Abstract

The authors examine inequality in an important branch of the Russian economy during the World War I using the materials of one of the large West Siberian enterprises. The study relies on the sources for the first time introduced into the scientific circulation: data from the funds of the tax inspectorate, which are related to the determination of the circle of income taxpayers and their earnings. The advantageous feature of these lists is that they include not only taxpayers (recipients of relatively high income), but all employees of the enterprise in general. Information on the wages of almost 400 employees of the Altai Railroad, from watchman to manager, was used to calculate the decile coeffi cient. This allows us to expand the field for microhistorical study of inequality by statistical methods through including new industries and new regions. In addition, one of the lists contains information that allows us to raise the question of the need to study additional parameters of inequality in Russia at the beginning of the20th century. It is shown that the income diff erentiation of railroad workers increases signifi cantly when taking into account their dependents (primarily children), i.e. taking into account family composition can change the inte rpretation of the degree of income inequality. Another list gives the authors a rare opportunity to examine the wages of railroad employees taking into account individual components of earnings (including salary, military increment, bonuses, payment for extracurricular work). The analysis of change in the decile ratio depending on the above-mentioned payment issues allowed us to prove that one of the weighty additions to the salary reduced the gap between the incomes of the highest and lowest employees, and the other, on the contrary, gave an opportunity to earn more to those who wanted it. Thus, it is demonstrated that one of the wage systems created before the revolution allowed to avoid simultaneously both problems that would become urgent for the new authorities in the 1920s — equalization and excessive inequality.

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