- 24 Jun 2017 16:37
#14817874
It is very difficult to get a definitive answer about what living standards were like in communist countries.
In all Soviet films I have seen the living standards looked very good. Everyone is portrayed as living in an apartment. But films are never an indication of reality, especially not in a country where there was heavy censorship. If I were to judge the Soviet Union's living standards by those movies I would easily be able to conclude that all Soviet people lived a middle class life.
When we hear that living standards in the USSR and Warsaw Pact countries were lower compared those in Western countries, what does this actually mean? How big was the disparity? Were the Soviet peoples living a completely deprived existence, barely eating, absolutely no consumer goods, or was it just that they could not buy tons and tons of consumer goods whenever they felt like it?
In all Soviet films I have seen the living standards looked very good. Everyone is portrayed as living in an apartment. But films are never an indication of reality, especially not in a country where there was heavy censorship. If I were to judge the Soviet Union's living standards by those movies I would easily be able to conclude that all Soviet people lived a middle class life.
When we hear that living standards in the USSR and Warsaw Pact countries were lower compared those in Western countries, what does this actually mean? How big was the disparity? Were the Soviet peoples living a completely deprived existence, barely eating, absolutely no consumer goods, or was it just that they could not buy tons and tons of consumer goods whenever they felt like it?