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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 August 2018
For a number of years the dynamics of money wages in the Soviet Union have caused controversy among Western students of the economic and social development of the Soviet Union. The divergences among the authors who have dealt with this problem are very considerable, and thus far it has been impossible to reconcile them. The differences in the estimates of the level of money wages in the Soviet Union in recent years are caused primarily by disagreement on two questions. These are: first, the question of the average level of earnings of workers and employees in the first half of 1946, after the transition of the entire national economy to the eight-hour work day (instead of the ten- and eleven-hour work days of the wartime period); and second, the question of whether the average level of earnings of workers and employees continued to rise after 1948, when the Soviet Government adopted the policy of systematic price reductions.
1 Decree of the Soviet of People's Commissars of the USSR of December 3, 1932, “Obotvetstvennosti za pereraskhod fondov zarabotnoj platy,” Sobranie zakonov i rasporjazhenij pravitel'stva SSSR (1932), No. 493.
2 It is cited textually, as a law in force, in the Spravochnik po voprosam oplaty truda rabochikh, zanjatykh na stroitel'stvakh Ministerstva Elektrostancii, compiled by M. M. Kreisberg and N. V. Kaminskij (Moscow-Leningrad, Gosenergizdat, 1950), p. 82.
3 Sobranie postanovlenij i rasporjazhenij pravitel'stva SSSR (1939), No. 396.
4 See Spravochnik cited in footnote 2, p. 82.
5 Izvestija, June 27, 1940. For more details about this see my Labor in the Soviet Union (New York, Praeger, 1952), p. 299. Yanowitch (p. 211, footnote 25) evidently does not fully appreciate the significance of this decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR.
6 Labor, etc., pp. 205-08.
7 Gosudarstvennyj plan razvitija narodnogo khozjajstva SSSR na 1941 god, p. 512.
8 Yanowitch himself notes that in the coal industry wage rates were increased only “in some areas” (p. 197, footnote a to Table I), and in the iron and steel industry, the increases affected only “direct production workers” (p. 199, footnote 9).
9 Gosudarstvennyj plan, etc., pp. 514, 515 and 516.
10 Trud v SSSR. Statisticheskij spravochnik, ed. by A. S. Popov, TsUNKhU Gosplana SSSR (Moscow, 1936), p. 11, and Kulturnoe stroitel'stvo SSSR, TsUNKhU Gosplana SSSR (Moscow, 1936), p. 54.
11 Teachers of “technicums,” music, theater and choreographic schools and “workers' faculties,” teachers of schools for illiterate and semi-literate adults and advanced schools for adults, managers of village reading rooms, village clubs and district houses of culture, teachers and instructors of district houses of culture, and, finally, a large number of library employees. See O trude i zarabotnoj plate sluzhashchikh. Sbornik ukazov, postanovlenij i polozhenij (Moscow, Profizdat, 1946), pp. 81-83, 89-91 and 98-103.
12 Labor, etc., pp. 219-23.
13 Labor, etc., p. 205. In most recent times this observation has been confirmed in Productivity of Labor in Soviet and American Industry by Galenson, Walter (New York, Columbia University Press, 1955), p. 14 Google Scholar.
14 See The Structure of Soviet Wages, a Study in Socialist Economics by Bergson, Abram (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1944), p. 228.Google Scholar
15 Since the monthly wage average in October, 1934, as quoted by Bergson (p. 117), was 192 rubles and the pre-September, 1946 average is assumed to be equal to 339 rubles, the five groups of the September decree (up to 300 rubles, from 300 to 500 rubles, from 500 to 700 rubles, from 700 to 900 rubles, and over 900 rubles) corresponded to October, 1934 groups of up to 170, from 170 to 283, from 283 to 396, from 396 to 511, and over 511 rubles. These five groups, according to Bergson's table, comprised correspondingly 59.5, 26.6, 8.7, 3.2 and 1.9 percent of all workers and employees. As the wage increase in September, 1946, for the first four groups was correspondingly 110, 100, go and 80 rubles, with no increase at all in the fifth group, it is easy to calculate that the average for all five groups was appr. 102.4 rubles.
This calculation is based on wage average as earning average. However, the wage increases in September, 1946, were ordered expressis verbis not on earnings but on wage rates which are as a whole lower than earnings. If we could use the data for wage rates—which we cannot do as the data are not available—the distribution of workers and employees in the five groups would show even a greater strength of lower groups and thus a little higher average wage increase, say, 103 rubles.
16 See reports for 1947-54 in Pravda of January 18, 1948, January 20, 1949, January 18, 1950, January 27, 1951, January 29, 1952, January 23, 1953, January 31, 1954, and January 21, 1955.
17 See Labor, etc., p. 825.
18 The New York Times of February 26, 1955.
19 Manevich, E., “Raspredelenie po trudu i voprosy organizacii zarabotnoj platy v promyshlennosti SSSR,” Kommunist, No. 11 (July, 1953), pp. 76–77 Google Scholar.
20 Pravda, December 28, 1954.
21 Pravda, February 4,1955.
22 See footnote 3.
23 Pravda, March 16, 1946.
24 Pravda, February 10, 1946.
25 Labor, etc., pp. 156-57.
26 Ibid., p. 213.
27 Pravda, October 11, 1952.
28 Cyganov, V., “Profsojuzy v poslevoyennyj period vosstanovlenija i dalneishego razvitijanarodnogo khozjajstva,” Professionalnye sojuzy (December, 1954), p. 52 Google Scholar.
29 Pravda, April 27, 1954.
30 Trud, June 8, 1954.
31 Politicheskaja èkonomija. Uchebnik(Moscow, pub. by Institut Ekonomiki Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1954), p. 462.