Agricultural Productivity Growth in Russia, 1861-1913:

From Inertia to Ferment

by

Carol S. Leonard, University of Oxford
Carol.leonard@sant.ox.ac.uk

Presented at
Final Conference of the Research Training Network,
Unifying the European Experience: Historical Lessons of Pan-European
Development

Jagiellonian University,
Krakow 27 September 2008

NOT FOR CITATION
Early Version


Abstract

This paper provides estimates of Total Factor Productivity in tsarist Russian agriculture from
the abolition of serfdom to 1913. It shows a surge of capital inflows during industrialization,
although import and domestic manufacturing of large equipment remained a small factor in
income by comparison with labour and land. The main finding here is that by the last decade
of the regime, agriculture had greater potential for technological change than it had
demonstrated before, a small positive residual indicating technological change that shows
up in the 1900s. Suggested explanations would be economies of scale, or the spread of the
locally produced iron plough, absent from the data on imports and manufacture of large
harvest machinery. Surely also the spread of capital, enabled by a significant growing
accumulation in the late tsarist era of outworkers remittances to the farm, and skills.

I Introduction

The dynamics of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Russian agricultural output are
as clear to economic historians as they will ever be. After a century of controversy, in a
tribute to careful research in the last decades of the twentieth century, on aggregate, data
carefully compiled have been careful analyzed.
1
During Russias industrialization from the
mid-1880s, output improvement, after years of seeming stagnation, grew at a rate
comparable to that in countries of western Europe. Paul Gregory estimates that net grain

1
Nifontov (1974); Gregory (1982); Goodwin (1998).
Leonard, Inertia to Ferment 2
production rose at 3.1 per cent annually between 1885 and 1913.
2
Russia produced more
grain than any other country in 1861, and in 1913, was second only to the US.
3

This bright picture of Russian agriculture, to be sure, has yet to capture the narrative
of most general histories, where the late decades are more often depicted by deepening
poverty and landlessness, causing an agrarian crisis and contributing to revolutionary
unrest. On a per capita basis, Russias grain production and per capita GDP lagged far behind
that of the US in 1913.
4
Indeed, even the above findings, as Allen (2003) argues, do not show
that agricultural productivity growth was strong. Output improvement, in his view, was no more than
a temporary improvement, not self-sustaining.
5
This paper looks once more at aggregate
numbers in this period. The objective is, this time, to capture productivity growth across a
half century and, therefore, to look as closely at the beginning of change, around
Emancipation, as at the output surge after industrialization began. That is a not entirely a
new endeavor. The first to attempt to fill the gap of the pre-industrial, post-Emancipation
years was Goldsmith. His fragile conclusions were so tentative that he did not publish them
nor release his data and computations to other scholars. The only solid conclusions have
been based, again, on output rather than productivity.
Part I briefly reviews, by way of background, the familiar historiographic controversy
over rural capitalism in late tsarist Russia.
6
The assumption here is that ample empirical
evidence has been produced to show dramatically increased output growth beginning in the
1880s. It moves on, however, to a somewhat different point. Its concern is that a lack of
understanding of the earlier period and lack of total factor productivity research makes this
burst of development seem exogenous to the sector, one reason the narrative literature has
such a difficult time dealing with the evidence. The clearly evident burst of growth seems out
of place in light of contemporary accounts about the depth of rural poverty in that era.

2
Some of this was presumably the reduction of waste, that is, the increase in the ratio of net to gross production;
see Gregory (1982), pp. 75-76.
3
Gregory (1982), p. 158.
4
Gregory (1982), p. 158.
5
Allen (2003, p. 34): The nineteenth century sources of growth had run their course, and the most important
had reversed direction. The prime mover behind the agricultural expansion had been the rise in the price of
wheat.
6
Hoch (1994).
Leonard, Inertia to Ferment 3
The aim of this paper is to set rates of growth in a historical process within
agriculture and to estimate total factor productivity for the years 1861 to 1913. National
income has been well documented only for the later period, and total factor productivity has
never been attempted. The findings have considerable policy relevance for development
economics. The estimates show a sudden infusion of capital during industrialization on the
back of a dramatic rise in land prices produced by the results of Emancipation, which created
a land market overnight in the 1860s. The story may have gone something like this: in the
first two decades after the Emancipation, the take-up of land rights and expansion of
average holdings was relatively faster in the relatively richer soils of the Blackearth South,
although in the less fertile regions of the North, average holdings shrank and enthusiasm for
cereals farming waned. Despite restrictions on labour, off farm work expanded bringing in
considerable new resources to farming in both regions as well as migration to state lands in
Siberia. It is suggested here that the movement of labour was significant for agriculture,
then, in two regards, first, for remittances, and second, for the spread of skills and
transformation of farming routines. More significant in the data below than equipment and
fertilizer seems the impact of the phenomenal lure of land in the rise of off-farm labor and
spread of farming knowledge.
Part II discusses the methods and data used in estimation. This paper follows the
method adopted in historical treatment of agricultural productivity of taking decadal
averages. It begins with the three years around and including 1861 and takes decadal
periods through 1911. Part III is a presentation of the findings and a summary.

II The Setting: the Tsarist Russian Rural Economy After Serf Emancipation (1861)

The rural economy stagnated in the aftermath of the Crimean War. Financial conditions after the war
worsened in a banking crisis, followed by fiscal tightening in which environment, the abolition of
serfdom occurred in 1861. The government followed the well know crisis/reform pattern, in which
social reform was accompanied by trade liberalization as well as fiscal tightening, forcing the
beneficiaries to pay for rural reconstruction. Thus, in the first few decades after Emancipation, when
rural households were struggling in the newly competitive environment for non-agricultural labour,
they also faced swiftly rising prices in the new land market. This would have been to their advantage,
if it werent for continued restrictions on movement away from the land and the protracted reform
process, which allowed the purchase and sale of land only by the commune and not the individual
Leonard, Inertia to Ferment 4
household. Confronting this new world, many rural dwellers remained temporarily obligated to
their former landlords until 1883, when settlement was forced on the hold-outs.
After the mid 1870s, agriculture generated even worse numbers. Conditions for the largest
grain producers were affected by the flooding of European markets with American grain, meaning
lower prices for Russian exports, some 3 per cent of gross production. This adversely affected the
financial position of the larger export-oriented grain producing noble estates lowering production
figures on aggregate. It would be difficult to argue, however, that lower prices on foreign markets
greatly affected peasant producers, although it may have affected opportunities for agricultural hire
on large estates in the 1870s and early 1880s. All of the retail price indices we have for grain show
the dip in prices, but they are all for St Petersburg. There is no reason to suppose that a large and
growing land market would not have enriched many peasants. Stephen Hoch (2004, p. 261),
observed more positive consequences for peasants of the Emancipation earlier than are generally
assumed. He shows that between 1863 and 1872, although merchants and nobles, together,
purchased 72 percent of the total ruble value of land sold, peasant participation in the market
(whether individually, communally, or in groups) was substantial; they constituted one-third of the
total number of buyers.
Peasants sold their land and left it, mainly seasonally, with remittances sent home. They
enriched themselves with outwork at massive levels by the end of the century. Labour is the focus of
most microanalytic studies by Soviet-era and Russian researchers, who took interest in social
conditions during the burst of industrialization in the mid-1880s. Despite restrictive forces on out-
migration, peasants worked in large numbers off the land. Social stratification followed, as
outworkers earnings were remitted, and it was becoming more apparent in the village by the 1880s.
7

Western historians, along with some Soviet scholars, strick a cautionary note. They emphasize the
legacy of serfdom particularly on feudal-style large estates in the 1880s and 1890s and the continuing
power of the Russian land commune to hold back the mobilization of land and labour resources. One
might suspect that land resources were rationed from the dramatic rise in land prices by 1913 (see
below).
Thus what Soviet scholars then called proletarianization of the peasantry, but more
modestly, and equally interestingly, might be called increasing household autonomy, was a force,
alongside industrial demand, that plunged the rural economy after 1900 into a period of ferment and
change. The number of long-distance year-long passports given to peasants increased by four times

7
See literature cited in Borodkin et al (2008).
Leonard, Inertia to Ferment 5
between the 1860s and 1900 (Khromov 1950). Certainly after the Stolypin reforms (1906-1910),
fostering the break-up of communal land tenure and new small farm formation, technological change
was an important outcome of greater individual household choice, described in his two-volume
sociology of rural Russia by Boris Mironov (1999). Historians, such as Vladimir Danilov (1976), have
argued, to the contrary, that the commune remained a major force against government reform
through the much later era of collectivization.
8
Gerschenkron also found unremittingly backward
agriculture held back demand for industrial goods (1961). No further treatment will be given here to
this familiar historigraphical controversy, about which much research in this post-Soviet era, without
interpretation imposed from above, remains to be done. It is assumed here that the evidence falls
decisively on the side of arguments by Ivan Kovalchenko and his colleagues in Moscow from the
1970s on, and by Paul Gregory and others, among western specialists on Russia, that there was no
agrarian crisis in late tsarist Russia. Markets were making rural Russians much better off. This study
aims to provide more understanding of how fast and how extensively the agricultural economy
changed during this period.
Productivity Measures
This paper, following Ball and Walton (1976) and Gallman (1972) on early American
agriculture, finds factor productivitiesproductivity of land and labourand multi-factor
productivity, or Total Factor Productivity (TFP) for decadal periods. Partial productivity is the
ratio of total output to a single input, generally land or labour. It is used where there is
concern with specific processes, for example, the productivity of labour, assessed by labour-
based hours as the input variable. Placing emphasis on partial productivities without
reference to factor endowments and available technologies, however, can be misleading.
For example, estimates of partial productivity for the Soviet era have led to assertions that
private agriculture was more productive than socialized labour because output per hectare
was higher, and the reverse, that private agriculture was less productive because output per
worker was lower. Both judgments should be qualified by the circumstance that raising
livestock on private plots was a land saving production choice determined in large part by
the land constraint (0.5 hectares), and cereals in the socialized sector were land-using and
labour saving, and they were exported to the private sector.
9


8
See a review of Soviet and Russian writing on pre-revolutionary industrialization by Borodkin (2006).
9
Clayton (1980), p. 452.
Leonard, Inertia to Ferment 6
TFP is a broad measure, combining the aggregated effects of factor inputs in gross
production of goods and services. It is the residual from a production function, representing
improvement caused by changes in efficiency, the scale of production and/or technical
change, that is, the increase in production not accounted for by the growth in the quantity of
inputs used. For modern agriculture, it is the standard tool for assessing the transformation
of agriculture. TFP, for example, is published annually for US agriculture and has been since
1960.
10

The production function measures the relationship between inputs and outputs,
usually a Cobb Douglas linear function with logarithms.
11
The assumption is that in the long
run, factors are easily substitutable for each other, making the elasticity of substitution equal
one, an assumption that is reasonable for agriculture everywhere.
12
TFP is calculated here as
the rate of growth of output minus the rate of growth of aggregate factor inputs (human and
physical capital, labour and land). From the assumed production function, real income is
established to determine the factor weights (with labour as the residual) in the sources of
wealth. Estimated inputs are multiplied by these weights, the fractional share of the
separate factors in income. In this way, the weight shows the elasticity of output with
respect to the input.
13
It is emphasized, again, that that by estimating it in this way,
economics and diseconomies of scale are included with technological change as sources of
TFP growth.
14



10
The USDA Economic Research Service (ERS) provides factor productivity (TFP) measures based on a system
of farm production accounts (see www.ers.usda.gov/Data/AgProductivity Its TFP model uses the transcendental
logarithmic (translog) transformation frontier. It relates the growth rates of multiple outputs to the cost-share
weighted growth rates of labor, capital, and intermediate inputs. See Ball (1997, 1999) for a complete
description of the USDA model.
11
For productivity measurement, other factors, such as measurement of inputs and outputs, are more important
than the functional form of production (Maddala 1979, p. 309).
12
Clayton (1980), p. 455.
13
See Robert Gallman (1972), p. 192: For example, assume that the labor input increased at an annual rate of 3
percent, the property input, at a rate of 5 percent, and the share of labor in income was 70 percent while the share
of property was 30 percent. Then the rate of ,growth of total factor input was 3.6 percent: (.03 x .70) + (.05 x .30)
= .021 + ,015 = .036. See Denison (1962), pp 24-34.
14
Gallman (1972), p. 193.
Leonard, Inertia to Ferment 7
TFP Growth in Russia: what can be expected?
Productivity estimates for Russia will not rise nearly to levels found in the same years in the
more advanced regions of Europe and North America. For the latter countries, more ample
data and careful analysis show modernization to be well on its way by the third quarter of
the nineteenth century. Productivity estimates for those countries are a probable upper
bound for Russian period estimates, but it cannot be anticipated that the Russian data would
produce comparable estimates. The agricultural revolution started in Britain: it took several
centuries, from 1520 to roughly 1739, for output to double.
15
From 1790 to 1815, Hueckel
finds for Britain a mere 0.2 per cent rate of growth.
16
Allen and OGrada find it up to 0.5 per
cent annually between 1800 and 1850, slowing to 0.4 per cent between 1860 and 1914.
17

The range for England in the nineteenth century, therefore, falls between 0.2 and 0.5. For
France, change follows the French Revolution in 1789.
18
Grantham shows TFP growing by
0.45 between 1789 and 1840, 0.81 per cent between 1840 and 1870, and by an average of
0.85 per cent between 1815 and 1914.
19
For the US agriculture, TFP growth was observed
for the eighteenth century at an annual rate of between 0.2 and 0.3 per cent,
20
which picked
up to 0.5 per cent in the nineteenth century (0.14 in the first half and 0.8 in the latter half).
21

The usefulness of coming up with TFP estimates for Russia is in comparing the potential of
the economy in that period with that of other countries. Of course comparing different
farming systems, for example, the US and British small farms with the communally organized
Russian regime, creates problems of interpretation. However, since the step has already
been taken in comparison of the diversified small family farms in the US and the more
traditional French agricultural regime, with intermingled and scattered plots and open fields
for grazing, it is a useful exercise. This is especially so since the primary force in generating
TFP growth in any regime more in technology, holding organization constant. For example,
improvements in France and Britain raged from the introduction of multiple crop rotations

15
Allen (1999), p. 215.
16
Hueckel (1981), p. 192
17
Allen (1994), OGrada (1994), reviewed in Grantham (1997), p. 389.
18
Hoffman (1991), cited in Grantham (1997), p. 391.
19
Grantham (1997), p. 391.
20
Ball and Walton (1976).
21
Gallman (1972).
Leonard, Inertia to Ferment 8
and better plowing to greater knowledge about seeds and soils.
22
To summarize, an upper
bound for Russia of this period would not be nearly what it was elsewhere. One would
expect continued labour intensivity of production. But there may be signs of deeply rooted
change due to the liberal reform era in the 1860s, when serfdom was abolished.
The Data for Russia, Imperial Period
Missing Information
The lack of reliable published series for mid-nineteenth-century agriculture is a clear
roadblock to growth accounting for Russia. Gaps for the 1860s and 1870s include such
fundamentals as the extent of cleared and uncleared land, net harvest figures by crop,
reliable livestock estimates, and capital input series. I. Vilson, Russias leading agricultural
expert, writing in 1869 blaming weak and poorly financed institutions of local government,
shows the statisticians frustration:
the amount of land under crops is unknown; exacting and well defined household
surveys do not exist, or, at least, did not exist before the introduction of zemstva
institutions [1864csl], therefore, the evidence collected by committees for the
public supply of food can be accepted only with extreme cautionwe have as rough
indicators from reports by landowners the general extent of plowed land, the level
of the harvest of every year, and so forth.
23

Other missing figures in those years and later are for land rental, insured structures, the
production and application of domestically produced mineral fertilizers, the use of
mechanized equipment, exacting livestock and crop inventories, and producers prices for
some of these years. In estimating Gross Production, non-agricultural output is a missing
number, never accounted for in published studies, despite its obvious importance across
northern Russia, with its relatively infertile soils.
The gap in coverage narrows from 1870, when separate crops and arable sown to
them were first distinguished in surveys following a major effort to improve reporting by a
joint project of the Central Statistical Committee (TsSK) and the Ministry of State Domains.
There was no further progress until after 1880, when the TsSK produced its own estimates
using the first agricultural census (1881). At that time, the start-up of registry institutions for
formal land markets help the historian overcome to some extent the fragmentary state

22
Grantham (1997).
23
Vilson (1869), pp. 75-76.
Leonard, Inertia to Ferment 9
knowledge about actual land use by individual peasant khoziastva (households) and property
boundaries. From 1880, a new initiative to improve agricultural statistics was taken up by the
Department of Agriculture and Rural Industry of the Ministry of State Domains. The result
was a considerably improved survey including cereals and industrial crop output, livestock,
and conditions of agricultural production for every year, on a similar basis to surveys in the
US, Prussia and England.
24

Current Knowledge
The three most important published compilations of output series for the tsarist era, all
based on the official series above, are Obukhovs 1927 gross harvest data for the fifty
European provinces of Russia, Raymond Goldsmiths 1955 unpublished estimates of gross
value of agricultural production, a series for 1860-1913 also covering European Russia, with
each crop weighted by its average value in 1896-1900, and Paul Gregorys 1982 estimates of
the value of net agricultural output in his more comprehensive study of national income
across the entire territory of the empire. Obukhov and Gregory avoid the most severe data
issues by focusing on the period after the mid-1880s, when country-wide uniform standards
were used in surveys and accuracy and completeness were among objectives of surveyists.
For the entire period, we use Goldsmith (1995) whose data from 1884 are from surveys
taken by the Central Statistical Committee (the Ministry of Interior) on the volume in puds of
wheat, rye, oats and barley and potatoes. For the earlier period, chetverti were converted to
puds at ratios given in the source.
25
Although post-1884 are viewed as considerably more
reliable that the earlier estimates, there remain gaps and problems, for example, in
determining non-agricultural output of peasant farms and changing land boundaries.
26
For
example, even after 1884, surveys captured only allotment land (upon which redemption
fees after the end of serfdom were based), an area of arable too small probably by half: it
did not include possibly extensive rented croplands and meadows in some regions. We
concur with Goldsmith, however, that even though absolute levels, even after 1884, may not
be entirely reliable for any given year, the movement of production over time will reflect a

24
Timiriazev 1902, pp. ix-xi.
25
Through 1915, the TsSK sent two sets of forms to each locality, requesting information about yields and sown areas by
crops from both peasants allotments and nobles fields. From this information, the TsSK estimated harvests, or gross output,
using population data to provide information on per capita yields/ Groman (1927), p. 1.
26
Ivantsov (1915).
Leonard, Inertia to Ferment 10
consistent collection technique over a territory where officials practiced familiar routines.
The data do not permit estimates of output by typical farm. The complex
organization of farming is not well captured by the data. After the Emancipation of the serfs,
manorial style agriculture persisted in some regions, and virtually disappeared in others,
which means that the typical farm is difficult to identify. Most of research on nineteenth
century farming in Russia has been drawn from manorial archives, which provides only a
glimpse of one part of rural life. From these microlevel data, one cannot estimate the
number of workers per farm, including on middling size estates for the rest of Russia.
Moreover, over half of the peasants resided in villages on state-owned lands. These
resembled the privately owned peasant operations, which covered a territory the size of
France by 1913. However, they co-existed with the communally governed peasant plots. The
typical farm? Farm surveys for nineteenth-century US and Europe could be counted on for
representativeness Even for the 18
th
century US, the historian finds an enviable clarity in the
following:
To derive an index of labour inputs consistent with our capital and land indexes, we
must consider the trend of labour inputs per average farm. Because the typical farm
was a family concern, average labour input per farm was dominated by family size.
27

In Russia, no doubt the major form of peasant production was still communalistic, reflecting
economic and social dependency and incomplete household control over production
decisions. An autonomous form of farming was rapidly emerging, however.
The state of the data, then, is far from idealless adequate than for other countries
undergoing industrialization in the late nineteenth century. Published records for the US, for
example, are sufficient with extrapolation to provide gross production (net of seed), or value
added information about all farm activities, net crop output and livestock and other sales by
the farm for 1800 through the present. Income for those years can also be determined by
farm, complete with returns from cleared and uncleared land and farm investment.
28

This study of productivity nevertheless aim to provide a plausible long run picture of
how agricultural production changed in the tsarist era. Our approach is to take decadal

27
Ball and Walton (1976), p. 108.
28
See, for example, Towne and Rasmussen (1960).
Leonard, Inertia to Ferment 11
averages, net of feed and seed for 1871 (1870-1872) through 1911.
29
These were based on
reconstruction of annual time-series as close to the original data sources as possible for the
entire post-1861 period. For the 1860s, the estimate is from Vilson (1969, p. 112). This
provides a rough periodization of changing production efficiency.
Gross Production
Gross crop production for the 50 provinces of European Russia embraces, for a beginning,
consumption and sales of the four main grains and potatoes. The four grains accounted for
90.3 per cent of all net grain production in 1896-1900, according to Prokopovichs
estimates.
30
According to Goldsmith, for 1861 and 1864-1866 there are no figures on the
production of grain crops.
31
This is not quite right. Information for all years through the early
1880s is available in governor general reports. The data are not missing, but for the 1860s,
crops are distinguished only as winter and spring and harvest size must be estimated
from crude seed/yield and yield/desiatina (1 desiatina = 2.7acres) ratios. Through the 1860s,
yield/seed estimates were carried out in the same way as in the General Land Survey of the
late 18
th
century, where landlords reports of harvest yields also provided the base for
estimates of sown arable. For the 1860s, our data are from Khromov.
32
We also estimated
production net of seed, averaging the regional data in provincial sources for Yield and take
the percentage required as the minimum net volume.
Our data on cereals differed from Goldsmiths in the determination of value. His
gross estimates are from Prokopovich, who then derived net value by excluding expenditure
on seed in output. Since this approach leads to no important difference for Goldsmiths
purposes, the relative weight attached to individual crops, Goldsmiths indexes are based on

29
First person plural is used here to indicate the importance of research carried out in the early stages of this
project by Dr Dilyara Ibragimova of the Institute for Social Policy in Moscow.
30
Prokopovich (1918), p. 7.

31
Goldsmith (1955), p. A-2.
32
For 1857-1866 from Obruchev(1871), pp. 247-253, and these data are much the same as in the earlier
publication by Vilson, who essentially wrote the test of the Voenno-statisticheskii sbornik.edited by Obruchev.
The other years are from Goldsmith for the 50 provinces of European Russia, checked for accuracy against
Obukhov (1927); Khromov (1950).
Leonard, Inertia to Ferment 12
gross value.
33
For assessing the growth rate of aggregates, however, this is a drawback.
34
For
the purpose of examining productivity, we first disaggregated the crops and used annual
yields by crop to determine seed, and for the 1860s, used I. Vilsons breakdown (Vilson
1869, p. 112) for aggregate consumption and seed.
For the value we averaged regional aggregated prices from Mironov (Mironov 1985),
despite large regional differences across European Russia.
35

a) Rye and oats. We averaged regional retail prices for 1860-1880s and procurement
prices for European Russia, 1881-1913.
b) Wheat and barley. We used Mironovs procurement prices for 1881-1913. For the
earlier period, we reconstructed the price data, assuming a constant price ratio for crops.
c) Potatoes. Price information for potatoes is relatively scarce. We used Gregorys
data for 1885-1913 (which are in part reconstructed, based on the price ratio of potatoes
and barley for fragmentary years) and similarly reconstructed prices for earlier years.
d) Industrial crops (beets, tobacco, flax and hemp
36
). These were derived from
Prokopovichs average prices for 1896-1900 for each crop, as in Goldsmith.
Our price index, using constant 1913 prices, from Strumilin, is as in Gregory, with the gross
value as shown in Figure 1, below:
FIGURE 1
GROSS VALUE OF PRODUCTION OF CEREALS AND POTATOES, 1870 TO 1913, IN 1913 PRICES


33
This assumption has been challenged (see Gregory [1982], pp. 75-76.
34
See Gregory (1982).
35
Mironov (1985).
36
The production of hemp was first included in the record in 1888.
Gross value output dynamics (1913=100), in 1913 constant prices
y = 1.2452x + 35.9
R
2
= 0.7825
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
110
1
8
7
0
1
8
7
2
1
8
7
4
1
8
7
6
1
8
7
8
1
8
8
0
1
8
8
2
1
8
8
4
1
8
8
6
1
8
8
8
1
8
9
0
1
8
9
2
1
8
9
4
1
8
9
6
1
8
9
8
1
9
0
0
1
9
0
2
1
9
0
4
1
9
0
6
1
9
0
8
1
9
1
0
1
9
1
2
Leonard, Inertia to Ferment 13
We find that the average annual rate of growth of gross cereal and potato production in
European Russia for 1870-1913 was 2.5 per cent, 1.6 per cent for the first 30years, and 4.4
per cent from the turn of the century. This is in the range of estimates by Paul Gregory
(Table 6.3, 1982), who found the rate of growth covering the entire territory of Russia,
including frontier regions, from 1883-1887 through 1909-1913 to be 2.8 per cent, with some
differences within the intervals of that period.
Goldsmith finds a slower rate of growth (he estimates the average annual rate of
growth at 1.5% for the 50 European provinces.
37
He used average prices for grain and
technical cultures for 1896-1900 from Prokopovich (1918). Based on these prices and
average gross output of these cultures, he calculated price relatives for each culture for
1896-1900 then applied these weights for the remaining period.
38
But, as Goldsmith himself
recognizes, Prokopovich does not cite his sources or explain his methods for estimating
prices, and Goldsmith only assumes that they are producer prices.
39
Moreover, he had no
prices for potatoes, whose production was calculated from share of output in mlns of puds
between potatoes and major and industrial grains and average value of output of grain
production. We take our estimates as better approximating reality, in that we used improved
price data from Mironov for individual grain cultures (mostly retail, some producer) for the
entire period.
To crop production we add livestock (the slaughter rate is estimated at 20 per cent of
output, as in Gallman), for a general picture, within the limits of our data.
40
To this we add
changes in the value of land through improvements. As in Gallman (1972), because
improvements are not known, we use a 5 per cent return on land. It would be important to
have an estimate of cleared land, but for Russian data, this information is not available. We
take arable plus meadows and pastures. Since these were in short supply (for most years,
the latter only one/half of cropland), we assume that they were fully in use.
For gross production, it would be an enormous deficiency for Russia, where it was so
important, to ignore outwork. Outworkers earned some 40 to 50 per cent of household
income, a far more significant part of income than local sales of home produced items.
41
We
estimate this non-agricultural output in the category of cash receipts (Carlin and Handy
1974). For this we have exact number of passports and temporary permits issued for the

37
Goldsmith (1955), p.18.
38
Goldsmith (1955), Appendix A, p.A-26, A-27.
39
Goldsmith (1955), p. A-3.
40
Gallman (1972), p. 204, n. 25, cites Samuel Blodgett Economica, A Statistical Manual for the United States of
America (1806; reprint ed., New York: Augustus M Kelley, 1964), p. 90, for his estimate of a 40 per cent
slaughter rate.
41
Towne and Rasmussen (1960), p. 256.
Leonard, Inertia to Ferment 14
entire period, as translated into one year passports (Mironov 1999, I: 247), and we take
wages for construction workers in St Petersburg (Borodkin et al 2008).
Remarks about Output Estimates
As in Wheatcroft and Davies (1994, p. 108), I note the problem surrounding the year 1913.
The official estimates produced for that period by the Tsarist Central Statistical Committee
(TsSK) were corrected in the early Soviet era, in 1925, because it was thought that yields
and sown area were both underestimated, possibly by as much as 19 per cent. In the 1930s,
however, the estimates were recorrected downward, and again in the 1960s, so that Soviet
achievement in agriculture would appear, by comparison, more significant. We have used
the original materials, following Goldsmith, in preference to the corrected data.
Using crops, including potatoes, to represent gross production is the standard in
Russian historical statistics.
42
In all likelihood, Goldsmiths figures for gross cereals output
may be too low, and they include the waste, adding an additional element of unreliability. It
is clear from the data and from internal Ministry documentation that the method of
gathering harvest statistics changed in the 1880s and again in the late 1890s, each time
boosting the figures and, seemingly, making them more reliable. This means, however, as
Goldsmith remarked in his unpublished work, that the corrected figures should be
incorporated back into the series in an integrated way, without such a sharp rise for the late
1890s. Although the growth of agricultural output was more significant in the last several
decades of the tsarist regime, when the figures are adjusted properly for the change in
methods of calculation, the rate of growth for the entire period, like that of Goldsmith, is
adjusted downward in our figures, not upward.
Harvest Weight
Official tsarist Russian (and current) data captures weight rather than volume in reporting
quantity of crop output. Weight was currently is measured in centners (1 centner equals a
quintal, 100 kilograms), and it formerly was measured in puds. This is different from
estimates elsewhere, which is in volume. The difficulty in using weight for product of the
arable (rye, wheat, oats and potatoes) lies in the mix. Output in pre-modern times differs
considerably from that in modern agriculture, and the weight of output will generally be

42
Prokopovich (1918), p. 44.
Leonard, Inertia to Ferment 15
insufficient to show structural transformation. The following figure, for example, shows the
increasing relative amount of potatoes in output across the period.


Figure 2

0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
1
8
7
0
1
8
7
3
1
8
7
6
1
8
7
9
1
8
8
2
1
8
8
5
1
8
8
8
1
8
9
1
1
8
9
4
1
8
9
7
1
9
0
0
1
9
0
3
1
9
0
6
1
9
0
9
1
9
1
2
Output of Crops and Potatoes
Puds (% of Total), 1870-1913
Industrial
Potatoes
Oats
Barley
Rye
Wheat
Leonard, Inertia to Ferment 16
FIGURE 3


Potatoes grew in importance for consumption after the mid-1880s, as can be seen in Figure
2. For contrast, Figure 4 presents the relative value of the crops and potatoes produced.
There was not much structural change in output across the decades. The bulk of production
in rye shrank somewhat relative to wheat. In other countries, such as the US, this variability
would encourage researchers to use volume of output rather than weight, as in the US,
where the measure used is bushels. A bushel of wheat, white potatoes, and soybeans weighs
60 lbs; a bushel of corn, rye, sorghum grain, and flaxseed weighs 56 lbs; a bushel of barley
and buckwheat weighs 48 lbs, and oats 32 lbs. The weight of the potato crop is heavier than
the rye. Weights are fragile, and they depend upon acceptance of numbers that are not
based on the output of various fields.
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
1
8
7
1
1
8
7
4
1
8
7
7
1
8
8
0
1
8
8
3
1
8
8
6
1
8
8
9
1
8
9
2
1
8
9
5
1
8
9
8
1
9
0
1
1
9
0
4
1
9
0
7
1
9
1
0
1
9
1
3
Output of Crops and Potatoes
Mlns Rubles (% of Total), 1870-1913
Industrial crops
Potatoes
Oats
Barley
Rye
Wheat
Leonard, Inertia to Ferment 17
There are a number of reasons, however, for staying with weight. For one thing, in
Russia, the weight of output per unit of land is traditional as the measure of yields. For
another, in regard to variability, the product mix does not change too much. This is the main
reason weight is retained as the measure used here. Regarding the inclusion of potatoes,
the benefit is that this high valued crop is of great nutritional value, even though it is
considered a low-valued product for statistical purposes. A measure of volume will not
reflect actual utility, and weight will. The figure used here, weights, reflects value as well as
gross output (food and feed crops, including potatoes) per hectare.

INPUTS
Labour
The data which is required for estimating the labour input includes employment in
agriculture, hours worked and the real wage, for which we use materials as cited in our study
of the region of St Petersburg (Borodkin et al 2008). We use these materials on the
understanding that their purpose is as a test against the residual method of determining
labour input. From the estimates shown below, it is clear that even though we take
agricultural wages for the Moscow region, rather than St Petersburg, they have an upward
bias.
We estimated the number employed in agriculture. We use the census of 1897 and
for earlier years, population data, and take 1858 as representative of 1861 (Mironov (1: 20;
de Livron 1874, p. 26, and pp. 2-3 of appendix. Published population series are available
from 1871.
43
The ratio between engaged in agriculture and able to work was calculated
based on the census of 1897. Days worked was from Mironov
44
, and from Chayanov and
Chelintsev we derived information about actual expenditure of time on agriculture, from
which we constructed a trend.
45
Then we take the average daily wage (for sowing, hay

43
The rural population in 1863, from Obruchev (1971), v. 4, pp. 36, 132; rural population and per cent of rural
population engaged in agriculture in 1860 and from 1871 from Goldsmith (1955), p. 32, no 45; rural population
and per cent engaged in agriculture, for 1897 from census data, see Strumilin (1964), vol 3, pp. 304-306.
44
1855, 1872, 1902, from Mironov (2003), 2:308.
45
for 1907, Chayanov et al (1966), pp 73-77 and Chelintsev (1919), p. 126. The trend for working days spent
per year in agriculture estimated from the polynominal regression model, y=-0.0096*t^2-0.2226*t+134.3.
Leonard, Inertia to Ferment 18
making and threshing) in kopecks per day.
46

Estimating real wages requires some discussion of problems with cost-of-living
indexes, among other issues.
47
First, there is extensive regional variation in nominal wages
for the period, 1861-1913; we average regional differences but advise the reader for a future
research agenda to gain regionally-based long run series. Because of the regional range,
finding a deflater for the agricultural sector is more difficult than identifying nominal
wages.
48
Several deflators exist for wholesale and retail prices, as published in Strumilin. For
retail: the Petersburg index of the Institute of Economic Research (based on a basket of 27
products) and the Petersburg and Moscow index (based on a basket of 24 products)
prepared by M. E. Kokhn both used weights based on the structure of average budget
expenditures of industrial workers.
49
A third, the Podtiagin index, is based on wholesale
prices for 66 commodities taken from the annual of the Ministry of Trade and Industry's
Survey of Commodity Prices in Major Russian and Foreign Markets. This index often
included both Moscow and Petersburg, and so Strumilin used it for national trends. The
analysis of these indexes from which our discussion is drawn is in Gregory.
50

Agricultural earnings should include estimates of the average value of extra wages
during harvest, and board and free food at harvest time, information that is not always
available.
51
For Russia, the problem is particularly difficult, because household budget data
and therefore cost of livingare available only for a few selected years. Added to this problem
for Russia is one of using urban deflaters for preference patterns attributed to the rural
sectors. There are different price and income elasticities of demand for the same products
by individuals in different sectors.
52
In sum, there are gaps in data as well as conceptual
issues in using the Podtiagin index for agricultural products, as we do, and the reader should
be aware of this.


46
Strumilin (1958), p.277.
47
Borodkin et al (2008).
48
See a review of this problem in Borodkin, Granville and Leonard (2008).
49
Strumilin (1960), p. 89.
50
See Gregory (1982), pp. 201-203.
51
See the important republication of pre-revolutionary budget surveys for urban workers in Antologiia (2000).
52
Cheetham, Kelley and Williamson (1974); Jones (1975).
Leonard, Inertia to Ferment 19
FIGURE 4
LABOUR INPUT DYNAMIC, 1913=100

According to our estimates, the value of the labour input increased between 1861 and 1913
by 42.6 per cent, or an average annual rate of 1.7%.
Remarks about population and output growth
The peasant living standard in tsarist Russia has been explored by Stephen Hoch, who
cautions against assuming Malthusian growth.
53
Our data for the period after the 1890s is in
line with his conclusions. The growth of population (European Russia) was on average 1.5% a
year, thus the rate of growth of agricultural production exceeded the rate of growth of the
population. The data below in Table 1 show, that by our indicatorsmore inclusive
estimates of gross agricultural production per capita and per agricultural worker (labour
productivity)no agrarian crisis in the countryside except in the obviously dire immediately
post-Emancipation era of the 1860s is found.




53
Hoch (1994).
y = 4E-06x
5
- 0.0006x
4
+ 0.0298x
3
- 0.6062x
2
+ 5.4704x + 31.259
R
2
= 0.8746
0
20
40
60
80
100
1855 1857 1859 1861 1863 1865 1867 1869 1871 1873 1875 1877 1879 1881 1883 1885 1887 1889 1891 1893 1895 1897 1899 1901 1903 1905 1907 1909 1911 1913
Leonard, Inertia to Ferment 20



Table 1
Average annual rate of growth (%) of
Output and output per capita and per Agricultural Worker
(Labour Productivity), 1870-1913 (1913 prices)
Year Annual average
growth, gross
production, by
decade, 1861-
1911
Annual average
growth per
capita, gross
production,
1861-1911
Annual average
growth per
worker, gross
production,
1861-1911
1871 0.22 -0.40 -0.40
1881 3.26 1.68 1.81
1890 2.55 1.03 1.11
1901 3.25 1.45 1.56
1911 4.80 3.13 3.34

This is not to say, to be sure, that the living standard in Russia approached that of
western European countries (Leonard and Ljungberg, forthcoming). The impact of the servile
regime on infrastructure as well as production was profound.
Capital
Agricultural equipment includes imported and domestically produced machines. Data on the
value of imported agricultural machinery exists for almost the entire period in current
prices.
54
For domestic production, however, the materials are scarce. We used Lenin (1876,
1879, 1890 and Obruchev for the 1860s. To this we applied Gregorys deflater for agricultural
machinery for 1885-1913 and Strumilins price index for industrial commodities for 1867-
1884 (somewhat weakened for our purpose in that he also includes non-agricultural

54
For 1865-1867 we used data from Obruchev (1871); for 1869-1896 we relied on Lenins figures Lenin (1952),
1: i; for 1901-1913, Oganovskii and Kondratiev (1923). To construct a trend (based on a regression model), we
used Vainshteins data for 1910-1913 as a baseline.
Leonard, Inertia to Ferment 21
equipment in this index). Because the amounts are small, we used the deflater backward to
1861. Due to the lack of data, we do not count agricultural structures, which were, in any
case, very limited in number and quality.
FIGURE 5
EQUIPMENT INPUT DYNAMIC, 1913=100


In constant 1913 prices, the value of agricultural equipment for 1867 through 1913 rose, in
our estimate, 36.5 times with an average annual rate of growth of 8.6 per cent, that is, 7.1
for the first twenty years and 10 per cent for the remainder of the period.
Mineral fertilizers
Other researchers have ignored mineral fertilizers on the assumption that the Russian rural
producers used, almost entirely, natural fertilizer. This assumption is fair for the peasants
allotment land (nadel) in the early period, but mineral fertilizers were beginning to be used
at this time on large nobles farm enterprises, especially for industrial crops, a trend which
increased after the turn of the century. We have data for 1900 to 1913.
55
These estimates
were deflated by Strumilins price index for industrial products (which we assume is close,

55
Khromov (1950), p. 164; Oganovskii (1923), p. 307-308.
Agricultural equipment input dynamics (1913=100), in 1913 constant prices
0
20
40
60
80
100
1
8
6
7
1
8
6
9
1
8
7
1
1
8
7
3
1
8
7
5
1
8
7
7
1
8
7
9
1
8
8
1
1
8
8
3
1
8
8
5
1
8
8
7
1
8
8
9
1
8
9
1
1
8
9
3
1
8
9
5
1
8
9
7
1
8
9
9
1
9
0
1
1
9
0
3
1
9
0
5
1
9
0
7
1
9
0
9
1
9
1
1
1
9
1
3
Leonard, Inertia to Ferment 22
although not exacting). In 1900, the value of imported fertilizer was 4.1 million rubles (1913
prices), and by 1913, 15.2 million rubles, an average annual rate of growth of 12 per cent.
Livestock
Livestock data are extremely fragmented, since they were not systematically gathered
before the 1880s. In view of the substantial part of cereals, potatoes and industrial crops in
Gross Agricultural Output (70-80) per cent), the fragility would seem unfortunate but
tolerable. However, toward the the twentieth century the numbers of animal stock was
probably crucial. As estimated by Prokopovich, in 1913 about one-fourth of the income of
agriculture was derived from the sale, or self consumption by farmers, of meat, dairy
products, or other livestock products; we cannot reproduce this information.
56

For the earlier years, livestock inventories were entirely determined by the amount
of meadowlands and hay available to feed cattle in sufficient numbers to fertilize the land. In
the post-Emancipation decades, therefore, one could still describe Russia as a country split
between two kinds of agriculture, that which was independent of livestock inventories, or
the slash/burn and two-field fallow methods, and that which was higher yielding, the three-
field and multicrop rotation, that is, a production process that relied upon horses for
energy.
57
The exclusion of livestock at any point in this period of history would therefore be
a problem for understanding economic growth in Russias nineteenth century.
A sense of the state of information about livestock production, based on all the
available sources, can be felt in the summary remarks by Davies and Wheatcroft, remarks
cited in full because of the importance of the issue to growth calculations:
Livestock farming was the second most important sector, providing some 34
per cent of agricultural production. Our knowledge of its rate of growth in pre-war
decades is imperfect. Neither the absolute numbers of livestock nor their rate of
increase are known with certainty; and no data are available about changes in the
average weight of farm animals in this period. It seems reasonable that livestock
numbers increased by only about one per cent a year between 1900 and 1914, or

56
See Prokopovich (1918).
57
Obruchev (1871), p. 233.
Leonard, Inertia to Ferment 23
more slowly than the growth of population.
58

Goldsmith also believed that there was too little information at all on livestock figures, and
he refused to supply a series.
Actually, as Vainshtein remarked in his article about pre-revolutionary livestock
inventories, Statistics regarding livestock numbers for pre-revolutionary Russia suffer not
from insufficiency but from an abundance of contradictory materials.
59
In data published
after 1908, including a retrospective statistics for the post-Emancipation period, there is a
conflict between information gathered by the Veterinary Administration and that gathered
by the Central Statistical Committee. A leap in the series occurs at 1896. In 1895, this
retrospective series gives 24.5 million heads of cattle, and in 1896, 29.5, or an increase in
one year of over 20 per cent. We take this to be an error due to the introduction of a new
method of counting or statistical problems; Gregory, like Vainshtein, accepts the larger
number.
60

Production livestock is such an important part of farming in Russia, that we cannot
exclude it among factors of production or sources of income. The number of horses used in
production is exceedingly important for pre-revolutionary Russia. Because of the speed of
planting and harvesting induced by the high seasonality of production, oxen were almost
useless in much of Russia, and horses were the main productive force. The weight of horses
would be important, then, were it available, allowing detection of age, we take for input the
horses over 4 or 5 years of age, or those used for plowing.
We cannot use Gregorys figures for the value of livestock in investment. For our data
range, his bias is upward, due to his use for the pre-1900 period of additional estimates for
Poland, Siberia and Asia with reference to the population series.





58
Davies and Wheatcroft (1994), p. 109.
59
Vainshtein (1960), p. 87.
60
For further a discussion of this issue, see Goldsmith (1955) and Gregory (1981), pp. 265-267.
Leonard, Inertia to Ferment 24
FIGURE 6
LIVESTOCK INVENTORIES (MLNS OF RUBLS)

The above chart shows the fragmentary nature of estimates for livestock inventory.
Land
The survey data are organized in the General Land Survey, which lasted in its official
estaimates through 1870, by estate (dach). From the era of serfdom, where there were
numerous owners of one estate, the survey did not distinguish separate boundaries, but
instead, the number of serfs belonging to individually owned parcels of the dach, often
mixing even state and Church property together with privately owned land.
61
This practice
lasted until the abolition of serfdom, and the reporting routines much longer. Also a carry-
over through 1870 from the era of serfdom, the extent of the demesne, interleaved with
allotment land, cannot be determined for that era.
62


61
Milov (1965); Ivanov (1846); Kavelin (1914).

62
Confino (1969).
0.0
1000.0
2000.0
3000.0
4000.0
5000.0
6000.0
1
8
8
1
1
8
8
4
1
8
8
7
1
8
9
0
1
8
9
3
1
8
9
6
1
8
9
9
1
9
0
2
1
9
0
5
1
9
0
8
1
9
1
1
1
9
1
4
Leonard, Inertia to Ferment 25
The measure for land is obtained by weighting total sown acreage by an index of
weighted yields to which meadows and pasture lands were added. Land prices were taken
from Kovalchenko and Milov.
63

FIGURE 7
LAND PRICES, 1867-1913 (RUBLES/DESIATINA, 1913=100)

Income Weights
For weights in aggregation of factor inputs in income, we develop our own measures. From
Gallman, the weights used for US agriculture cannot be applied directly to the production
function for the farm regime in Russia. Our estimations proceeded in two ways, as in
Johnson (1948). We estimated labour as a residual among factors in production Method A,
and dwe then tested that by deriving our own estimate of the income share of labour. The
residual approach is preferred by Gallman (1972), who rejected a conclusion we might
similarly have drawn, at least for the 1860s, that labor income (including implicit earnings of
slaves and unpaid family workers), exhausts total sectoral income in 1850 (Gallman 1972,
pp. 204-205. In constructing factoral shares in income, it is necessary to assume that the

63
1863-1909, Kovalchenko and Milov (1974), pp. 259-267.
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
Year
Lan
Leonard, Inertia to Ferment 26
agricultural sector is in competitive equilibrium and that each factor is being paid the value
of its marginal product, which is the justification for assuming that the factor share is a
measure of output elasticity. As Robert Gallman observes in his study of 19
th
century farm
productivity, there is little alternative for historical studies to this approach: weights are
required, and income share makes economic sense.
64

The comparison, below in Table 2, shows that the estimates for some years are fairly
close, bearing out the usefulness of the residual.
TABLE 2
THE SHARE OF LABOUR IN INCOME, 1861-1913, TWO VERSIONS
Method A Method B
Value of
Labour, taken as
a Residual
(rubles)
Income Share
of Labour, taken
as a Residual, in
percent
Value of on-
Farm Labour,
including
consumption by
on and off-farm
workers (rubles)
Income Share of Labour,
in percent

1,813,233,409 86.7

2,343,459,771 112.02

1,748,059,427 81.9

2,123,409,040 99.49

2,430,704,878 85.3

2,525,750,382 88.66

2,451,530,639 68.6

2,704,624,042 75.72

2,709,616,349 56.9

2,874,617,116 60.33

4,941,606,643 68.0

3,026,035,015 41.67



64
Gallman (1972), p. 193.
Leonard, Inertia to Ferment 27
The following are the factor shares in income
65
:
TABLE 3

*Note: Income equals gross farm product minus seed, livestock sales (estimated 20 per cent
of livestock (as in Gallman 1972), receipts for off-farm labour, operational expenses
(fertilizer), rents paid to nonfarmers (proxied by redemption fees), and changes to net land
and livestock inventories.
a
Crop inventories were taken as a percent, based on Vilson (1869, p. 112), and assumed to
be constant through 1913, with income share estimated as standard as 5 per cent (Gallman
1972).
b
Livestock inventories (80 per cent of production of mature animals, with non-horses taken
as 1/10 of horses) from Vilson (1869, p. 112), had an income share represented by the
standard 5 per cent (Gallman 1972).
c
Equipment consisted of imported and domestically produced farm machinery, as described
in the text, at a return of 10 per cent (Gallman 1972).
d
Fertilizer, as equipment, as estimated at a return of 10 per cent (Gallman 1972).


65
The indexes are constructed using last period prices, with the knowledge that this will overstate output growth.
The total index is a weighted average of indices by last period prices (1913), which reflect their summed
proportion to total wealth, 1861, 1871, 1881, 1891, 1901, 1911.
Estimated Factoral Shares in Agricultural Gross Income, 1861-1913, in Percent*
Year Land Inventories Equipment and Fertilizer Capital Labour Total
Crops
a
Livestock
b
Equipment
c
Fertilizer
d

Method A
(Residual)

1861 12.85 0.47 7.24 0.01 0.00 7.72 86.67 100
1871 17.73 0.37 7.74 0.01 0.00 8.13 81.90 100
1881 14.38 0.29 4.71 0.01 0.00 5.02 85.32 100
1891 31.09 0.28 5.12 0.02 0.00 5.42 68.63 100
1901 42.83 0.28 4.06 0.04 0.01 4.39 56.87 100
1911 31.69 0.23 2.61 0.07 0.02 2.92 68.04 100
Leonard, Inertia to Ferment 28
Estimates
It is important to begin by observing, again, that these estimates are fragile. They depend
upon long run assumptions and data that were, for the early years, not documented by farm
surveys. However, the checks made on these data suggest that even though they employ a
lower figure for livestock production than in Gregory, they are consistent with findings and
show something about the nature of agricultural advancement for a longer period.
Rates of Change of Inputs, Outputs and Productivity
Presenting the findings for this paper, is Table 4:
Table 4

Average Annual Rates of Growth of Farm Gross Product and Agricultural Factor Inputs,
1860s-1900s, in per cent

Capital Land Labour Farm Gross
Product
1860s 0.77 3.47 -0.37 0.20
1870s -2.03 0.80 3.35 2.93
1880s 3.15 10.48 0.09 2.29
1890s 0.65 6.27 1.01 2.92
1900s 0.08 1.21 6.19 4.31


The results are not surprising. They show that output was increasing steadily, particularly
impressively in the last period up to World War I. Capital stock was growing by then
significantly slower than output, which would indicate that its partial productivity was
increasing. Similarly, output was increasing faster than land, which shows the partial
productivity of the latter to have become more significant in the last period, although
subject to great expansion in the 1880s and 1890s. With the rate of population booming
Leonard, Inertia to Ferment 29
before the revolution and seasonal migration increasing significantly, the partial productivity
of labour, controlling for other factors of production, was decreasing in the 1900s as
population pushed up seasonal migration and industrialization provided new opportunities
to supplement household earnings. Labour productivity here is in contrast to figures
introduced above for the final period, which show only the partial productivity. Production
had remained highly labour intensive, after having been transformed in the 1890s, as
estimates for that previous decade show, into a more modern framework. However, a new
legal regime was helping rural producers change their occupation, and the labour figures
cannot be understood without consideration of the rise in off-farm income.
The above rates of change show considerable acceleration in the 1890s. This is
entirely in accord with all reports about the course of industrialization in Russia, which had a
phenomenal take-off in the late 1890s, still having resonance in agriculture after recovery
from recession in 1908.
It remains to attempt to establish some estimate of total factor productivity, as
follows:
TABLE 5
AVERAGE ANNUAL RATE OF GROWTH: INPUTS AND OUTPUTS IN AGRICULTURE, 1861-1911
Year Inputs Outputs
1860s 0.50 0.22
1870s 2.83 3.26
1880s 5.45 2.55
1890s 7.04 3.25
1900s 1.30 4.80
1861-
1911 2.58 2.13

Leonard, Inertia to Ferment 30
This estimate does not contrast with the understandings already explicit in the
economic history literature, that Russian agriculture remained factor intensive for the bulk of
this period. It can be seen that for the period as a whole, TFP is negative. Individual decades,
such as the 1870s and 1900s, however, show technological change. The tendency is stronger
after 1900. TFP grows positive in the era just before World War I and revolution, suggesting
continuous growth involving structural change rather than simply additions to inputs. The
Stolypin reforms stimulated outwork, and this raised farm receipts.
The trajectory of aggregate growth in agriculture seems to have changed several
times over the years studied. Initially, after Emancipation, there was a gradual then
enormous increase in land prices, at a time when equipment purchases were increasing,
reducing labours previously overwhelming share in income. The influx of capital in
agriculture contributed at a much lower level. Although the introduction of advances may
have been a contributing factor in improving the adjustment of communities to individual
household decision-making, and the increase in household autonomy was well underway
across the north of Russia before the Stolypin reforms. From narrative evidence, adding to
passport numbers, it is further clear that restrictions on labour movement were de facto
eased after Emancipation in 1861. These legal restraints would seem to have broken down
on their own, judging by numbers of passports (Gregory 1994). Indeed, the government
removed them as early as 1903, still after the fact. The sharp rise in remittances would have
followed and led to the widespread access to finance and rise of credit cooperatives after
the turn of the century. If this scenario is correct, the key to the transformation of
agriculture after the Emancipation and the stagnation in subsequent decades lies probably in
urban labour remittances to communities, linking both sectors to the story of growth in the
industrialization process.
Was the appearance of technology change in agriculture after 1900 self-sustaining?
At first glance, the implications of the data, which seem plausible, restore some faith in the
technologically induced model of rural development. That model suffered as a lack of
adaptability of rural communities to new equipment led to frustration among development
economists. The productivity advances from using that equipment, however, are, as more
and more is known about development, are always accompanied by skilling. For this to be
Leonard, Inertia to Ferment 31
effective on a large scale, the movement of labor and spread of skills were synergistic with
the mobilization of land in Russia. The process which seemed to have been technologically
induced surely is equally due to prior institutional change, that is, the abolition of serfdom.
Difficult to show, the process points to self-sustaining growth.

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