Comparative labour productivity in British and Russian manufacturing, circa 1908

ABSTRACT Using data from official manufacturing censuses, we compare labour productivity in the UK and the Russian Empire around 1908 in the industries in which medium- and large-size enterprises predominated. We find that Russia’s labour productivity was 75.3 or 57.4% of the British level, depending on whether we include or exclude Russia’s large and highly productive spirits industry. Russia’s productivity was between France’s and the Netherlands’, if we include the spirits industry; and between the Netherlands’ and Italy’s, if we exclude it. We find that the majority of Russian industries underperformed the British ones. However, some of the industries that had been established or modernized during the state-induced industrialization policies of the 1890s, including the metallurgy in the Southern industrial region, iron and steel tubes, railway carriages, and butter and cheese, performed on a par with or close to their British counterparts. The remaining modernized industries, including spirits, tobacco, and petrochemical sectors, outperformed their British equivalents. Our findings suggest that although Russia’s aggregate labour productivity lagged behind the UK’s, Russia’s modernized industries achieved, and in some cases surpassed, the productivity level of their British counterparts.