The Staff of the St. Petersburg Office of the State Bank and Their Salaries

Abstract

The article deals with the problems of staffing of the St. Petersburg office of the State Bank and their employees’ salaries. This topic has not been researched in the national and foreign historiography, which excluded the possibility of referencing previously published works. The article is based on the record keeping documents from the Russian State Historical Archive. St. Petersburg office of the State Bank was established in 1894, being a part of the Corporate Administration of the main credit institution of the country. It was one of the largest local branches of the bank that executed the largest credit operations in the country. For this reason, the staff of this office was the most numerous and the most compensated in terms of pay. At the end of 1896 it comprised 463 full-time employees, while 54 more candidates were on the wait list for possible vacancies. Meanwhile the remaining branches and offices of the bank together had a staff of slightly less than 700 people. In addition to full-time employees, there were in the capital branch of the State Bank numerous support staff, including information security workers, brochure makers, janitors, security guards, laundresses and others. Salaries of officials of this unit were the highest. Although formally the official payment in the bank was established by law and in general was the same for all employees of the bank in all its branches; the corporate office of this institution paid their employees more generously by means of bonuses.