Olga Semyonova Tyan-Shanskaya, one of the first Russian sociologists and statisticians, at the end of the 19th century studied the life of peasants in the Black Earth Region. It turned out that the sale of agricultural products even to a middle peasant family did not cover their expenses. Moreover, this money was not enough even to pay taxes (which, by the way, were high - 32% of total income). Only earning money on the land of the landowner, carriage and handicraft helped the family to make ends meet. The average monetary income of such a family with our money was 1,000 rubles. per person per month.
The study by Olga Semyonova-Tyan-Shanskaya "The Life of Ivan" provides good material about the life of the Russian countryside in the late 19th - early 20th centuries. I met with her a calculation of the expenses and incomes of a typical, moderately prosperous family in the Chernozem region ("A peasant family consisting of a husband, wife, old woman-mother's husband and three children, of whom one is a teenager (12 years old). Average income. One horse, one cow, two sheep").
The income of this family for a typical year was 77 rubles. Moreover, it is interesting that only 28 rubles were earned by the sale of agricultural products (sale of oats and livestock), the rest is the wages for work at the landowner, a driver, etc. not agricultural labor.
The expenses amounted to 81 rubles for the year. Of these, a fairly high share was spent on taxes: "duties" - 18 rubles, zemstvo tax 5 rubles. To this must be added the cost of maintaining a priest - 1 ruble. 85 kopecks - which could not be refused. Thus, 25 rubles were spent on taxes, or 32% of income. If it were not for extra earnings outside their household, then after paying taxes the family would have 3 rubles to live on for a year.
Another interesting point from the statistics of the Tien Shan. The farm did not have enough grain for baking (apparently wheat and rye), and they bought it for 9 rubles. Also, meat was bought for 4 rubles and fish for 2 rubles. In total - 15 rubles. Let us recall that the sale of agricultural products gave the family 28 rubles. If you subtract these 15 rubles for food from it, then the total income from work on your land was only 13 rubles. If you subtract 25 rubles of taxes from this amount, then the family would remain in the red (by 12 rubles). That is, labor on their own land for this family in the Black Earth Region generally became unprofitable. If there was no extra work on the side, such a family could be declared bankrupt.
The only explanation why such a family did not go to the city can only be that there is no need to pay rent for their hut (and in the city it is necessary for housing). Also, some of their products from the garden (potatoes, vegetables, some meat and grain) were free (food in the city would have cost the family more than in the village). Plus the payment for moving to the city and settling down - the majority of even middle-income peasants did not have savings for this.
I would like to note that we are talking about the economy in the Chernozem region - where rich lands yielded 2-3 times higher than in the Non-Chernozem region (this gap in yield often persists in today's Russia).
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Well, again, I will return to the typical misconceptions about "a rich life under the king." Peasants made up 85% of the population of Russia. The family described above is the basis of that peasantry (there were a few richer peasants, 20-25% percent - poorer, horseless or farm laborers). 77 RUB per family per year, when we transfer the royal ruble in the ratio of 700-1000 modern rubles, we will receive an annual salary for a family - and this is 6 people - 60-80 thousand rubles. per year, or 5-7 thousand modern rubles per month (1 thousand rubles per person per month).
Here you also need to take into account the living conditions of the peasants at that time. For example, a typical house of a peasant family at that time, according to the description of Semyonova Tyan-Shanskaya, is 6 by 6 arshins. Arshin is 71 cm. the area of the hut was 18 sq. m, of which up to 3 sq. m could be occupied by a stove. 15 sq. m for 6 people in this family - this is 2.5 sq. m per person. In winter, lambs and a calf lived in this hut with the people.
A special problem for the Black Earth Region, as Smyonova Tyan-Shanskaya writes, was the lack of fuel for the furnace. There was almost no firewood - because of the plowing for grain, the forest was almost cleaned in the Black Earth Region. For example, in the Tambov province for a hundred years, by the beginning of the twentieth century, only 10% of the forest from its original area remained. The stove was mainly fired with straw. In the studied family, straw for heating was purchased for 5 rubles for a year. They also drowned with weeds, occasionally with dried manure (when it was necessary to cook food).
Semyonova Tyan-Shanskaya writes about the nutrition of the peasants:
“In hunger, peasant lunches and supper are reduced to one lunch or dinner with stale bread (soaked in water). Quinoa is mixed into the bread. In hunger, the man, of course, is strenuously looking for some kind of earnings or goes to beg with the whole family. Hungry children, when the snow melts, eat all kinds of roots and herbs (sorrel, porridge). They cook cabbage soup from a dream.
And in good years the same peasant (who was ready to get into the yoke for a penny when there was no bread) lies on the stove, and sometimes you can't lure him to work at any cost."