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Comment by ajross | Hacker News Reader

> [Western-driven reconstruction was] complete disaster for both your average Russian person

I think that's overstating the case. In fact the "average Russian person" was living in destitute poverty through most of the cold war, and none of that meaningfully changed with the advent of a market economy. Except that Russians of the 2000's could get eat better food and watch (much) better TV.

It's absolutely true that most of the western aid ended up hurting and not helping. But the bar was very, very low to begin with.

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> was living in destitute poverty through most of the cold wa

Genuinely asking, did you live East of the Wall back then?

Because I did live East of the Wall (not in the former USSR, though), and I can assure you that we were most certainly not living in "destitute poverty" (my dad was a civil engineer, my mum had graduated from a hydro construction faculty). My parents did end up living in destitute poverty, as in having to get back to literally subsistence agriculture in order to survive, but that only came in the second part of the '90s, once democracy had already been in place for a few good years (and democracy had come with privatizations and price liberalizations).

This is baloney. I was in Russia for a half year around 95-96. The standard of living was much deteriorated from Soviet times, especially for people on fixed incomes (basically almost everyone over the age of 50), and nobody hesitated telling me that.

People in the soviet union definitely did not live in poverty during the cold war.

Average Russian ranked in top 30 for standard of livings and in the first two decades after the war gdp grew more than in US. Richer countries like baltics ranked among the top 20 at times during soviet times. It was definitely not even in all soviet countries and regions, but that's not unlike other countries or regions.

That's ridiculous. The average Russian in the cold war was living a pretty okay life materially speaking. Far from destitute poverty. The economic crash in 1991 was so devastating it led to millions in excess mortality.

You're kidding. Watch a Soviet movie, estimate the level of poverty people lived - if the difference with reality was too great, people wouldn't watch them.

Big part of Putin's politics is to appeal to the older generation who remembers the Soviet Union and want it be back. So at least those people do no consider it as a poverty and they think it was better back then. Not even comparing to the modern Russia but comparing to the modern West.

(not agreeing with them, just pointing to the fact)

Check life expectancy of russians… it is not the same… it has gone worse.

Unimpressed. How much worse? USA life expectation went worse for last couple of years - is it enough argument for the lack of an argument?

It went from 69 years to 65 in 2005 when it started rising again. However life expectancy in the USSR seems to have been mostly stagnant since the 1960's, so I'm not sure the situation was that great in 1990.

I tried googling

Search Term : Result

Life expectancy Russia 1990 : 68.89

Life expectancy Russia 2019 : 73.08

For reference, in the US:

Life expectancy US 1990 : 75.21

Life expectancy US 2019 : 78.79

I dunno nothing really stands out. It looks like Russians benefited a little bit more, but Americans were starting from a higher baseline so it makes sense that gains would be harder to come by.

2019 was selected rather than 2021 for obvious reasons.

You need to Google for males specifically, both for cultural and historic reasons.

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