gh HISTORICAL COMPARISON OF PRICES

The history of Russian people's wages, incomes and prices has been studied very poorly. Professor Boris Mironov from the St. Petersburg Institute of History, Russian Academy of Sciences, was the first to track the changes in common prices and wages indices in St. Petersburg within the first 200 years of its existence. The research required enormous laborious effort.

How can the prices and wages of different historic epochs be compared? Let's try to compare, for example, contemporary prices and wages with those existing in the USSR in the 1980s. That is not so easy. If we refer to the 19th of the 18th century, the difficulty of such comparison would increase multifold - among other reasons, due to the lack of necessary data. Nevertheless, the researcher has succeeded to elaborate the methodology which enables the comparisons.

To investigate wages Boris Mironov has chosen the carpenter profession, as it was popular within the entire period under research; carpenters earned wages typical for all wage earners, the wage depending on the labor market conditions and price fluctuations. The researcher collected the data on prices from cash-books, bulletins of published and list prices. Based on that, price indices for nutrition, dwelling, clothing and footwear, and the common index of prices were calculated and allowed to assess the real value of the carpenters' wage.

A lot of details were to be taken into account in the course of the calculations. For example, a quarter of grain, basic bread measure, got to weigh by 10% more at the end of the 19th century than in the middle of the 18th century. Or the fact that in the 18th century and in the first half of the 19th century, sugar was luxury (working-people used to et honey instead of sugar), and dried whitebait used to be the product for cooking soup, rather than a snack to accompany beer, as it is now. And finally, the real value of money continuously changed.

The research has proved that the St. Petersburg as well as the All-Russian prices increased approximately by 5.3 times since 1713 through 1913 and experienced a real revolution (similar to the one which had taken place in Europe two centuries before - in the 16th century- beginning of the 17th century). The overall empire period witnessed the rise in prices, the price reduction was recorded only in 1811-1830 and 1891-1900. The highest rise in prices by 3.1 times occurred in 1703-1810; the prices growing only by 1.7 times within the next one hundred years.

Therefore, the price revolution primarily happened in 18th century and was caused by Russia entering the world market. The above revolution impacted real wages of the St. Petersburg working-people. Within the entire first half of the 19th century, wages were continuously growing up to reach the maximum in the 1850s on the eve of abrogation of serfdom. At that time the purchasing power of an average wage was by 67% higher than at the beginning of the 18th century. With capitalism emerging in the country, real wages started to decrease and dropped by one third in 1881-1890, but at the end of the 19th century - beginning of the 20th century wages rose again and by 1913 they again, like in the 1850s, reached the maximum for the overall empire period - 167% of the early 18th century level. For instance, on the eve of the First World War the purchasing power of an average wage reached the pre-reform level, i.e. the serfdom level.

In the Soviet era the real wages of the workers probably trended for the growth. According to Boris Mirinov's calculations, in 1985 the purchasing power of a skilled worker's average wage was by 1.35 times higher than that in 1913, and by 2.7 times higher than in 1711-1714. Today the real wages of the majority of workers is less than that 100-150 years ago.

***