Industrial Growth before the 1890s

Abstract

ALTHOUGH Russian industry continued to exhibit many features of a backward, agrarian-based structure in the decades after the Emancipation, definite growth did take place. Goldsmith’s figures show that in aggregate terms industry grew only slowly in the 1860s and 1870s, but from the middle of the 1880s a significant upturn occurred. A few statistics will illustrate this development. The labour force in the industries covered by official data, including railways, approximately doubled in the thirty years after 1860, so that by 1890 the number of workers stood at 1,433,000. Production in numerous industrial sectors mounted impressively. Coal output was some 18.3 million poods in 1860, and by 1890 had reached 367.2 million poods (see Table 11).