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Soviet Union [USSR] Noncash Benefits and Access to Goods and Services
Besides wages, citizens received two types of noncash benefits.
The first, artificially low prices for food, transportation, and
housing, amounted to approximately 42 percent of the average salary
in 1986. These subsidies and other types of transfer payments were
available to all and were not awarded according to status.
Other types of noncash benefits were allotted according to
social position. For example, high-ranking party and government
officials received such benefits as chauffeurs, domestic staff,
living quarters (size and quality dependent on status), priority
tickets for entertainment and travel, special waiting rooms at
public places, and passes allowing them to jump lines to make
purchases. As a rule, those receiving the least pay received the
fewest noncash benefits. This group included unskilled workers,
lower-level white-collar and service workers, farm workers, many
pensioners, and the temporarily unemployed. Farm workers, who
generally received the lowest pay, were able to supplement their
incomes with the proceeds from their private agricultural plots.
Social position also determined access to goods and services,
an important benefit in a country where, as Matthews has written,
"Deprivation is a recognized but unpublicized feature of . . .
life." Those in the party, military, security, and cultural elites
had the right to shop at special restricted stores that required
either foreign currency or so-called certificate rubles. In such
stores, imported goods or goods not available in the public markets
could be purchased. The average citizen, in contrast, was obligated
to stand in line for hours at public markets where many goods,
including clothing and foodstuffs, were either in short supply or
unavailable. Some occupations, however, bestowed privileges that
were not officially recognized or that offered opportunities for
blat (see Glossary). For example, managers of businesses and
business activities had higher standards of living than their
positions implied because they could demand special favors in
exchange for the scarce goods and services they controlled. In
turn, shop personnel possessed low occupational prestige but
enjoyed high, albeit unofficial and sometimes illegal, fringe
benefits. In addition, some blue-collar occupations could be put
into this group.
Social position also played a significant role in the
allocation of living space. The perennial shortage of urban housing
meant that insufficient individual apartments existed for those who
desired them. Income played only a small role in housing
distribution because the state owned most of the housing and
charged artificially low rents. (A small number of cooperative
apartments were sold, but these were beyond the means of most
people.) The elite received the most spacious and best-quality
housing, often as a job benefit. The elite also possessed more
influential friends who could help them bypass the usually long
waiting periods for apartments. The average family, in contrast,
either shared an apartment with other families, using the bathroom
and kitchen as common areas, or lived in a very small private
apartment. A 1980 article in a prestigious Soviet journal on
economics stated that about 20 percent of all urban families (53
percent in Leningrad) lived in shared apartments, although for the
country as a whole this percentage was decreasing in the late
1980s. The housing situation for young unmarried, and often
unskilled, workers was worse. They often could find living space
only in a crowded hostel operated by the enterprise in which they
worked or in the corner of a room in a shared apartment. Until they
could find their own apartment, young married people often lived
with one set of parents. Housing in rural areas was more spacious
than that found in urban apartments, but it usually had few
amenities.
Other forms of unequal access that favored those of higher
social status included better holiday facilities, better medical
care, and better education for children. The special schools that
taught advanced languages, arts, and sciences were generally
attended by the children of the privileged. Official state honors,
both civilian and military, also brought benefits in the form of
better travel, lodging, and holiday accommodations.
Data as of May 1989
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