Back to the USSR: what kind of pension did parasites, prisoners and collective farmers receive in Soviet times?

According to the law, current insurance (that is, ordinary) pensions are assigned to those who have at least 15 years of work experience and have accumulated more than 28.2 pension points. All others who do not fit into this framework can only count on social pensions. Which, as a rule, are indexed annually, but, as a rule, by a smaller percentage than insurance ones. And which are equal to the cost of living in a particular region. On average, last year it was 12,562 rubles per month.

There are over 4 million people receiving social pensions in Russia. This number includes disabled people, those who have lost their breadwinner and objectively find themselves in a difficult life situation. But there are also many who never worked anywhere, did not care about their old age, and, in general, wasted their lives. After all, unlike the USSR, we do not have laws on parasitism, people are left to their own devices. But were there such irresponsible and carefree citizens in the Soviet Union?

For a well-deserved rest with witnesses

We looked into history: what was the situation with pensions in different periods of the Soviet past?

Immediately after the revolution, in 1918, they were assigned only to disabled Red Army soldiers, and two years later (in 2020) this benefit was given to other figures who had special services to the revolution.

It is clear that in the subsequent decades of Soviet power, pension provision gradually covered all segments of the population. But there is no need to say that Soviet citizens could live comfortably after they retired. Back in the 1970s, the average pension on collective farms (namely, on them, not on state farms) was 14 rubles per month. To understand: the average salary for the entire national economy then was, according to official statistics, 122 rubles, and in agriculture – 101 rubles. In fact, collective farm pensioners were doomed to live in poverty, which naturally aroused people’s dissatisfaction, which was expressed, in particular, in numerous complaints and letters to the CPSU Central Committee.

According to Associate Professor of the Russian University of Economics. Plekhanov Lyudmila Ivanova-Shvets, the work experience of Soviet citizens was divided into collective farm and industrial. And things were very difficult for the villagers.

“To establish length of service, a retiring collective farmer had to bring several witnesses who would confirm that at some period the person actually worked on their farm,” she says. – From time to time, collective farmers’ pensions were raised, but if you look at the statistics of that period, they were ridiculous: 8 rubles a month, 14, 20…

Let’s turn the pages of history and move to the era of developed socialism, 1985. The average pension in the country at that time was 90 rubles per month; in the city it ranged from 70 to 120 rubles. And the average salary at that time was 190 rubles.

The country practiced personal pensions for those who particularly distinguished themselves in the construction of socialism. Thus, republican pensioners received 160 rubles per month. Local pensioners (there were some) – 132 rubles. But then it was believed that being “local” was more profitable, because they were also provided with various benefits that republican veterans did not have. The generals of the Soviet army received payments of more than 250 rubles.

But this “sweet” old age concerned only certain privileged categories: military leaders, senior party and Soviet officials…

Ordinary Soviet citizens lived a slightly different life in old age. The minimum pension in 1985 was… 35 rubles. It can be considered an analogue of the current social one. It was assigned to those who did not have enough work experience, which according to Soviet rules was at least 20 years. Which is generally strange for that time. In the Soviet Union, everyone had to work; the slogan was “he who doesn’t work, doesn’t eat.” And how in such an organized society there were people who did not have enough work experience (after all, parasitism was punishable by law!) is not clear.

But they still existed. For example, housewives. After working in production for 5-10 years, they successfully married and became dependent on their spouse. Or the so-called “scourges”: enterprising people and jacks of all trades. They traveled around the Russian outback to do the work – to do work that the local population did not undertake, but which was important for the development of enterprises or territories. It is clear that they received hard cash for their work, did not pay any taxes and did not even know what a work book was.

They made good money, and in their free time from work they caroused to the fullest. But, as you know, there is never too much money. And in their old age it turned out that they did not have enough experience to accrue a full-fledged pension, let them rejoice at these 35 rubles a month. By the way, this amount – an analogue of the current social pension – was not indexed or increased during the Soviet years. After all, according to official statistical data, there was no inflation in the country then…

What was 35 rubles at that time? We asked those who still remember Soviet times. This is a scholarship for students whose entire family helped them get an education. Realizing that 35 rubles is nothing, it will not be enough, even if you buy margarine instead of butter, and liver sausage instead of “Odessa” sausage. There were also simply parasites in Soviet society, social parasites, as they were called then. Which were periodically caught by law enforcement agencies on the streets and in taverns. The first time they had educational conversations with them, and, it seems, after the third such detention, they were forcibly evicted, by decision of the district people’s court, for up to 5 years beyond the 101st kilometer of the regional center – to the labor front. Where, if they didn’t run away, they built cowsheds on collective farms or dug potatoes during the harvest season. The time spent working beyond the 101st kilometer was counted as work experience.

“The security officers took away my pension”

There is a special story with citizens who were imprisoned and were applying for a well-deserved retirement. Their work experience was not counted, although they, presumably, did not sit idle in Soviet camps. They felled wood in the Siberian taiga or sewed mittens in the Mordovian colonies. “The security officers took away my pension,” experienced prisoners said in those days.

But for politically repressed persons, after Stalin’s death, continuous work experience in the camps was counted. Since they served their time somewhere far away and worked in logging fields, their pension, taking into account northern and other coefficients, was often even higher than that of the officers who guarded the inmates.

“But only if they have been rehabilitated,” explains Pavel Kudyukin, a member of the Council of the Confederation of Labor of Russia, formerly Deputy Minister of Labor of the Russian Federation. Pavel Mikhailovich knows about this procedure first-hand. In 1982, he was arrested for anti-Soviet activities and spent more than a year in Lefortovo prison. However, on the eve of the trial, he was pardoned by the Presidium of the Supreme Court of the RSFSR and was released.

“But then I was not rehabilitated,” he recalls. – This happened only in 1991, when the corresponding law was passed. They restored my work experience, pension points, paid me a one-time compensation proportional to my time in prison, and even provided me with some benefits. Which I could take in kind or in cash.

Kudyukin says that in Soviet times, pensions were paid not from the Social (Pension) Fund, as today, but directly from the federal budget – through separate social charges on the wage fund. According to him, often five years before retirement, employees who were in good standing were raised by their bosses so that they could receive more pension payments. Then they were calculated based on earnings for the last five years. And business leaders, as a rule, had the opportunity to reward their employees who, in their opinion, deserved it.

But as for pensions for those who did not have enough work experience, they might not have been granted pensions at all.

Lyudmila Ivanova-Shvets shares the same opinion.

– I can’t say for sure, but at some point such citizens, “asocial elements,” were not paid pensions at all. If they could not prove the existence of work experience, at least a short one. Their survival into old age was their own business.

What to take today

In general, it turns out that with all the equality in Soviet times, the current social pension (12.5 thousand) is better in purchasing power than 35 rubles in 1985. No wonder it is at the subsistence level. This means that it is still possible to live on it – after all, this subsistence minimum did not come out of thin air, it was calculated by entire institutes based on medical data on calorie intake.

But, according to Soviet veterans, it was impossible to survive for 35 rubles. To understand: in 1985, a kilo of sausage then cost 2.69 rubles, cheese – 2.34, meat – 1.89, a dozen eggs – 1.03 rubles. The simplest and cheapest lunch in a catering canteen (set menu) cost somewhere around a ruble. That is, the pension “minimum wage” was enough for one meal per day. But for an organism, especially an elderly and hardly healthy one, this is clearly not enough.

In rural areas, such recipients were helped by a vegetable garden, domestic animals, and trade in natural products on the market: milk, vegetables and meat. After all, back then they didn’t know what chemical flavoring agents or food flavoring agents that are widely used today were.

It was more difficult in the city; we had to rely on the help of our relatives. Or collect bottles from doorways. By the way, a good business could be made in glass containers. Empty bottles were accepted for 12 kopecks apiece, and in a day on the street or in the park you could collect two or three rubles.

In a word, one should not idealize the past from the heights of today: many Soviet pensioners had a hard time. But the pension system of that time had one advantage, which, according to Lyudmila Ivanova-Shvets, would be a good idea to adopt for the current government.

“If after retirement a person continued to work, then his pension was periodically raised, because his length of service increased, and he made pension contributions,” she explains. – Today the government refuses to index payments to working pensioners. But it would be possible to remember and apply that Soviet experience. Especially now, when the work of pensioners is especially in demand in our economy, which is experiencing a noticeable shortage of personnel.