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Soviet Union [USSR] Monetary Compensation
Within the general pay hierarchy, the order, going from the
highest to the lowest level of pay, was as follows: the upper crust
of the political and artistic elites; the professional,
intellectual, and artistic intelligentsia; the most highly skilled
workers; white-collar workers and the more prosperous farmers; the
average workers; and, at the bottom, the average agricultural
laborers and workers with few skills. The policy of wage
differentiation, put into practice in the 1930s, has continued into
the late 1980s. Western scholars, however, have disagreed about the
exact level of such differentiation. During the 1970s, the salary
ratio of the highest 10 percent of all wage earners to the lowest
10 percent has been estimated as ranging from four to one to ten to
one. Dissident Soviet historian Roy Medvedev has stated that within
the same enterprise the salaries of senior executives ranged from
ten to fifty times that of workers. Most industries had six grades
of pay, and most workers had incomes near to but not at the bottom
of the pay scale (see
table 18, Appendix A).
As a group, leaders in the government, party, and military
received the highest pay. In February 1989, the editor of a Soviet
journal admitted to a Western reporter that the top marshals and
generals in the Ministry of Defense earned the highest salaries, as
much as 2,000 rubles (for value of the
ruble--see Glossary) per
month. Gorbachev, the head of the Soviet state and the CPSU, was
said to receive 1,500 rubles a month, while other Politburo members
earned 1,200 to 1,500 rubles a month. Another Soviet official has
acknowledged that entertainers and other artists with nationwide
recognition received about 1,000 rubles a month, as did seasonal
construction workers, whose work sent them to various areas of the
country. Western sources have estimated that the government leaders
at the republic level earned 625 rubles a month. Those receiving
high incomes often were awarded extra pay in the form of a
"thirteenth month" or "holiday increment."
At the lower end of the pay scale were those workers employed
in what one Western sociologist called the "traditionally neglected
economic areas," which not only paid lower wages but also awarded
smaller bonuses and fringe benefits. In the 1980s, an estimated 7
million people worked in low-paying industrial sectors, such as
light industries (textiles, clothing, and footwear) and food
processing. Another 30 million workers were employed in low-paying
jobs involving retail trade, food service, state farming,
education, public amenities, and health care. Those who performed
unskilled supportive functions, the so-called "assistant workers"
and "junior service personnel," such as janitors, watchmen, and
messengers, also received low wages, as did office personnel in all
sectors. And although the income of collective farmers had improved
greatly since the 1960s, their average monthly income in 1986 was
only 83 percent of the average wage of 195.6 rubles.
Not all individuals in positions requiring higher or
specialized education were paid more than those requiring less
education, even though they received greater prestige. Low-paid
specialists included engineers, veterinarians, agronomists,
accountants, legal advisers, translators, schoolteachers,
librarians, organizers of clubs and cultural events, musicians, and
even physicians. Women dominated these professions (see
table 19, Appendix A). In 1988 the average monthly wage of medical personnel
who had completed secondary or higher education was 160 rubles, or
82 percent of the average wage.
Lack of official statistics made it difficult to determine the
number of Soviet citizens living in poverty. Until Gorbachev
assumed power in 1985, Soviet officials claimed that poverty could
not exist in their country, although they did admit to the problem
of "underprovisioning" (maloobespechennost'). In the late
1980s, however, Soviet economists acknowledged that 20 percent of
the population lived under the poverty threshold, which was
estimated at 254 rubles a month for an urban family of four. Mervyn
Matthews, a British expert on Soviet poverty, estimated that 40
percent of blue- collar workers and their dependents lived below
the poverty threshold. Matthews calculated that in 1979 the poverty
threshold was 95 percent of the average income of a family of four
that had two parents working outside the home. Similar figures for
the late 1980s were unavailable in the West. Many pensioners
likewise appear to fall under the official poverty level. The 56.8
million pensioners in 1986 received an average of only 38 percent
of the average wage, while pensioners from collective farms
averaged only 25 percent
(see Soviet Union USSR - Welfare
, ch. 6).
The official statistics reflected income obtained from the
state-controlled economy. They did not include income that was
obtained legally or illegally outside of the official economy
(see Soviet Union USSR - Nature of the National Economy
, ch. 11). Unofficial income included
earnings from such varied sources as private agricultural
production, goods produced on official time with company resources
and then sold privately, and profit realized from illegal currency
exchanges. Western specialists had little information on the exact
extent of this activity but acknowledged that it was widespread,
especially in Soviet Central Asia and the Caucasus. However, the
extent to which income derived from unofficial sources raised the
per capita income of the average Soviet citizen in 1989 was
undetermined.
Data as of May 1989
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