Food and services were usually very cheap. One year rent could be 60-70 roubles. So a family of two people with below average salary (say 150+150) would have had to spend only 20% of their shared one month's income to pay their YEAR rent. Many food products cost mere kopecks. Books (and people did read a lot) were also not expensive. BTW, newspapers were so cheap (often 0.01-0.03 roubles), that my Granny once bought me a few kilos of new newspapers to bring to school, when we had to bring some old paper for a paper recycling competition. ))))

On the other hand some things were ridiculously expensive (those that were considered unnecessary luxury by the state). For example the cheapest car cost around 3000 roubles, and a good one cost much more (more than 10000). The upside of this unbalance was that the state spent a great deal of money to develop a public transportation system, and you literally could get anywhere by public transport.