OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

The objective of this study is to estimate the real national income of tsarist Russia during its “industrialization era” from 1885 to 1913. The two major studies of Russian industrialization by Alexander Gerschenkron and Raymond Goldsmith agree that an upsurge in the rate of growth of industrial output occurred in the late 1880s, after a long period of sluggish growth following the 1861 peasant emancipation. Industrial growth was retarded by the world depression at the turn of the century and again by the civil unrest of 1905 but resumed there-after in full vigor until the outbreak of World War I.

This study of tsarist national income investigates Russia's industrialization era. My estimates take 1885 as their starting point and end in 1913, the last year of “normal” economic activity prior to the outbreak of World War I. It thus depicts the growth of Russian real national income in the most favorable possible light. The literature is in agreement that rapid and sustained growth of aggregate output would have been difficult to achieve before the abolition of serfdom and prior to the construction of a rail network in a land mass as large as that of the Russian Empire. Raymond Goldsmith's national income figures for the subperiod 1860 to the mid-1880s confirm that the growth of Russian national income was indeed slow by international standards during this early period, and scholars blame both the stubborn persistence of feudal institutions and the poor transportation system for this outcome.