ABSTRACT

By most conventional indicators Russia was a relatively backward and predominantly agrarian economy on the eve of the First World War. Munting (1982:26) estimates that income per head in the Russian Empire was about one-third of the level of Germany and one-sixth of that of the USA. He attributes the relatively low level of per capita income to the large proportion of the population employed in agriculture whose productivity was low in comparison with that of industrial labour in Russia and agricultural labour in the USA and Western Europe. Rapid population growth (from 74 million in 1860 to 116 million in 1890 and to 175 million in 1913), which was only exceeded in the developed economies by Australia, Canada and the USA as a result of immigration (Kennedy 1989:255; Maddison 1970:157) was concentrated in rural areas with poor soil fertility and a low level of capitalisation. This reduced the growth of agricultural output per worker and further deflated the growth of per capita income to only one per cent per annum in the twenty-five years before the war (Kennedy 1989:302-3). Just over 82 per cent of the population (based on 1987 Soviet territory) lived in rural areas in 1913 (Narkhoz 1917-87:374). This figure overstates the degree of dependence of the population on agricultural employment, as much of the rural population supplemented agricultural work with outwork and occasional employment in factories, mining and construction or were employed entirely outside agriculture. Of the population, 66 per cent depended on agriculture in 1914 but this created only 45 per cent of national

income while only 5 per cent of the labour force was employed in industry and mining but that this accounted for 20 per cent of national income (Crisp 1976).