Russian real wages before and after 1917
Interesting study on Russian real wages before and after 1917.
The paper measures real wages in St Petersburg, Moscow, and Kursk over 1853-1937. Workers in construction and large scale industry are studied. For the imperial period and the NEP, new series of prices are collected from archival and printed sources, and these radically revise previous measures of inflation. Russian living standards grew little between 1853 and 1913, but doubled between 1913 and 1928 due to the exchange rate, price, and employment policies followed by the regime. Real wages dropped to their pre-War level between 1928 and 1937, as the social surplus was mobilized for the industrialization drive.
The study finds that (with the possible exception of St. Petersburg) there was little growth in real wages in 1853-1913. This is despite relatively strong growth in output and GDP per capita; there was no "trickle down."
However, between 1913 and 1928, real wages increased by as much as 100% (and possibly more!), without significant increase in output per worker.
1928–37 saw extreme inflation and real wages dropped. In 1937, working class living standards had declined all the way back to 1880.
This immediately made me think of From Farm to Factory and it's argument that the New Economic Policy was relatively successful and Stalinist industrialisation achieved little for the bloodshed. Coincidentally enough (or perhaps the exact opposite) it turns out Robert Allen is the author of both this article and that book.
It seems clear though, that stripping away of feudal privileges in place of even fairly tenuous market relations (as per the NEP) has substantial redistributionary and positive effects. Stalinist industrialisation on the other hand can be viewed as forced investment, depriving people of standard of living for (hoped for) future benefit (if you live to see it). The issue of of course, that such a large amount of capital was misallocated and power systems were so entrenched, that the investments quickly became outdated and stagnation and eventual decline followed within a few brief decades. So another win for organic, bottom up growth rather than an authoritarian imposition.