Comradeship // Freechat

To add to what others have already said:

There's that declassified CIA report which says Soviet citizens ate or at least had access to more calories than their US counterparts by the 1980s.

Then there's the fact that housing was effectively free.

They weren't, but it's still a pretty big contrast between the 60s (which started of course in 1953) and even the mid-late 70s. The problems didn't start with Gorbachev

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1646771/pdf/amjph00269-0055.pdf

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1646824/pdf/amjph00253-0110b.pdf

(Commentary thereon.)

ETA: In research published after the twentieth century, Elizabeth Brainerd used archival and anthropometric data to provide a detailed analysis of living standards in the U.S.S.R., admitting that for all their faults, the Soviets still achieved

Remarkably large and rapid improvements in child height, adult stature and infant mortality [and] significant improvements likely occurred in the nutrition, sanitary practices, and public health infrastructure.

She also states that

the physical growth record of the Soviet population compares favorably with that of other European countries at a similar level of development in this period.

And finally,

The conventional measures of GNP growth and household consumption indicate a long, uninterrupted upward climb in the Soviet standard of living from 1928 to 1985; even Western estimates of these measures support this view, albeit at a slower rate of growth than the Soviet measures.

This documentary might help paint a picture even if it's not your main source of statistics and such: The Human Face of Russia (1984) - society and everyday life in the 1980s USSR

The filmmakers are from Australia and they go to various places in the Soviet Union asking people about typical quality of life questions like price of rent, bus fare, work, having a look at farms, etc.

Universal Healthcare, something no American has ever known.