Sept. 1, the official start of the school year, has come and gone, and it's time to sum up how much it cost parents to get their kids equipped for going back to school.

The good-old-bad days of 1-kopek pencils, 2-kopek notebooks, 15-kopek school lunches and free textbooks, and other "advantages of socialism" are history.

In the Soviet era, most parents could easily afford to equip their kids for school because the costs rarely exceeded 50 rubles – about 30 percent of the average monthly wage – and were not viewed as significant to the family budget. Besides, families with three or more kids enjoyed huge discounts and state subsidies.

Needless to say, there were few choices when it came to notebooks, schoolbags and other paraphernalia, which was well in line with the homogenization that was a key element in the Soviet Union's upbringing and lifestyle.

Uniform was mandatory – gray suits for boys and brown dresses for girls – and was generally disliked by the students. Girls often tried to modify it, mostly by shortening the skirts.

More often than not school administrations turned a blind eye to this practice, but some teachers, especially those of the Stalin-era generation, could go as far as to raise the question of expelling a girl from school for such "incompliance."

It is ironic that the much-hated Soviet-era school uniform seems to be experiencing a rebirth nowadays, though in a rather unusual way. In a street poll conducted in Moscow by a popular weekly tabloid Express-Gazeta more than 60 percent of men named the Soviet-era school uniform the sexiest women's outfit and an object of their erotic fantasies.

As such, uniforms are no longer mass-produced, but Moscow's procuring agencies promptly responded by ordering them from private tailor shops.

Uniform is no longer mandatory at most Russian schools (except some private schools), and each student is free to choose what to wear – of course, within sensible limits. A modest outfit for a girl or a boy of school age costs around $100-150, not including winter clothes.

Around $50 will be required for notebooks, pens, pencils, crayons and other paraphernalia, while a stylish, durable and convenient satchel or backpack may cost as much as $30.

Ordinary textbooks are quite cheap ($1-3) and are still provided free at some schools, but if your child studies at a school with a comprehensive foreign language course you will have to spend around $100 to buy various dictionaries, grammar and study guides.

To add to these already heavy expenses – especially given that the average monthly wage in Russia is currently $134 – let's recall that we live in the IT age, meaning that every kid should become acquainted with computers as early as possible. Most schools have computer classes nowadays, but there are usually no more than one or two PCs per 10 students.