DYNAMICS OF WAGES INEQUALITY IN SOVIET INDUSTRY IN THE NEP YEARS: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

One of the most important questions in the study of income inequality in the 1920s is evolution of the differentiation of workers’ wages. Salary policy during this period was very controversial. Along with measures in the field of labor incentives, there were also opposite trends: from the mid-1920s the state and trade unions began to pursue a policy of wages equalization, one of the elements of which was its equalization by branches of labor. This reflected both popular beliefs about socialism and the demand of low-paid workers for higher wages. This article aims at analyzing the differentiation of workers’ wages in the second half of the 1920s. It focuses on the study of sources and approbation of the methodology for assessing the differentiation in the wages of workers using statistical methods. The use of different methods for assessing inequality is largely related to the nature of the information in the sources on wages. Diverse information allows us to study the dynamics of average values (monthly and daily wages of industrial workers in general and in various industries, as well as by professions within industries), the ratio of wages of highly skilled and unskilled workers. More complex methods are also used — the calculation of the decile coefficient and the Gini index. The article identifies the main trends in the dynamics of differentiation of wages of various categories of workers in the NEP years.