Poverty in the Soviet Society of the Postwar Years: Sources for the Study of Economic Characteristics. The Second Half of the 1940s - 1980s.

Scientific article

doi 10.28995/2073-0101-2025-2-542–559

For citation

Beznin, Mikhail A., Dimoni, Tatiana M., Poverty in the Soviet Society of the Postwar Years: Sources for the Study of Economic Characteristics. The Second Half of the 1940s - 1980s, Herald of an Archivist, № 2, pp. 542–559, doi 10.28995/2073-0101-2025-2-542–559

Beznin, Mikhail A., Dimoni, Tatiana M., Vologda State University, Vologda, Russia

Poverty in the Soviet Society of the Postwar Years: Sources for the Study of Economic Characteristics. The Second Half of the 1940s - 1980s.

Abstract

The article is devoted to the review of the source complex on the problems of the authorities' work with poverty in the Soviet society in the second half of the 1964s-1980s. This topic is part of the study of the living standards of the population in the USSR, but none of the authors of scientific works has presented a set of sources on the problems of poverty. The authors of the article consider the phenomenon of poverty as a reflection of distributive principles, which, in turn, were a systemic indicator of the level of exploitation of workers. The review of documents includes, first of all, “secondary”, analytical sources, created as a result of the study of budget surveys, data on salaries, one-time territorial surveys on these issues by representatives of the authorities and the scientific community. The study reveals that during the post-war forty years the problem of poverty and poverty alleviation was constantly in the sphere of active observation and decision-making by the governing bodies. The source review describes analytical documents on this issue, created under the auspices of the Central Statutory Administration of the USSR, as well as scientific teams of economists, sociologists and groups of political figures. The main part of the documents of the presented review was found in the fonds of the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History. These documents allow us to draw conclusions about the dynamics of the state of poverty and poverty, as well as the size of the low-income strata of the USSR and the social characteristics of this phenomenon. As the source complex testifies, poverty as a phenomenon that existed widely in the post-war period was generally eliminated by the mid-1950s. Low-income groups of the population were also decreasing. In 1960, the population group receiving the lowest level of wages (up to 35 rubles per month) accounted for about half of all families. In the mid-1960s the minimum wage level was raised and in the 1970s this group did not exceed a tenth of families. People's self-perception generally coincided with these figures: according to sociological surveys in the mid-1980s, about 11% of the country's population called themselves “poor” (“living from paycheck to paycheck”). The social groups included in the category of “poor and low-income” were, as a rule, collective farmers, representatives of health care, housing and communal services, and trade. The analytical documents named a large number of dependents in the family, low wages in certain branches of production as factors of poverty.

Keywords

Poverty, living standards of urban and rural population, wages in the USSR, poverty alleviation, analytical notes, income of workers, collective farmers and employees, statistics, social strata of the USSR.

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About authors

Beznin, Mikhail A., Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor, Vologda State University, Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities, Department of National History, Head of Department, Vologda, Russia, +7-817-272-52-70, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

ORCID 0000-0001-5152-796X

Dimoni, Tatiana M., Doctor of Historical Sciences, Associate Professor, Vologda State University, Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities, Department of National History, Professor, Vologda, Russia, +7-921-231-28-45, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

ORCID 0000-0002-9049-1469

Grant information

The research was supported by Russian Science Foundation grant No. 24-28-00077, “Institutions of Dependence and Systems of Labor Exploitation in Soviet Russia (1930s-1980s),” https://rscf.ru/project/24-28-00077/

The article was received in the editorial office on 16.09.2024, recommended for publication on 20.03.2025