How the worker lived before the revolution

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

There are two opposing points of view regarding the question posed in the title of the question: the adherents of the first believe that the Russian worker eked out a miserable existence, while the supporters of the second argue that the Russian worker lived much better than the Russian. Which of these versions is correct, this material will help you figure it out.

It is not difficult to guess where the first version came from - the whole Marxist historiography tirelessly repeated the plight of the Russian worker. However, even among the pre-revolutionary literature there are many that supported this point of view. The most famous in this regard was the work of E. M. Dementieva "The factory, what it gives to the population and what it takes from it." Its second edition is circulating on the Internet, and it is often referred to by both bloggers and commentators who argue with them.

However, few people pay attention to the fact that this very second edition was published in March 1897, that is, firstly, a few months before the adoption of the factory law establishing an 11.5-hour day, and secondly, a set of books surrendered a few months earlier, that is, before Witte's monetary reform, during which the ruble was devalued one and a half times and, therefore, all salaries are indicated in this book in old rubles. Thirdly, and in the main, according to the author himself, "The study was made in 1884 - 85", and therefore, all his data are applicable only for the mid-80s of the last century.

Nevertheless, this study is of great importance for us, allowing us to compare the well-being of the worker of that time with the standard of living of the pre-revolutionary proletariat, for the assessment of which we used data from annual statistical collections, reports of factory inspectors, as well as the works of Stanistav Gustavovich Strumilin and Sergei Nikolaevich Prokopovich …

The first of them, who became famous as an economist and statistician even before the revolution, became a Soviet academician in 1931 and died in 1974, three years before his centenary. The second, who started out as a populist and social democrat, later became a prominent Freemason, married Ekaterina Kuskova, and after the February Revolution was appointed Minister of Food of the Provisional Government. Prokopovich received Soviet power with hostility and in 1921 was expelled from the RSFSR. He died in Geneva in 1955.

However, neither one nor the other liked the tsarist regime, and therefore they cannot be suspected of embellishing contemporary Russian reality. We will measure well-being according to the following criteria: earnings, working hours, food, housing.

Earnings

The first systematized data date back to the late 1870s. So, in 1879, a special commission, held under the Moscow governor-general, collected information about 648 establishments of 11 production groups, which employed 53, 4 thousand workers. According to Bogdanov's publication in the Proceedings of the Moscow City Statistical Department, the annual earnings of the workers of the Mother See in 1879 were equal to 189 rubles. In a month, therefore, an average of 15, 75 rubles came out.

In subsequent years, due to the influx of former peasants into the cities and, accordingly, an increase in supply on the labor market, earnings began to decline, and only from 1897 their steady growth began. In the Petersburg province in 1900, the average annual wage of a worker was 252 rubles. (21 rubles per month), and in European Russia - 204 rubles. 74 kopecks (17,061 rubles per month).

On the average for the Empire, the monthly wages of a worker in 1900 amounted to 16 rubles. 17 and a half kopecks. At the same time, the upper limit of earnings rose to 606 rubles (50.5 rubles per month), and the lower one dropped to 88 rubles. 54 kopecks (7, 38 rubles per month). However, after the 1905 revolution and some stagnation that followed from 1909, earnings began to rise sharply. For weavers, for example, wages rose by 74%, and for dyers by 133%, but what was behind these percentages? The weaver's salary in 1880 was only 15 rubles a month. 91 kopecks, and in 1913 - 27 rubles. 70 kopecks. For dyers, it increased from 11 rubles. 95 kopecks - up to 27 rubles. 90 kopecks

The situation was much better for workers in scarce professions and metalworkers. Engineers and electricians began to earn 97 rubles a month. 40 kopecks, the highest artisans - 63 rubles. 50 kopecks, blacksmiths - 61 rubles. 60 kopecks, locksmiths - 56 rubles. 80 kopecks, turners - 49 rubles. 40 kopecks. If you want to compare this data with modern wages of workers, you can simply multiply these figures by 1046 - this is the ratio of the pre-revolutionary ruble to the Russian ruble as of the end of December 2010. Only from the middle of 1915, in connection with the war, inflationary processes began to occur, but from November 1915 the growth in earnings overlapped the growth of inflation, and only from June 1917 the wages began to lag behind inflation.

Working hours

Now let's move on to the length of the working day. In July 1897, a decree was issued limiting the working day of the industrial proletariat throughout the country to a legislative norm of 11.5 hours a day.

By 1900, the average working day in the manufacturing industry averaged 11.2 hours, and by 1904 did not exceed 63 hours a week (excluding overtime), or 10.5 hours a day. Thus, in 7 years, starting from 1897, the 11.5-hour norm of the decree actually turned into a 10.5-hour norm, and from 1900 to 1904 this norm fell annually by about 1.5%. And what happened at that time in other countries? Yes, about the same. In the same 1900, the working day in Australia was 8 hours, Great Britain - 9, USA and Denmark - 9, 75, Norway - 10, Sweden, France, Switzerland - 10.5, Germany - 10.75, Belgium, Italy and Austria - 11 hours.

In January 1917 the average working day in the Petrograd province was 10.1 hours, and in March it dropped to 8.4, that is, in just two months by as much as 17%. However, the use of working time is determined not only by the length of the working day, but also by the number of working days per year.

In pre-revolutionary times, there were significantly more holidays - the number of holidays per year was 91, and in 2011 the number of non-working holidays, including New Year's holidays, will be only 13 days. Even the presence of 52 Saturdays, which became non-working since March 7, 1967, does not compensate for this difference.

Nutrition

The average Russian laborer ate a pound and a half of black bread, half a pound of white bread, a pound and a half of potatoes, a quarter pound of cereal, half a pound of beef, an eighth of lard, and an eighth of sugar a day. The energy value of this ration was 3580 calories. The average inhabitant of the Empire ate 3370 calories of food per day. Since then, Russian people have almost never received such an amount of calories. This figure was exceeded only in 1982.

The maximum was in 1987, when the daily amount of food consumed was 3397 calories. In the Russian Federation, the peak in calorie consumption was in 2007, when consumption was 2564 calories. In 1914, a worker spent 11 rubles 75 kopecks a month on food for himself and his family (12,290 in today's money). This accounted for 44% of earnings. However, in Europe of that time, the percentage of wages spent on food was much higher - 60-70%. Moreover, during the World War, this indicator in Russia improved even more, and the cost of food in 1916, despite the rise in prices, amounted to 25% of earnings.

Accommodation

Now let's see how things were with housing. As the Krasnaya Gazeta newspaper, which was once published in Petrograd, wrote in its issue of May 18, 1919, according to data for 1908 (most likely taken from the same Prokopovich), workers spent up to 20% of their earnings on housing. If we compare these 20% with the current situation, then the cost of renting an apartment in modern St. Petersburg should have been not 54 thousand, but about 6 thousand rubles, or the current St. Petersburg worker should receive not 29 624 rubles, but 270 thousand. How much money was it then?

The cost of an apartment without heating and lighting, according to the same Prokopovich, was per earner: in Petrograd - 3 rubles. 51 K., in Baku - 2 rubles. 24 K., and in the provincial town of Sereda, Kostroma province - 1 p. 80 k., So on average for the whole of Russia the cost of paid apartments was estimated at 2 rubles per month. Translated into modern Russian money, this is 2092 rubles. Here it must be said that these are, of course, not master's apartments, the rent of which cost an average of 27.75 rubles in St. Petersburg, 22.5 rubles in Moscow, and an average of 18.9 rubles in Russia.

In these master's apartments lived mainly officials of the rank up to the collegiate assessor and officers. If in the master's apartments, there were 111 square arshins per tenant, that is, 56, 44 square meters, then in workers there were 16 square meters. arshin - 8, 093 sq.m. However, the cost of renting a square arshin was the same as in the master's apartments - 20-25 kopecks per square arshin per month.

However, since the end of the 19th century, the general trend has been the construction of workers' dwellings with improved planning by the owners of enterprises. So, in Borovichi, the owners of a ceramic factory for acid-resistant products, the Kolyankovsky brothers, engineers, built wooden one-story houses with separate exits and personal plots for their workers in the village of Velgia. The worker could buy this housing on credit. The initial contribution was only 10 rubles.

Thus, by 1913, only 30.4% of our workers lived in rented apartments. The remaining 69.6% had free housing. By the way, when in post-revolutionary Petrograd 400 thousand master's apartments were vacated - who were shot, who fled, and who died of hunger - the working people were in no hurry to move into these apartments even for free. Firstly, they were located far from the factory, and secondly, it cost more to heat such an apartment than the entire salary of 1918.

Workers' barracks in Lobnya for the workers of the cotton spinning factory of the merchants Krestovnikovs

Factory school of the Partnership of Manufactories of Y. Labzin and V. Gryaznov in Pavlovsky Posad

Worker's room in the family barracks.