On the Possibility of Studying the Wage Inequality of Mining Workers and Employees in the Period from 1861 to the Beginning of the XX Century. According to the Documents of the Siberian Archives

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to analyze archival materials of the State Archive of the Altai Territory and the State Archive of the Tomsk Region for the possibility of studying differences in wages of mining workers and employees based on them. The prospect of studying the archival funds of the Kemerovo region and the Krasnoyarsk Territory is also indicated. The subject of the study is the information potential of archival sources of these archives. The chronological framework of the study covers the period from 1861 to the beginning of the XX century. The relevance of the study is justified by the need to expand the range of sources for a broader study of the topic of income inequality in the regional dimension. The paper considers and analyzes archival materials containing information on the salaries of full-time employees and the earnings of freelance workers at various enterprises and institutions of the Altai Mining District, as well as at private and state-owned gold mines and fisheries of nearby Siberian territories. Conclusions were drawn about the different information potential of the considered sets of sources, about their suitability in aggregate for studying the issues of wage inequality for different types of activities, categories of employees or positions, at different enterprises and territories, and the shortcomings of the identified materials were identified.