Gorbachev's salary before he gave the USSR to be torn apart

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Since 1982 I have had the opportunity to work in one of the numbered geodetic expeditions. 7-8 months a year, during the warm season of the year, I had to work in the mountains and deserts of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. The charm of the Kyzyl Kum desert with rare and sudden oases and the Pamir and Tien Shan mountains with their peaks, rock paintings of primitive people attracted, probably, all my young peers. Tents, backpacks, bonfires with kettles … Plus, a combination of business with pleasure, namely with good salaries by Soviet standards.

It is about these standards and salaries that I want to convey my memories and feelings.

My salary in such seasons came out in the region of 500-700 rubles a month.

What were the salaries in the country that I or we knew about then? My father, for example, working at a plant for the production of agricultural machinery, had an average salary of 180 rubles. If he stayed on overtime, he could bring in a salary of 230 rubles. In some months of shock labor, he could earn 270. He was a long-term "shock worker of communist labor" with all the letters and badges due then.

Mother, closer to retirement age and previously working as an ordinary employee of one of the local ministries and receiving a salary of 140 rubles, went to a construction site to work as a painter. And already there she could earn under 200. Both retired in 1985, with the largest pensions at that time of 132 rubles.

While working in a factory, my father received an apartment, but he refused, as there was already an apartment. And there, their trade union committee offered vouchers, in the 70s and 80s - to Japan and Canada, as I remember now, at a price of 3,000 rubles with air travel, but he also refused …

Both because of the fact that earlier, by the nature of his activity, he looked at the world, and because of the fact that there is nothing for him to look at from the capitalists. But my parents and I loved to travel around the country.

The salary of a laboratory assistant in some research institute was 90 rubles, and this, in my opinion, was the lowest salary in the country. With an average salary in the country of 170-190 rubles, about 85% of the population then belonged to the stable middle class under socialism.

The party state farm nomenklatura then numbered about one million eight hundred thousand people, from the district committee-district executive committee to the regional committee-republic committee-Central Committee. The salary of a union minister averaged 500-600 rubles, depending on the scope of work. A candidate member of the Politburo received (from "party gold") 600 rubles. Member of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee 800 rubles. General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee - 1100.

In 1985, in connection with admission to the evening department at the university, my expeditions ended and I "had" to become a teacher. With a salary of one and a half rates and a classroom leadership, I began to receive "beggarly" 140. Writing theses for graduate students helped out. A couple of diploma theses gave another steward a month.

With "perestroika" and "socialism with a human face," such diploma work has become almost the norm for some. Yes, and to squeeze something into the local newspapers, too, a penny fell.

With the release of the "Law on Cooperation" in 1988, it was possible to put together a cooperative. And then it began …

His hand, as they say, is the lord. Yes, and "help" in the form of prices for services arrived in time from Moscow. The salary began to fluctuate in the amount of 3,000 rubles to 15,000 per month. And the salary of the still Soviet majority in the country, up to the Pavlovian reform, was the same. As, however, and the prices of food. It is another matter that by the end of the 80s these products in many cities ceased to be sufficient, local deficits arose.

Have Gorbachevthe salary of the secretary general and the president totaled 3,000 rubles.

But, nevertheless, here are the prices I remember.

Bread - from 16 to 24 kopecks, a pack of "Prima" - 14 kopecks (I don't take the time of the "tobacco riots" because of its absence, as well as other cigarettes), I smoked Bulgarian "BT" for 80 kopecks ("Marlboro" or "Pall Mall" of Java production, when it appeared in 1989, cost one and a half rubles, this was the maximum), potatoes - 16 kopecks, milk - 24 kopecks per liter, a dozen eggs - 90 kopecks, a bottle of white table wine - 1.10, beef - 1p. 80 kopecks, tenderloin on the market - 5 rubles, Vodka Pshenichnaya - 5.30, prices for books ranged from 50 kopecks to 3-4 rubles, Dutch cheese at three rubles per kilo, half-smoked sausage - 6 rubles, swimming kit (mask, fins, a tube) cost 7.50, a Chinese thermos - 7-8 rubles, a Smena camera - 15 rubles, a ticket for the Moscow-Alma-Ata train - 34 rubles, an air ticket from Riga to Tashkent - 74 rubles, velvet pants "Montana" speculators - 300 rubles, jeans "Levi Straus" -250, body shirt - fifty dollars, going to a restaurant with a girl from 15 to 25 rubles, carpet 2 for 1.5 - 90 rubles, tape recorder "Mayak" - 300 rubles, tube color TV - 700 rubles, 1-room cooperative apartment - 3000 rubles, Moskvich-2140 - 7500 rubles (a relative in 1991, after Pavlov's "reform", bought it from speculators for 37000).

And the rent with all the amenities was 8-9 rubles for a "kopeck piece" per month. Now there is something like a joke: "Do you remember how much you paid for the apartment, no? And I don’t remember! Do you know why? We never paid for it, my wife went to the store for bread, at the same time she will pay for the apartment, and what is there to pay ?!

Even for the "middle class" life was acceptable and decent.

For me, the last decade of the Soviet system was generally paradise, not only from the moral point of view, but also from the material point of view.

Everyone, in general, thought that socialism continues, everything is within the framework of socialism. Much importance was not attached to what was being done above. The parties and the government were traditionally believed. I was not among the disaffected or dissidents.

In the "August putsch" came the first understanding that something had happened, but it was believed that Moscow would definitely figure it out. And soon they figured it out … before the collapse. And the feeling of disaster came on December 25, 1991, when in a hotel near Moscow I saw strong but crying 30-40-year-old truckers with clenched fists at the TV, where Gorby announced his resignation, and a fight in a local empty store over salt. which was the only one on empty shelves …