Living standards were a major concern for both Soviet Leaders. Khrushchev was firmly convinced that Soviet-style Socialism was perfectly capable of achieving the same quality of life and prosperity of the West without all its flaws. He allowed Soviet Citizens to travel and foreign tourists to come and visit Russia.
Gorbachev wanted the same quality living standards for the Soviet population but unlike Khrushchev he knew that major political and economic reforms needed to be implemented in the Soviet Union in order to do that. His model for quality of life was not the United States or even Western Europe, it was the social democratic states of Scandinavia.