RUSSIA AND BRITAIN

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 78, Issue 7016, 7 February 1949, Page 5

RUSSIA AND BRITAIN

LIVING STANDARDS ' COMPARISON VIRTUALLY IMPOSSIBLE The following article was written by a staff correspondent of the Sydney Morning Hjrald:— To compare the living standard of two widely different countries as Russia and, for example, Great Britain is virtually impossible. It is impossible precisely because they are so different. z Britain has an advanced industrial society in which the common man, in spite of disgraceful black spots, enjoys a standard unprecedented in history until this century. Russia has a backward semi-prim-tive agricultural society, now being forcibly industrialised but still thinking, and for the greater part still living, in terms of the most elementary food and shelter, and with the ghastly spectre of famine and starvation never/far away. The only sensible way to look at it is to calculate the working time the Russian must devote to obtaining certain basic goods and then, in our heads, to compare the result with our own various situations.

The value of the rouble is a misleading thing to play with. Officially it stands at 20 to the pound sterling; but the purchasing power of 20 roubles is only a fraction of the purchasing power of the pojind even today.

Thus a good pair of boots or shoes may be bought in England for 50s, officially 50 roubles. But a very inferior pair of shoes, man’s or woman’s, costs in Moscow 250 roubles, or, at the official, rate of exchange, £l2 10s. Unless we know how much the Russians earn, that means nothing at all. If we take a £6-a-we.?k worker in England, we find that his opposite number in Russia is getting something like 100 roubles a week. That does not look too bad—at the official rate of exchange. But the critical question is: What can the Russian buy for 100 roubles ? We have already mentioned shoes and, if we compare the prices given above, we see at once that in order to buy one pair of shoes a Russian worker earning 100 roubles a w*eek has to devote the proceeds of two and a half week’s worK to that single purchase, while his opposite number in England can get a better article for only two and a half day’s work. That is a comparison that really means something. We see the same sort of picture wherever we look.

Given the rouble values you can make other comparisons for highly skilled workers or clerks earning 200250 roubles a week, or for many good managerial, official, or engineering posts earning 250-500 roubles a week, '■ popular actors and writers and topflight technical designers earning anything from 1000 to 3000 roubles a week.

The great mass of the people, however, average out at our original 100 roubles a week, and we must base our calculations on this.

In Russia a suit made of thin shapeless, inferior, shoddy material costs 450 roubles, or four and a half week’s work. A new suit of strong, decent material (though by our standards very rough and ready) costs 1500 roubles, or just under four months’ work.

A standard utility woollen dress costs 500 roubles, or five weeks’ work In a word, clothes are rationed by price. The Russian worker saves up for a new suit or a new dress as his English counterpart saves up for a television set.

Now let us look at food. We find that a pound of meat in Russia costs about 12 roubles, or about six hours’ work. A pound of butter costs just twice that. Even a pound of sugar, at 6 roubles, costs nearly half a day’s work; while a pint of thin Russian beer is the same, and a half bottle of vodka (the national drink) at 60 roubles represents over half a week’s work.

A pint of milk at 3 roubles is one and half hour’s work, while tea at 70 roubles a pound is very precious indeed. Even a pound of apples at 10 roubles .means something like five hours’ work.

Now imagine yourself a Russian, earning your 100 roubles a week, the equivalent of at least £6 a week in England, and work out how much of your weekly pay-packet will be required to purchase the basic rations for a family of four in England. You will then see why all Russian women have to work until they drop. Of course, as a Russian worker you would not think at all in terms of butter and margarine, except as the rarest treats. You would think in terms of bread, potatoes, and cabbage soup, sometimes with a lump of coarse beef floating in the stock, sometimes an egg (a day’s work for a dozen); you would drink a little weak tea and suck a rare lump of sugar as a special treatFood Costs High: Rent Low

And for your bread, nearly always black rye bread, you would have to pay a rouble for a pound of black, two roubles for a pound of grey, and three roubles for a pound of white. Since you yourself would eat upwards of 21b of bread a day, and your family would also want their share, that itself is quite art item out of your 100 roubles a week.. To set against the tremendous cost of food and the prohibitive cost of your clothes, you would pay so little rent that it would hardly count. That is one great saving in Russia, and it is that which makes the real wages a little higher than they look. But what you would gat for your rent would not be a little house, or even a flat of your own. At most it would be a single room for your whole familv. with a share in a communal kitchen. Far more likely it would be a single room into which you would be forced to take a lodger. Cheap Canteens in Factories

That goes for the town. In the country the peasants’ cottages are roomier and more private. The only other asset to set against the hardship of life in Russia is the cheap canteen meals in factories and offices. These, then, are the facts about the living conditions of the ordinary working man in Russia. They seem

very much less grim to the‘Russian than they do to us because the Russians can happily put up with things which no Englishmen would even consider putting up with. too, have the advantage of very highly-developed communal amusements, and they get much more out of these than we would. But even allowing for a difference of habit and custom, these facts should tell that, to put it mildly, the living conditions in the “workers’ paradise” are nothing to write home about.