2 The number of employees of privately owned or operated firms declined from 300,000 in 1927–28 to 10,000 in 1935 (36 S-356). These figures exclude domestic help, whose number in most years probably exceeded that of all other privately employed nonagricultural workers, and also employees of private agricultural, fishing, and forestry firms.

Abbreviated references (e.g., 36 S-356) are used for the sources cited most frequently. The initial numbers refer to the date of publication, the letters to the title, and the final numbers to the pages. A list of abbreviations and titles is given at the end of the article.

3 Hired farm workers, principally employees of machine-tractor stations and state farms, numbered about 2,200,000 in 1939 (Table 1) in contrast to 42,800,000 collective farmers and 3,100,000 independent peasants. ( Eason, Warren, “Population and Labor Force,” in Bergson, A., ed., Soviet Economic Growth: Conditions and Perspectives [Evanston, Illinois, Row, Peterson & Co., 1953], p. 108.Google Scholar)

4 Although cooperative artisans were definitely excluded through 1937 from the employment series presented in this paper (cf. 36 S-393 to 394 and 3; C-13), their coverage is not clear after that date. In 1938 the Soviet Central Statistical Administration decided, apparently, to include these workers (Planovoe khozjajstvo, No. 3 [1938], pp. 172–75. The Russian wording is somewhat ambiguous.) The size of employment data up to World War II, however, suggests that this decision may not have been implemented up to that time; and this hypothesis is supported by statements of two Soviet writers: I. M. Krasnolobov (in Problemy ekonomiki, No. 9 [1940], p. 56, fn. 3) stated specifically that cooperative artisans are not included in TSUNKHU employment totals; and Margolin, N. S. (Batons denežnykh dokhodov i raskhodov naselenija, 2nd ed. [Moskva, Gosplanizdat, 1940], pp. 46–55 Google Scholar) noted that earnings of cooperative artisans are excluded from Soviet computed wage bills.

By 1944, there was at least one change from Soviet statistical practices of 1940. A Soviet statistical text (Slovar-spravočnik po socialno-ekonomičeskoj statistike [Moskva, Gosplanizdat, 1944], p. 213)Google ScholarPubMed stated that the earnings of cooperative artisans are included in the wage bill, thus implying that these workers are also included in the employment data. Coverage of this group could have been initiated at almost any time after 1940 without attracting Western attention; however, since the text was quite specific about other points of employment coverage, its failure to specify that cooperative artisans are covered makes this inference somewhat tenuous. Continuation of the practice of including the earnings of these workers in the wage bill is confirmed by a Soviet writer in Planovoe khozjajstvo, No. 4 (1949), p. 60.

5 Warren Eason (loc. cit.), cited figures of 1,559,000 and 2,158,000 cooperative and self-employed artisans in 1926 and 1939 respectively. Norman C. Stines, Jr. (Cooperatives in Soviet Industry, Department of State, Foreign Service Institute Monograph Series [May 1950]) estimated the same group at around 4,000,000 in 1928. Estimates of cooperative artisans only, are available for other years, including a recently released figure of 1,865,000 in industrial cooperatives in 1953 (Pravda, August 26, 1953).

Reliable estimates of the extent of forced labor are not available (see Redding, “Reliability of Estimates of Unfree Labor in the USSR,” Journal of Political Economy [August, 1952], pp. 337–40), although Eason (op. cit., p. no) has set an upper limit tp their number in 1939 at about 10 million.

6 If an enterprise is attached in an accounting or financial sense to larger units, its personnel are classified according to the principal work of the parent firm. For example, personnel in a machine shop attached to a state farm and producing spare parts for tractors would be reported as “agricultural” rather than “industrial,“ or personnel employed by an industrial enterprise to build à new plant would be listed as “industrial” rather than “construction.” Although these practices are partially offsetting, the net effect of this method of compilation is to understate the “industry” sector, by perhaps a million persons in most years, and, correspondingly, to overstate the other sectors of the economy. (See 36 S-61 to 63, for the number of industrial personnel in enterprises attached to construction, transportation, and agricultural firms in 1933; and see 36 C-3 and 708 for an alternate series on USSR industrial employment.)

7 Pjatiletnij plan narodno-khozjajstvennogo stroitel'stva SSSR, 2nd ed. (Moskva, 1929), I, 94, cited a total employment goal of 15,800,000 from which I have subtracted agricultural employment of 2,300,000 (estimated on the basis of data, ibid., I, 94, and II, part 2, 170 and 206).

Note that this plan was to cover a five year period starting October 1, 1928, but was declared “completed” as of December 31, 1932, after only 4¼ years.

8 Of the 12.6 million workers added during the plan period, 8.6 million were former peasants, while only 4 million (mostly women and adolescents) were from urban areas. (Itogi vypolnenija pervego pjatiletnego plana razvitija narodnogo khozjajstva Sojuza SSR, 2nd ed. [Moskva, Gosplanizdat, 1934], p. 174 Google Scholar. (The above figure differs from that derivable from Table 1, this paper, because all new workers rather than only net additions to employment are included.) On the assumption that the new hired workers in agriculture were former peasants, about two-thirds of the nonagricultural employment increase of around n million persons came from the agricultural sector.

The increase during the 1928-32 period was, in small part, a statistical phenomenon, since 400,000 self-employed artisans were included in the urban increment; if data had been available, this group would have been included in the employment statistics of this paper for both years—in 1928 as self-employed artisans, and in 1932 as state-employed artisans.

9 Nonagricultural employment increased by more than 5.4 million persons, most of them probably peasants, in the calendar year 1931. (Nonagricultural employment figures of 14,645,000 and 20,073,000 for January 1, 1931, and January 1, 1932, respectively, are given, indirectly, in Planovoe khozjajstvo, No. 10 (1939), p. 113.)

10 Nonagricultural employment in 1933 was planned at 17.7 million (Pravda, January 31, 1933).

11 Vtoroj pjatiletnij plan razvitija narodnogo khozjajstva SSSR (Moskva, Gosplanizdat, 1934), I, 505.

12 Narodno-khozjajstvennyj plan Soiuza SSR na 1937 god (Gosplanizdat, 1937), p.144.

13 “P” denotes planned rather than realized data.

14 Women accounted for 53 percent of total employment in 1942, as contrasted with only 38 percent in 1940; workers under 18 years accounted for 15 percent of total industrial employment in 1942, as contrasted with 6 percent in 1939; and persons over 50 years accounted for 12 percent of the industrial total in 1942, as contrasted with 9 percent in 1939. (N. Voznesenskij, Voennaja ekonomika SSSR v period otečestvennoj voiny [Gospolitizdat, 1948], pp. 111–13.)

15 The Great Stalin Five Year Plan, published by the USSR Information Bulletin (Washington, 1946), p. 16, cited planned total employment at 33.5 million. Planned agricultural employment was estimated by the writer.

16 Pravda, January 26, 1951. Agricultural employment was estimated by the writer.

17 Women accounted for 47 percent of total employment around 1950 (V pomošč FZMK, No. 5 [1950], p. 10). The date was not specified, but the reference was in the present tense. However, since this percentage was cited also for 1947 (Pravda, March 8, 1948), the 1950 reference may simply have quoted Pravda.

18 P. Khromov, in Bol'ševik, No. 4 (1951), p. 28, listed total graduates as nearly 3.5 million. The number planned was even greater—4.5 million, according to The Great Stalin Five Year Plan, op. cit., p. 16.

19 Nonagricultural employment increases are shown below for the plan periods— in both absolute and percentage terms, and both as planned and realized.

The employment data from which the above increases were derived are given in Table 1 or in the text, except for the 1942 nonagricultural employment goal (of 29,350,000) which was taken from Tretij pjatiletnij plan razvitija narodnogo khozjajstva Sojuza SSR (1938–1942 gg.) (Moskva, Gosplanizdat, 1939), p. 228. The use of annual averages (or approximations thereto) centered at July 1 of the year preceding the beginning (or end) of the plan period, rather than at the following January 1 (or the following October 1 in the case of the First-Plan period) when the plan period actually started, introduces some distortion in the increases; for present purposes, however, comparability of the increases appears to be adequate.

20 See Warren Eason, op. cit., appendix, p. 19, for labor force projections.

21 Cf. the year-end employment figures given for 1945–53, inclusive, in the footnotes to Table 1. The 1953 increment to total employment was actually 3.1 million, of which 1.4 million represented an unusual increase in agricultural employment. The 1.7 million increase of nonagricultural employment would include any formerly forced laborers, released as a result of the recent amnesty (see Pravaa, March 28, 1953), who are now working in the nonagricultural sector. Since the 1953 increase is practically the same as that for 1951, it may be conjectured that most forced laborers went into the agricultural sector or that few were actually released (either because the amnesty was not broad in coverage or because the total number of such workers is much smaller than the 5 to 20 million often estimated).

22 There has been a steady decline in the annual rates of increase of industrial labor productivity reported by Gosplan for the past 6 years, from 15 percent in 1948 to 7 percent and 6 percent in 1952 and 1953 respectively. Although the lower rates of increase in 1952 and 1953 probably arise in part from the Soviet use of 1952 rather than the usual 1926/27 price weights, still it appears that the downward trend would have to be reversed if the 1955 goal is to be met. Sources of labor productivity increases: Pravda, January 20, 1949, January 18, 1950, January 26, 1951, January 29, 1952, January 23, 1953, and January 31, 1954.

23 E.g., see 36 T-8 for 1932–34 data.

24 E.g., see E. M. Kulischer, “Russian Manpower,” Foreign Affairs (October, 1952), p. 71.

25 Pravda, January 23, 1953, and January 31, 1954. Enrollment in colleges and technicums was stated to include correspondence course students.

26 The USSR Information Bulletin, March 8, 1952, p. 134.

27 Cf. realized data of Table 1 with planned data in The Second Five-Year Plan (New York, International Publishers, 1936), p. 224.Google Scholar

28 The actual numbers of persons working in all sectors is believed to have expanded less than recorded employment (see Table 1) for the following reasons: 1) Coverage of three series (trade, communal enterprises, and “other transport“) was specifically stated to have become more comprehensive starting in 1933 (e.g., see 56 T-359), and it was stated (36 S-393) that the same phenomenon occurred for other (unnamed) sectors, a) Many persons who worked independently or as members of cooperatives in 1928 (and thus were not covered by the employment statistics) had changed their status by 1932 and 1937 to that of “employees.“ Both factors are thought to have affected the percentage rates of growth more for the services and commerce sectors than for industry (except perhaps forestry) and construction.