of labour, the Bolshevics gave it up and fell into the other extreme: 
none other, non-socialistic, country had ever experienced such a wide 
difference between the remuneration of the highest category of labour 
and that of the lowest, as Soviet Russia did in the year 1926. 
At the meeting of the board of the General Council of Trade Unions 
S.C.C.T.U.) in August 1926, Tomsky pointed out that the Soviet rulers 
were at first of the opinion that the ratio between the highest and lowest 
wages in different categories of workmen were not to exceed 1:13); and 
at present, according to Tomsky, one comes in practice across such ratio, 
as 1:6 and even 1:9. That means that the trained workers are paid about 
5 to 9 times higher than the low categories of unskilled workers. In the 
same speech Tomsky admitted that delegations of foreign workers, who 
visited Russia, expressed their surprise as to the wide difference existing 
etween remuneration of the skilled and unskilled workmen in Russia, 
a state of affairs unknown in other countries*). This leads to the con- 
clusion that unskilled workmen must earn considerably less than they did 
before the revolution. During this last year Bolshevics tried to level this 
difference. Nevertheless, data quoted by the People’s Commissary of Labour, 
Shmidt, in his article which has been already mentioned**), the margin 
setween the highest and lowest wages continues to be great. 
Thirdly, in all comparisons of the real wage, one has also to take into 
account the innumerable deductions, “voluntary” in form only, to which 
the Soviet worker has constantly to submit, in spite of his poor remune- 
-ation. In the first instance, it is a matter of deductions in favour of the 
‘Aviachims”, an extensive organisation with a large budget which is devoted 
‘0 the development of the Air Fleet, as well as to the methods of 
‘chemical” warfare; and further, it is a question of the ‘International 
Red Help” (Mechrabprom), and of separate collections of funds in favour 
of workers on strike in foreign countries (the English coal strike!). 
Although the exact amount of these collections is not known, there is no 
loubt at all that in some months the Soviet worker has to surrender, 
‘voluntarily’’, a considerable percentage of his earnings for these objects. 
When dwelling on the question of the increase of the real wages, of 
vhich one is informed by the data of the Soviet statistics, the following very 
»ssential circumstance must be taken into consideration: The increase of the 
werage real wages up to the level of the pre-revolution period was only 
possible owing to the fact that workmen pay almost nothing for lodgings 
in the houses which were nationalized without their owners being com- 
pensated. According to the results of a special examination undertaken 
*) See Troud of August 1926. 
See Pravda No. 271, November 26th, 1927.