ABSTRACT

Using data from official manufacturing censuses, we compare labour productivity in the UK and the Russian Empire around 1908 in the industries in which medium- and large-size enterprises predominated. We find that Russia’s labour productivity was 75.3 or 57.4% of the British level, depending on whether we include or exclude Russia’s large and highly productive spirits industry. Russia’s productivity was between France’s and the Netherlands’, if we include the spirits industry; and between the Netherlands’ and Italy’s, if we exclude it. We find that the majority of Russian industries underperformed the British ones. However, some of the industries that had been established or modernized during the state-induced industrialization policies of the 1890s, including the metallurgy in the Southern industrial region, iron and steel tubes, railway carriages, and butter and cheese, performed on a par with or close to their British counterparts. The remaining modernized industries, including spirits, tobacco, and petrochemical sectors, outperformed their British equivalents. Our findings suggest that although Russia’s aggregate labour productivity lagged behind the UK’s, Russia’s modernized industries achieved, and in some cases surpassed, the productivity level of their British counterparts.

摘要

我们使用来自官方制造业普查的数据，比较了 1908 年左右英国和俄罗斯帝国在大中型企业占主导地位的行业中的劳动生产率。我们发现，俄罗斯的劳动生产率是英国水平的 75.3% 或 57.4%，这取决于我们是否包括或排除了俄罗斯庞大且高产的烈酒产业。如果我们将烈酒行业包括在内，俄罗斯的生产力介于法国和荷兰之间；如果我们将其排除在外，则介于荷兰和意大利之间。我们发现大多数俄罗斯工业的表现都逊于英国工业。但是，在 1890 年代国家工业化政策期间已经建立或现代化的一些工业，包括南方工业区的冶金、钢铁、铁路车厢、黄油和奶酪的表现与英国同行相当或接近。其余的现代化行业，包括烈酒、烟草和石化行业，表现优于英国同行。我们的研究结果表明，尽管俄罗斯的总劳动生产率落后于英国，但俄罗斯的现代化工业达到了甚至在某些情况下超过了英国同行的生产率水平。