Real cost of cameras in USSR?

Hello all! I've just found this site after recently purchasing a Zorki 4. I'm not a collector yet, but you never know...

Having the Zorki has set me wondering about just how affordable it would have been for an ordinary person in the USSR. According to the wiki catalogue on this site, a Zorki 4 like mine would have cost 47 rubles in 1970-73. Now, that doesn't mean much to me unless I know how much people earned, but that data has been surprisingly difficult to find on the web. Can anyone here tell me, for example, how much an ordinary worker's salary might have been in the early 1970s? Thanks in advance!

Hello Andy,

From personal knowledge, in 1980s for example a teacher would make around 100 roubles a month, salary around 400 roubles a month was considered really really good.
It may have been less in 70s..
Vlad

Actually just read somewhere - official averages:
in 1972 Engineer salary was 105 rubles plus around 30% monthly bonuses if plan was met.

So, during the seventies, an engineer had to spend 25 to 30% of his wages to buy a Zorki 4?
Russian cameras were not so affordable for soviet people…

Am I wrong?

Oh they were definitely not very affordable.. Smenas - maybe somewhat - but metal cameras like Zorki and especially Zenit - you had to save up to buy one!

Vlad

thanks for the quick reply Vlad! If an engineer had to spend 30% of his month's wage on a Zorki (with Jupiter-8 lens), I wonder what portion his colleague in western Europe would have had to spend to buy the same camera? Or a German or Japanese-made equivalent?

I'm interested because Soviet cameras are sometimes regarded (not by collectors obviously) as worthless. While it's true that they may not have the same qualities as other more expensive cameras, they fulfil the same function. I wondered whether the Soviet system produced cameras which were of sufficient quality, which were also affordable to large numbers of people who wanted one

Dear friends

Well, what was the price for a Leica M4 or M5 in the seventies and how much a German engineer earned at this time?

And an other point: The Zorki's were build for exportation to foraign markets (the cheaper Mir variant of the Zorki 4 was made for domestic market).

Best wishes - Guido

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Originally posted by Michel

So, during the seventies, an engineer had to spend 25 to 30% of his wages to buy a Zorki 4?
Russian cameras were not so affordable for soviet people…
Am I wrong?

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Excluding two short periods of overstocking, a cameras in the USSR was a hard-to-get thing (in deficit).

A measure of prices in the USSR was absolutely different from one in the West (capitalist) countries. A_b_s_o_l_u_t_e_l_y. So, it is impossible to compare it using your life experience.

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Originally posted by andyohare

If an engineer had to spend 30% of his month's wage on a Zorki (with Jupiter-8 lens)...

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Btw., an engineer wage in the USSR has been 2 or 3 times less than an skilled worker month's wage...

Around late 1970's my father (corporate lawyer) and my mother (accountant) were making some 80 roubles per months (each). A Zenit-E with I-50 was 70 rub, and with H-44 - 100 rub. It was also impossible to find in stores. Luckily my father worked for a large retail organization, so he could get one.

Smena-7 was quite cheap. I think 14 rubles, and it was often available. A roll of film was 35 kopecks (40 on a spool, 60 in a cassette).

But Zoom is right - it is hard to judge the price just by the numbers. In USSR expenses for apartment and utilities were very small, education and health care were free. So even with low salaries people often saved more money than they can spend, since practically all desirable items were absent from stores.

Like Zoom writes all costs in USSR were different from West. And most important is to know how much were the living costs like rent and food, because those make how much money you really get.

Best regards,
Juhani

Is it also true that buying the camera may have been just the beginning - that a there was an industry of techs fixing it before it would work ?

Also , that early Kievs were 'gifts' to high ranking Party officials ? This may explain a virtually unused 1952 KNeB II with careless scratches to the case and some small marks on the leather which are atypical wear .

thanks everyone - this is fascinating information for me. I grew up in the UK during the 1970s, and it was very difficult for us to imagine what life was really like in the Soviet Union. I had considered the implications of housing costs etc. - the real question is how much disposable income people actually had to spend on items such as cameras. If I was to meet a person today from a very poor African country and tell him how much my monthly salary is, he might imagine I could live like a king. However once I've paid my housing costs, and fed my family, and paid my regular bills, the story is very different. And that's before we consider actual avalability of such cameras...

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Originally posted by dee

Also , that early Kievs were 'gifts' to high ranking Party officials ?

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Paraphrasing Mikhail Bulgakov (from the novel "Heart of a Dog"*): Never watch a Hollywood movies about the USSR... ;)

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*) -- from this novel:
...And, God forbid -- never read Soviet newspapers before dinner.'
'M'mm... But there are no other newspapers.'
'In that case don't read any at all. Do you know I once made thirty tests in my clinic. And what do you think? The patients who never read newspapers felt excellent. Those whom I specially made read Pravda all lost weight.
'H'm...' rejoined Bormenthal with interest, turning gently pink from the soup and the wine.
'And not only did they lose weight. Their knee reflexes were retarded, they lost appetite and exhibited general depression.'
'Good heavens...'

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Originally posted by andyohare

If I was to meet a person today from a very poor African country...

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The African lives in the poor country. You live in expensive economy. But there and there the prices have about the same scale.
The USSR economics has been constructed on absolute other principles...

Unfortunately, these principles conducted to scarce economy... What does it mean? That the problem was not in absence of money. Quite the contrary. The problem was in a lack of the goods of shops. Demand was not satisfied... (Capitalism is a deficiency of money. The socialism is a deficiency of the goods. ;)
Thus that the considerable quantity of the goods was made in the USSR. Much more than it is consumed now, by the way.

Sorry, it's hard to me to explain this with my poor English...

Zoom, I always love that Bulgakov piece!

Dee, high-ranking thing did happen but it wasn't as dominant as you may think. Here's a story of my family's Kiev (IIIa I believe):

One day my grandfather (a famous city refrigerator mechanic) gets a call from one of his clients.
- Hello Yasha, in central UnverMag (supermarket) they just received a batch of Kiev photocameras!
My grandfather thinks wow these are Kievs (very good camera from what he heard) and he had no camera but no one knows about cameras in the family, but still it's A camera and it's AVAILABLE in store, I must get it and keep it maybe someday I'll need it or give it to my son. Son wasn't interested in the end, so the camera was kept new in a box for tens of years and then was sold in that condition when we were all leaving for United States. So the point is even if people didn't need something and there was a quality product simply available because of shortage people stock up,since it was always easier to sell than buy.

Vlad

Zoom, I understand your English perfectly well. My mistake was to imagine I could think of the relationship between the UK and the USSR in the same was I could understand a relationship between two countries today under the same (capitalist) system. I can see now that this is not the case.

I've read elsewhere that 1.7 million Zorki 4 cameras were produced. A lot of these were for export, but I wondered about the people in the USSR who could afford and obtain such a camera. Fedka's post below helped me greatly. It seems that the answer is that many people could have spared the money, if only the cameras had been in the shops!

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Originally posted by andyohare

Zoom, I understand your English perfectly well.

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Re-read my message. When you answer, I constantly edited it... ;)

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Originally posted by andyohare

I've read elsewhere that 1.7 million Zorki 4 cameras were produced. A lot of these were for export...

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You may see this data there:
http://www.zenitcamera.com/catalog/cameraproduction.html
(English names are on the right side).
The export volumes was rather not big. I don't have the exact data, but in any case not more than 30%.

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Originally posted by andyohare

Fedka's post below helped me greatly. It seems that the answer is that many people could have spared the money, if only the cameras had been in the shops!

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Yes. Level of monetary savings was very great (all money were disappeared in 1992).

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Originally posted by Zoom
Level of monetary savings was very great (all money were disappeared in 1992).

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I'm surprised you didn't have a revolution ;) Seriously though, I can't imagine how difficult that must have been for people.

When - in '92? :) There was a revolution. It was called "Perestroika" . Well and the stuff that followed like Putch.

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Originally posted by andyohare

I'm surprised you didn't have a revolution ;)

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It happens just after a revolution in 1991... ;) For what we fought, then we now have... (As I said: Capitalism is a deficiency of money... ;)