How rich and poor people lived in pre-revolutionary Russia

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Today, when it comes to luxury living, people imagine yachts, luxury cars, travel to exotic countries and expensive accessories from the Swiss watch register. And how did people live a century ago, in pre-revolutionary Russia? What could the richest of them afford, and what were the poor content with?

Salaries of workers and employees

To assess the situation in terms of wages under the last tsar, we will use the conversion coefficient 1282, 29. Multiplying the salaries recorded in historical documents by this indicator, we will receive the real income of citizens.

the most common professions: a teacher at school - 25 royal rubles, or 32,000 for our money; an ordinary janitor had a salary of 23,000, and the eldest received as many as 50,000; the work of a paramedic was estimated at 50,000 rubles, and an ordinary worker - 48,000; the cooks received little, only 5 royal rubles or 6400 rubles; the policemen were paid 26,000, but the precinct supervisors of the site - 64,000 rubles; captains - 79,000 rubles, second lieutenants - 90,000 rubles, lieutenant colonels - 416,000 rubles; generals - 640,000 rubles. and higher.

Prices for products and services

For a realistic assessment of the economic situation and social standards, it is necessary to assess the prices of food products in terms of current money.

Food: 1 kg of wheat flour cost 250 rubles; 1 kg of meat cost 610 rubles; 1 kg of rice - 300 rubles; 1 kg of fish - 800 rubles; 1 kg of apples cost almost 100 rubles; 1 kg of grapes - 500 rubles.

Housing rental at that time in St. Petersburg was 25, and in Moscow 20 kopecks per square yard per month. Learning that in the arshin 0.5 sq. m., we can calculate and find out: for an apartment of 50 square meters by today's standards in the capital, you would pay 25,800 rubles.

Such housing in those days could only be afforded by a state councilor, a clerk, a captain and some other important official. Ordinary people rented attics or basements for housing, paying a small rent for them.

"Poor" peasants

Of course, after the bloody events of 1917 and the coming to power of the Bolsheviks, information about how the peasants lived in pre-revolutionary Russia was transformed into propaganda pleasing to the party. Only now is it beginning to slowly shed light on how an ordinary peasant lived at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries. Oddly enough, the peasants also owned the land.

Until the abolition of serfdom in 1861, landowners owned only 1/3 of the land. All other territories belonged to the state. Land suitable for cultivation was transferred to rural communities. After the well-known reform, the landlords gave part of their estates to the peasants (34 million dessiatines from 121 million dessiatines) and every year they were forced to sell land, the buyers of which were just ordinary villagers.

Thus, in 1905, the peasants and Don Cossacks had 165 million dessiatines in their hands, and the landowners had only 53 million, of which a significant part was leased to the lower strata of the population. Statistical data for 1916 tell us interesting facts: in the arsenal of the rural population there were 90% of arable land, 94% of the territories for raising livestock in the European part of Russia and 100% in the Asian part.

Historians say that unlike the countries of Europe (France, England, Spain and Italy), where most of the land was owned by private latifundists, in Russia the land belonged to small peasant communities. Ironically, after the 1917 revolution with the slogan "The land to the peasants!", The state created collective farms with hired laborers. In fact, the land was taken away from the villagers, and those who disagreed with collectivization were shot or sent into exile.

Economy and welfare of the population

Hard to believe in this, but at the beginning of the twentieth century Russia was ranked 4th in the ranking of industrial giants, with the highest growth rates in the period from 1890 to 1914. And in terms of the total volume of agricultural products, it had no equal. During the reign of Nicholas II, the well-being of the population significantly improved.

main indicators of the well-being of the population: over 20 years of government, the country's population has grown by 40%; consumption of "popular" food products has doubled; deposits of citizens in 1894 amounted to 300 million rubles, in 1913 - 2.2 billion;

The wages of ordinary workers in Russia were less than in England and France, but they could buy more goods. The rich at that time owned commercial banks, sugar factories, factories, mines. They not only multiplied their well-being, but also actively engaged in patronage (for example, Savva Mamontov).

According to the European economists of those times, if the Russian economy developed at the same pace, and the affairs of European countries would go similarly to the period from 1905 to 1912, then our country would by the middle of the last century become a leader among the countries of all of Europe, not only in the economic, but financially and politically.

BONUS

And in continuation of the topic, in more detail about what could be bought for a salary in tsarist Russia.