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ПОДЕННЫЕ ЗАРАБОТКИ ЧЕРНОРАБОЧИХ И ЦЕНЫ В МОСКВЕ И ТОБОЛЬСКЕ В XVIII В
Assessing the incomes of the Russian population in the 18th century is one of the urgent tasks in the economic history of pre-industrial Russia. The difficulty of the task is determined by the existence of serfdom in Russia, since it preserved an archaic economy with its barter exchange. This article presents the first results of the project “Wages and Prices in Russia of the 18th century”. The author compares daily wages in cash of peasants-laborers involved in construction in Moscow and Tobolsk, as two capitals of the European part of Russia and Siberia, respectively. Then a comparison of the calculated incomes of peasant-migrants and the costs of living in these cities applying the methodology of Robert Allen is made. The main source of research was the books of revenues and expenditures of the monasteries, which were located in these cities. It is demonstrated that in the second half of the 18th century, the well-being of the peasant-migrants is noticeably reduced in Moscow and slightly less in Tobolsk. The results show that the study of the economic development of Russia should focus on the study of regions, since the vast territory of Russia and the unresolved issues of market integration, including the labor market, hamper an adequate determination of the level of economic development of the empire as a whole. And it is especially important that the results obtained cannot be explained in any way only by the presence or absence of serfdom in a particular region of Russia.