famous doctoral dissertation). This is how the well-known children's writer E. Nosov, the author of books about Dunno, described this crisis.
“Contrary to the optimistic diagrams of milk yield and weight gain that had not yet faded, not washed away by the rains, meat and all meat began to disappear from store shelves. turned out to be for decades. It came to noodles and pasta "… In the fall of 1963, bakeries stopped the planned baking of loaves and rolls, confectionery shops were closed. White bread was issued with certified certificates only to some sick and preschoolers. Restrictions on the sale of bread were imposed in bread shops in one hand and sold only loaves of grayish bread, which was prepared with an admixture of peas."
My resort acquaintance very lucidly explained the reasons for the reduction in the range of food products, as well as a significant increase in prices for products made from grain crops, while according to official data there was much more grain in the country than in the mid-50s, and besides a lot of grain was bought abroad. The fact is that most of the food industry in the USSR, including flour grinding and bread baking, belonged to the industrial cooperation. State bakeries were located only in large cities and produced a very limited range of bread products. And the rest of the bread products were produced by private bakeries in the form of artels, supplying these products to ordinary state stores. The situation was similar with meat, dairy and fish products. By the way, the catch of fish, sea animals and seafood was also mainly carried out by artels. Most of the meat of livestock and poultry, milk, eggs, as well as buckwheat and millet (millet) was supplied not from collective farms, but from the farmsteads of collective farmers and served as the main source of income for the rural population. A significant part of public catering enterprises, especially in the Baltics, Central Asia and the Caucasus, were part of the system of industrial cooperation.
In 1959, the size of personal plots was sharply reduced. Collective farmers are forced to sell their livestock to collective farms, where they die en masse due to the lack of both feed and personnel to provide appropriate care for the animals. As a result, the volume of production of meat and especially milk decreases. In 1960, the mass nationalization of industrial cooperation enterprises began, including in the food industry. All property of the artels, including premises, equipment, commodity and cash reserves, is transferred to the state free of charge. The leadership of the artels elected by the labor collective is replaced by party appointees. Workers' income is now, as in other state-owned enterprises, determined by salary or tariff rates and supplemented by quarterly and annual bonuses. In artels, in addition to the usual wages fund, there was a bonus fund, for the formation of which 20% of the profit was allocated. This fund was distributed among the artel workers, as in the case of the MPE, in accordance with the points of labor participation. The values of these points were determined on the recommendation of the chairman of the artel at general meetings of all shareholders. The monthly income of members of the artel, even with minimal labor participation, as a rule, was 1.5 - 2 times higher than the basic salary. But at the same time, all the artel workers, including the chosen chief, also involved in a specific production, worked with maximum intensity and with irregular working hours. The income of each artel member depended not only on the quantity of products produced, but also on the quality and on the variety of the assortment. By the way, I remember that in Leningrad, some bakeries not only supplied their products to state bakeries, but also delivered hot bread, various rolls and pastries directly to the apartments of city residents with a small extra charge.
After the nationalization, the working hours of the former artel workers were reduced to 8 hours in accordance with the labor legislation. In addition, there appeared people absolutely useless for production with a relatively large salary in the person of newly appointed bosses. The material interest in the quality of products disappeared, and the percentage of rejects immediately increased. As a result, the volume of production decreased sharply with the same number of enterprises and the same number of employees. And flour mills could no longer produce the same volumes of flour with sufficient grain reserves. The only way out of this situation was to increase the number of workers in the food industry. The additional financial resources necessary for this were obtained by increasing the prices of food products by an average of 1.5 times, which automatically led to a decrease in the living standards of the population. Prices for manufactured goods rose even more, but without explicit declarations. Well, the income of the former artel workers fell by more than 2 times. The liquidation of industrial cooperation inevitably led to a reduction in the range and a decrease in the quality of products in the nationalized enterprises. It is much easier to produce one type of product instead of ten, especially if the planned indicators indicate abstract pieces or kilograms.
Industrial cooperation enterprises worked in conditions much more favorable than modern small enterprises. Lending to artels was carried out not by banks, but by district, inter-district or sectoral unions of industrial cooperation (SEC) from special credit funds with an interest rate of no more than 3%. In some cases, the loan was issued at zero interest. To obtain a loan, the newly formed artel did not need any collateral - the entire risk of bankruptcy of the artel fell on the SEC. The artels received equipment and materials necessary for production from the SEC at state prices. Applications from the SEC were received by the USSR State Planning Committee, which allocated the appropriate funds, including for materials purchased for foreign currency.
The sale of products manufactured by cooperatives was also carried out through the SPK. At the same time, the price of products of industrial cooperation enterprises could exceed state prices by no more than 10%. For small artels, the SEC could, for an appropriate fee, take over the accounting, cash management and transport services … SEC managers of any level were selected, as a rule, from the artels or employees of the SEC of lower levels. The remuneration of these employees was carried out in the same way as in the artels. Along with the usual salaries, there was a bonus fund, which was distributed in accordance with the points of labor participation. The higher the profit of the cooperatives, a significant part of which was transferred to the SEC, the greater the bonus fund for the SEC employees. This was a significant incentive for all-round support for the activities of artels and for increasing their number.
The SEC was actively engaged in housing construction. The artels bought out ready-made individual houses with the help of a 15-year loan received from the SEC at 3% per annum without an initial payment. The apartment buildings were the property of the SEC. Apartments in these houses were bought by artel workers, just like in ordinary housing construction cooperatives, but without a down payment.
Promkooperatsia had its own network of sanatoriums and rest homes with free vouchers for artel workers. The industrial cooperation had its own pension system, not replacing, but supplementing state pensions. Of course, in 50 years I could forget some details, and my acquaintance could embellish the reality, talking about the industrial cooperation, "which we have lost." But on the whole, I believe, the presented picture is not far from the truth.
At last I will tell you
The overwhelming majority of citizens of modern Russia, from liberals to communists, are convinced that the population of the USSR has always lived much worse than in Western countries. No one suspects that it was under Stalin and only thanks to Stalin that Soviet people in the middle of the last century lived much better materially and morally than in any other country of that time and better than in the modern United States, not to mention modern Russia. And then the evil Khrushchev came and ruined everything. And after 1960, the inhabitants of the USSR, imperceptibly for themselves, found themselves in a completely different country and after a while forgot how they lived before. It was in this new country that all those negative features that are considered to be organically inherent in the socialist system appeared. It was this pseudo-socialist country, completely unlike the former Soviet Union, that collapsed under the weight of accumulated problems in 1991, and Gorbachev only accelerated this process, acting in the style of Khrushchev.
And I decided to talk about what a wonderful country the post-war Stalinist Soviet Union, which I remember, was.
