Soviet Living Standards Seen in Steady Drop

A former Soviet planning expert today told an international conference on human rights that economic growth has ceased in the Soviet Union and there is no sign that the Communist superpower can catch up with the West.

“The Soviet system, which permits private enterprise on only a very limited scale, jeopardizes the basic needs of its citizens,” said economist Igor Birman. “Even Soviet official data showed that in 1982 there was no improvement in living standards.”

Birman, 56, who emigrated in 1974 and now lives in Silver Spring, Md., said he estimates that Soviet consumption per person is a fifth of that in America.

Many Years Behind

“If the Soviet Union continues to raise production of goods and services as it has done over the past 23 years, then it will catch up with the United States’ 1976 level in 62 years in fruit, 74 years in meat, 142 years in housing, 176 years in automobiles, 188 years in telephones and 298 years in roads,” he said.

Birman worked in planning institutes in Moscow and belonged to the Soviet Academy of Sciences’ council on mathematical economics. He was addressing the final session of the two-day Fifth International Sakharov Hearing, a group of scientists, lawyers and scholars monitoring human rights around the world.

The group is named after Soviet dissident Andrei D. Sakharov, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who is in internal exile at Gorky, east of Moscow.

Life Expectancy Drops

Australian physician Allan Wynn, the conference chairman, said Soviet life expectancy has gone down from a peak of 66 years for men to 62 years between 1966 and 1983, compared with 71 years for American men.

He said deaths from heart disease doubled in the Soviet Union in the last 20 years, while they were cut by half in the West, and he blamed poor medical facilities.

“Not one single important drug has been discovered in the Soviet Union in the past 30 years and it is an underdeveloped country in medical services,” he said.