1. Not really. It’s a double situation really. The first years were difficult for obvious reasons, so situation with food and basically every other single thing was unavailable . The years of the Great Patriotic war were difficult. 30-s as you can guess were difficult in some areas. Plus the last decade was here and there in terms of availability of things for reasons.

Other than that, things mostly depended on where you lived. I can’t say much for those who lived in town, but countryside was not too fancy. Noone ever suffered from lack of job, but day to day rations were rather simple and people were inclinded to leave for town where they could pursue better life and opportunities. Apart from something way high-techie or complex every single thing available in the West was more or less available to the regular customer. Cars and other means of personal transport might’ve not been too spread in the 50-s and 60-s, but later for example my grandpa even being a simple guy in the countryside got an actual motorcycle. Ask away for more specific things, if I know - I’ll share.

2. Yeah, kinda. Some people even nowadays still can’t grasp what SU really gave them if they manages to settle more or less good. Back then they were living their day to day lives without paying much attention pretty much like the majority of people lives nowadays.

Overall, I can give you one damn simple fucking comparison of how things are now vs. then. Again, from the countryside. Back in SU the region where my family fares from was a big agricultural thing. Everyone had job. Things were fine. You could always afford food and shelter in one form or another. Moving from countryside to town was fine, because you could get education/job quickly. Nowadays those who remained in the countryside are slowly dying out. Agriculture was pretty much abandoned and former fields were abandoned. There are still giant ruins you can see here and there. Villages themselves are rows of ruined houses with only a couple of them being populated. Younger people are barely educated, barely having food and only doing some rare hard work to pull through. Many of those who would be dying now of old age went on to drink back in the 80-s and 90-s and soon died of other obvious causes.