"The standard of living and human development in the Soviet Union in the interwar period", a report by Ilya Voskoboinikov at the conference “Baltic Connections 2022”

 On June 17, in the Finnish city of Jyväskylä, Ilya Voskoboinikov presented his new study "The standard of living and human development in the Soviet Union in the interwar period".
Over the past few decades, economists have been actively discussing the question of how to measure changes in human development. The usual indicators of economic growth and the level of well-being, based on the concept of per capita gross domestic product, are related to income and consumption levels, but poorly reflect other important dimensions of human development—health, education, and the institutional environment. The solution to this problem was the emergence of various human development indicators and indices
Such an integrated approach can give a fresh perspective on the question of what changes in the standard of living and in the development of human potential took place in the USSR in the turbulent 1920s and 1930s and the extent to which these changes varied between the union republics. This is particularly interesting given the discovery and publication of new population and production statistics in recent years. During the years of the NEP and, in particular, industrialization, the USSR demonstrated high rates of economic growth according to different estimates used in the literature today. Significant achievements were observed in education and health care: literacy and the number of schools and universities grew, as did the number of doctors and hospitals. The results of which can be seen in the noticeable increase in life expectancy in the USSR which occurred in the 1950s. Collectivization, famine, and repressions remained significant trials. What was new in the report was the consideration of the problem at the level of individual union republics and showing the extreme heterogeneity of living standards. For example, the share of the urban population in the Central Asian republics grew much more strongly than, for example, in Russia or Ukraine