The whole Marxist historiography has tirelessly reiterated the plight of the Russian proletariat
Recently, they have often begun to remember how the worker lived in the Russian Empire before October 1917. There are two opposite points of view on this topic: the adherents of the first believe that the proletariat eked out a miserable existence, while the supporters of the second argue that the working people lived before October much better than now.
It is not difficult to guess where the first opinion came from - the whole Marxist historiography tirelessly reiterated the plight of the Russian proletariat. However, even among the pre-revolutionary literature there are many that supported this point of view.
For example, the work of E. M. Dementyeva "The factory, what it gives to the population and what it takes from it." Its 2nd edition is circulating on the Internet, and it is often referred to. However, few people pay attention to the fact that this very 2nd edition was published in March 1897, i.e., firstly, a few months before the adoption of the factory law establishing an 11.5-hour day, and secondly, the book was handed over to the set a few months earlier, i.e. before Witte's monetary reform, during which the ruble was devalued by one and a half times and, therefore, all salaries are indicated in this book in old rubles.
Thirdly, and most importantly, according to the author himself, “the study was carried out in 1884-1885,” and therefore, all his data are applicable only for those years.
Nevertheless, this study is of great importance, because it allows 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 were used data from annual statistical collections, reports of factory inspectors, as well as the works of S. G. Strumilina and S. N. Prokopovich.
The first of them, who became famous as an economist and statistician even before October, became a Soviet academician in 1931 and died in 1974.
The second, who began as a populist and a 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.
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However, neither one nor the other liked the tsarist regime, and therefore they cannot be suspected of embellishing contemporary reality. We will measure well-being according to the following criteria: earnings, working hours, food and housing.
Let's start with making money. The first systematized data date back to the late 70s. XIX century. Thus, in 1879, a special commission under the Moscow governor-general collected information on 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 Moscow workers in 1879 were 189 rubles. In a month, therefore, 15.75 rubles.
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. (RUB 17.061 per month).
On the average for the empire, the monthly wages of a worker in 1900 amounted to 16 rubles. 17.5 kopecks At the same time, its upper limit 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, wages began to rise sharply. For weavers, for example, wages increased by 7%, for dyers - by 13, but what was hidden behind these percentages?
The weaver's salary in 1880 a month was only 15 rubles. 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 receive 97 rubles a month. 40 kopecks, higher artisans - 63 rubles. 50 kopecks, blacksmiths - 61 rubles. 60 kopecks, locksmiths - 56 rubles. 80 kopecks, turners - 49 rubles. 40 kopecks.
Naturally, the bare numbers do not say anything - they need to be compared with the modern wages of workers. To do this, these figures should be multiplied by 1046 - this is the ratio of the pre-revolutionary ruble to the Russian ruble (as of December 2010, i.e. before the next crisis).
For comparison, let's take turners: with today's money they would receive about $ 1,720, and machinists and electricians - about $ 3,400. In which CIS country is there such a salary now?
Only from the middle of 1915, in connection with the war, inflationary processes began to take place, but from November 1915 the growth of wages overlapped the growth of inflation, and only from June 1917 wages began to lag behind inflation.
Now let's move on to the length of the working day. In June 1897, a decree was issued limiting the working day of the proletariat throughout the empire to a legislative norm of 11.5 hours a day.
By 1900, the working day in the manufacturing industry averaged 11.2 hours, and by 1904 it 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 rate of the decree has actually turned into a 10.5-hour rate, and from 1900 to 1904 this rate 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 o'clock.
In January 1917, the average working day in Petrograd province was 10.1 hours, and in March it dropped to 8.4 hours, i.e. 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 (let's take 1913 by tradition) there were significantly more holidays - 91 days (!), And in 2013 (a hundred years later) the number of non-working days, including New Year's holidays, was only 13 days in Russia, and 16 in Azerbaijan. Even the presence of 52 Saturdays, which became non-working since 1967, does not compensate for this difference.
Now about nutrition. The average laborer of the Russian Empire ate 1.5 pounds of black bread (pound - 400 g), 0.5 pounds of white bread, 1.5 pounds of potatoes, 0.25 pounds of cereals, 0.5 pounds of beef, 0.8 pounds of lard and 0, 8 pounds of sugar.
The energy value of such a ration was 3580 kcal. The average inhabitant of the empire ate food at 3370 kcal per day. Since then, the citizens of the USSR have almost never received such an amount of calories.
This figure was exceeded only in 1982. The maximum was in 1987 -3397 kcal. In the Russian Federation, the peak in calorie consumption fell in 2007, when the figure was 2564 kcal.
Unfortunately, your humble servant does not have any data on Azerbaijan, but according to indirect indications, of course, it is not so low.
In 1914, a worker spent 11 rubles on food for himself and his family. 75 kopecks per month. This is about a third of the earnings. However, in Europe of that time, the percentage of wages spent on food was much higher - 60-70%.
Moreover, during the First 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.
To even better understand the picture of nutrition, it is worth considering that a pound of meat in 1914 cost 19 kopecks. So a kilogram, if it were then a measure of weight, would cost 46.39 kopecks. A bottle of milk with a volume of 0.61496 or 0.7687 liters cost 10 kopecks.
Thus, a liter of milk cost 14.5 kopecks. For a day's earnings, a St. Petersburg locksmith could buy more than 5 kg of meat or 22 kg of wheat bread or 15.5 liters of vodka or 33 liters of milk.
In other words, in St. Petersburg and Moscow a worker in a month (based on a 10-hour working day and 22 working days a month) could buy about 110 kg of meat or more than 700 liters of milk.
Now let's move on to the fourth indicator - housing - and see how things were with it.
As the Krasnaya Gazeta newspaper, which was once published in Petrograd, wrote in its issue of May 18, 1919, according to 1908 data (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 (approximately $ 1,800 before the crisis), but about 6 thousand rubles. (about $ 200 before the crisis), or the current St. Petersburg worker should receive not $ 950, but almost 10 thousand. (For Azerbaijan, these data are not the same: the cost of renting an apartment is about the same as before October, but with salaries it is much worse.)
And how much money was that before October? The cost of an apartment without heating and lighting, according to the same Prokopovich, was per earner: in Petrograd - 3 rubles. 51 kopecks, in Baku - 2 rubles. 24 kopecks, and in the provincial town of Sereda, Kostroma province - 1 rubles. 80 kopecks, so that on average for the entire Russian Empire, the cost of paid apartments was estimated at 2 rubles. per month. Translated into a universal currency, this is approximately $ 66.
Here I must say 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, 21.5 rubles in Baku, but on average Russia - 18.9 rubles.
In these master's apartments lived mainly officials up to collegiate assessors and officers. If in master's apartments there were 111 square meters of yards per tenant, i.e. 56.44 square meters, then in workers - 16 square meters each, i.e. 8,093 sq.m. At the same time, one must take into account the fact that the cost of renting a square yard was the same as in the master's apartments - 20-25 kopecks. per month.
However, since the end of the nineteenth century. the general trend is 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.
Moreover, the worker, having entered the factory, received a place in a hostel or barracks, while family workers, as a rule, were provided with a separate room.
The future "leader of the world proletariat" V. I. Lenin admitted that if the Stolypin reform succeeded, the revolutionaries in Russia had nothing to do and could put up with the idea of lifelong emigration.
Thus, by 1913, only 30.4% of the workers of the Russian Empire 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 starvation - 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.
Of course, all these data are given on average for the Russian Empire, and somewhere the workers lived, of course, much worse. But very often their salaries depended on qualifications, which no one has ever bothered to improve. Moreover, the enterprises had all the possibilities for this.
Based on materials from sites topwar.ru and opoccuu.com
