Salaries and Social Status in USSR

Officially USSR proclaimed equality of all people, but as one joke says, some were more equal than others.

In practice there was a complex hierarchy based on perceived value of one's work. On top of the official social pyramid were actually factory workers and miners. Government pampered them a lot and called them best and most important and so on. They were even paid better too, especially miners. Miners and factory employees had highest standing and highest official salaries.

That however did not mean they had highest quality of life or standards of living. Some other groups had better living standards for reasons I will explain below.

In contrast cleaners, street swipes and such had low standing and were indeed seen and dumb and uneducated.

Another sector that was look down upon was retail. They were seen as speculates who only peddle goods and do not produce anything.

Hard to tell where construction workers would be in that hierarchy, but likely somewhat below of factory workers.

White collar workers still had better working conditions and, in some cases, could steal shit so they often had it better.

In general one's ability to steal something from a warehouse or such had a much greater impact on standard of living and quality of life than official salary. Official salaries only ranged from 120 to 330 rubles or so.

Some white-collar workers however were seen as more important than the others, for examples military engineers who design weapons.

In general, there was a complicated hierarchy of how valuable or important was one's work seen.

Party members had the best lifestyle though. Their official salaries were small, and they had to pay a party membership fee out of it. However, they had a lot of perks of office to compensate for that: state cars, chaffers, premium government accommodation and summer houses, party owned seaside resorts, even special stores for party members only and so on. Because of all these perks Communist Party was the wealthiest organization in the USSR.

All that compromised politics as politicians were focused on making sure they will not lose out in shifting web of informal alliances rather than represented people or stood for anything. Because if they lose out and removed from office, they will lose all these juicy perks and become dirt poor.

Another group who had real high income and standards of living were smugglers of western goods. They could make a lot of money and be underground millionaires. There was risk however if they were exposed, as western goods were illegal. Some smugglers were even sentenced to death and executed. Smuggling Levi's jeans where as bad as smuggling cocaine as far as Soviet law was concerned.

Prices in USSR

A meme on reddit inspired me to write about pricing of the goods in the politicized economy of the USSR.

they priced goods cheap (cheaper than market value) because people like lower prices more than higher prices and government wanted to be popular and brag how they care more about working class by offering them goods at cheaper prices compared to fat cat greedy capitalist who bleed people dry to buy themselves another mansion

that had a predictable (for an economist) economic outcome of there being constant goods shortage (deficit was a word used a lot in USSR, every Joe Shmoe knew it): empty shelves in most stores and ques. When something good suddenly appears in stores it gets bought out almost immediately and only some unpopular shit sticks around.

however, government managed to take credit for low prices without being blamed for shortages. People were not economically savvy enough to associate artificially low prices with constant goods shortages, so even Gorby built his popularity on keeping prices down.

In 1991, when Yeltsin ended price regulation, prices gone up, but shortages ended. Some die hard commies still blame him for "robbing the people" by doing that. The country went from people have money to buy, but there is nothing to buy; towards there are goods to buy now, but people do not have (enough) money to buy them.

Second Cold War

Over the past 10 or so years we often see various events of backsliding of democracy and freedom, both imaginary and real. Often these events did not receive significant attention. After Spring of Nations or 89 and collapse of USSR Western world thought that freedom have won. It is only a matter of time before the last remaining enclaves of tyranny will finally liberalize and democratize. In 2000s even Chinese Hu Jintao committed towards limits on Presidential terms in power. There was of course no way for the defeated autocrats to somehow crawl back into power. 

That ended up an overly optimistic outlook. Couple of decades later in 2025 authoritarian forces in Russia, China and some countries around them managed to rebuild themselves and now want to preserve their autocratic rule over what is left of their former empire. Now Russia interferes in Georgia and Kyrgyzstan to impose autocratic rule there. China destroyed democracy in Hong Kong and now wants to do the same in Taiwan.

I too often was overly carefree of many actions by Putin and the other autocrats, believing they merely cling to power with lies and cheap tricks. After all they have their money in western tax heavens and their kids live in Western countries. There is no way they would want to destroy Western liberal order; all they want to keep their autocratic rule in their particular jurisdiction. 

That autocratic rule is bad in itself. In the past I wrote many articles, exposing how Putin's propaganda machine works and how one can dismantle it by hitting its weak points.

However, their continued persistence with the war in Ukraine and interference in Kyrgyzstan and Georgia suggests something else. Either Putin was out to restore autocratic neo-USSR (Eurasia) all along or people who wants that managed to sideline all other groups in power and now free to pursue their agenda.

Either way it is a dangerous turn of events that heralds beginning of the Second Cold War. Western Intelligence Agencies should start seeing Russia and China as enemies once again and begin working on defeating them in this new confrontation. 

This can be challenging. Sure, they are smaller and less rich now. However, they no longer have rebellious Warsaw Pact countries to deal with. Areas they control now are at average more backwards and more accepting towards tyranny. 

In contrast West is divided and confused due to wokeism and undue Russophilia in some circles. Current threats should not be underestimated.  Sure, there were communist sympathizers in the US even during Vietnam war and that did not destroyed democracy in the US. However, these anti-war protests managed to do what Viet Cong could not do on the battlefield, make US withdraw and leave Saigon government unable to defend itself. 

Unlike during USSR times, this time Russia does not limit itself to only pushing left wing ideologies but instead supports all malicious and destructive ideologies no matter where they stand on ideological spectrum. Various pro-Russian thugs, such as Antifa, radical ecologists, wokes, certain traditionalists and many more destroying West from within, like mite eats away at tree trunk. Intelligence Agencies should step up their game to stop these destructive actions.

West still have some allies in Russia itself as well as some other countries currently ruled by dictators of Eastern Club. However, levels of repression in Eastern countries prevent them from significantly challenging current regimes.

Dictators of the East can be defeated, however. Just like the last time West should break through the information blockade, censorship and propaganda to destroy them. China has this Great Firewall precisely because they fear that certain information available on the internet can destroy CCP's grip on power, that is why they get out of their way to suppress this information and prevent anyone living in China from seeing it.

Thus, the path for victory is simple, just bypass the firewall and let people access this "dangerous" information. Then see them rebel against their overlords, just like what Lelouch did to Chinese Federation in season 2. I even wrote several articles about exact structure of propaganda myth perpetrated by each of these countries and what exact information can take each of these regimes down. 

In Russia Alexey Navalny was trying to do just that and spread just such dangerous information to Russian public, that is why Russian police killed him. However, if anonymous sources would spread information about Putin's corruption and abuses, then Russian police will have no one to arrest.

Eastern Autocracy can be defeated, and I hope victory comes the sooner the better.

On Peace in Ukraine

 

Donald Trump victory in the US elections sparked renewed conversation about peace in Ukraine. Together with talks about peace there also surfaced a much murkier and more confusing topic about terms of any such peace. Different sides of conflict all have different views as to what a fair peace deal will look like, such differences in views might very well preclude any peace from being made.

I already predicted that instead of any negotiated peace the current situation with de-facto zones of military control on the ground would become de-facto reality. This is not the peace any of the sides really want but it's the only one either of them can achieve. 

Current de facto line of control would become a new frontier or a de-facto border between not just Russia and Ukraine but also between European Union and Western world on one hand and the eastern Eurasian Russian Chinese one. A new frontier of the Second Cold War. Kind of like Korean DMZ. I will cover Second Cold War in a separate article, here I will talk about Ukraine in particular.

This de facto military line of control is not perfect, but it is better than de-jure borders or any of the maximalist aims, professed by either side.

Letting Russia keep the territory it occupied may seem like a loss to Ukraine. However, a real loss would be losing sovereignty and being turned into a Moscow puppet, just like Belarus is. Losing some borderlands is much better than letting Moscow tell Kyiv what to do.

Both pro-Russian and pro-European side tend to overestimate their popularity and underestimate that of the opposing side. Everyone thinks that everyone else is much like their own neighborhood and if there are any different people, they are but a small minority. In reality the country is much more diverse than that.

Yanukovich era Minister of Education, Tabachnik, once proposed to make Galicia (West Ukraine) into its own country. He erroneously thought that pro-Western sentiment is limited to just that area of the country and by making it independent from the rest of Ukraine he can solve the political division and turn the rest of Ukraine into second Belarus. 

Reality is that pro-European sentiment spreads much further east than just Galicia. Even areas as far as Poltava, Sumy and Kremenchug are very pro-European and majority there speaks Ukrainian language daily. Even some mostly or partly Russophone cities like Dnipro or Odesa, would prefer EU over Eurasia. Donbas is rather unique it its Russophone monolingualism and Ukrainian language can be heard frequently in Dnipro, Odesa and even sometimes in Kharkiv.

On the other hand, pro-Ukrainian (European) side thinks that the whole conflict only happened because of history of Russification mixed with Russian propaganda aimed at advancing Russian Imperialist ambitions against Ukraine. They think that Ukraine already lost a lot in the past and it would be unfair to give Russia any more land that they already grabbed. Theya also thinks that if Putin's propaganda can be stopped, country can be united once again. Past Russification can be undone, and Ukraine will be happy and united again.

Reality is that Donbas, Crimea and Azov Sea coast were settled by Russian Empire in 19th century and almost no one there can understand Ukrainian language. It is areas with mixed population like Dnipro and Zaporizhya that de facto divide Ukraine pro-Russian and pro-European sides of the country. Even politicians such as Yulia Timoshenko and Volodymir Zelenskiy did not spoke Ukrainian language when they were children and learned it at later times in life.

In the past I wrote several articles about why current post-Soviet borders are not good and what better borders there could be in this region. I liked some here and you can find more if you search my blog.

Not only that, but current de-facto border has its advantages to Ukraine.

Back before Euromaidan and any wars with Russia when Ukraine had control over all of its de-jure territory, Ukrainian politics were dominated by constant geopolitical strife. Half of the country wanted to integrate with European Union and the other half with Russian Eurasia instead. Politics were dominated by this geo-political division. 

If Ukraine regains back all of its de-jure territories, this geo-political split will likely once again dominate politics in Kyiv. Pro-Russian people from currently Russia occupied lands will vote for anti-EU, pro-Russian parties that will work to prevent Ukraine from joining the EU and NATO. Someone like Yanukovych could again win election. That would mean that Ukraine will forever be stuck in a geo-political limbo between East and West. That is something that benefits neither west, nor Ukraine itself. 

Ultimately Ukraine needs to rid itself of its anti-European ballast and finally join EU and NATO. As much as you can argue that Donbas and Crimea are brainwashed by Putin and his TV, there is no simple and easy way to undo this brainwashing, Russian TV is free to air and broadcasting towers from Russia reach far into its neighbors' territory. All the Russophones who want to watch Russian propaganda are always able to tune it. As stupid as it is to believe Putin's lies about Banderites and Nazis in Ukraine, people of Donbas and Crimea choose to do so. It's time to stop trying to save them and simply let them join Russia they love so much.

On the other hand, Russia should not be allowed to dictate Kyiv what to do. People of Ukraine from Lviv to Kremenchug did choose Europe over their ties with Moscow. Euromaidan is definitive proof of that. It's an ultimate democratic expression of popular will. It will be unfair to betray these people who fought for freedom and their free choice of their future. 

Ukraine is Europe. Ukraine is not Eurasia or some brotherly nation of Russia. Thus, Ukraine should be allowed to join EU and NATO and Russia absolutely should not receive any Finlandization style concessions on this. 

Sovereignty of Ukraine should be guaranteed by Western military presence. Border between Ukraine and Russia occupied areas should be reinforced and patrolled by European or UN troops to prevent further fighting.

Ukraine joining European Union will benefit both sides enormously. It will improve quality of life in Ukraine while Europe will benefit from skilled and educated workforce that Ukraine has. It will also improve security of both sides. Ukraine will stop being vulnerable to Russian incursions and Europe will become bigger and its negotiation position with other international players will be stronger.

One last issue that remains are people who ended up on the wrong side of the East-West divide. There are some pro-Russian people left in Odesa and Kharkiv, on the other hand there are many pro-European people in Russian occupied areas as well as in Russia's core lands itself. 

A population swap should be arranged so that those who want to live in Europe could move to Ukraine while those who want to live in Russia could move there instead. Anti-Putin Liberals from Russian occupied areas as well as from Russia itself can take place of pro-Putin Eurasians in Odesa and Kharkiv.

Ultimately differences between different parts of Ukraine can only be solved by a fair division so that each side of the geopolitical divide can get their own country and move towards their desired objectives. Then each side can finally stop fighting tug of war and start building its future.

Hopefully these objectives can be achieved in the coming peace talks or at the very least on the ground. Glory to Ukraine.