Russian Real Wages Before and After 1917

Prices of major consumer goods and wages of building craftsmen and labourers in Moscow, St Petersburg and Kursk were collected from administrative records and historical accounts for the years 1824-1937. For the period 1853 to 1937 real wage measures were calculated. There was no overall growth in real wages in the cities studied from 1853 to 1913. The income distribution shifted against labour. Wages increased by 50-100% after the 1917 revolution reaching a peak at the end of the New Economic Policy in 1928. By 1937, however, real wages had dropped back to the level of the 1880s, as the first two Five Year Plans shifted resources to capital investment.