Institutional sources of human capital formation in the regions of European Russia, the Siberia, and the Far East (late 19th – early 20th centuries)
Authors:   Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, Didenko Dmitry V. 
Published: December 2024

The paper is focused on the processes of human capital formation in the principal macroregions of the Russian Empire: Eastern Europe, Siberia, and the Far East. We present our results of the long series analysis of financing education and healthcare as regards their institutional sources.
The study is aimed at discovering common patterns and features of the role of institutional sectors of the economies in the macroregions as the sources of their human capital formation during Russia’s transition to ‘modern economic growth’ (as the term was coined by S. Kuznets) in the late 19th – early 20th centuries.
The study is based on annual governors’ reports. Their information potential is discussed in this paper. By utilizing their quantitative evidence, we have constructed our dynamic models of institutional structure of the sources of human capital accumulation (in tabular form).
We analyze the following institutional sectors: central government (secular powers represented by the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and other agencies, primarily the Ministry of Defense); clerical powers (the Holy Synod and various church communities); administrations of regional and local levels; rural self-governments of the lower level (volost’ and mir communities); urban communities; enterprises; households. The data are related to organized forms of education and health care, they do not cover the respective services provided at home. In the conclusion we formulate the characteristics of the models of human capital formation in the three macroregions of the country.
In European Russia the first place in the total expenditures for education belonged to the zemstvos since the end of the 1860s till the 1900s. But the central government increased its share of funds and by the early 1910s had taken over in education financing. At the same time, it remained much less active in the healthcare sector and could even reduce its share of funds in certain periods.
The Far East was distinguished by an elevated share of funds from the central government (in the field of education it became prevalent as early as in the 1880s), a depressed role of regional dues; a steadily growing and fairly significant share of the funds from the urban communities by the end of the period under study. Siberia demonstrates an intermediate position between the regions of European Russia and the Far East. The central government funds became prevalent in the late 19th century. The funds from local self-governments of the lower level (rural and urban communities) were comparable to that of European Russia, while urban funds played a much more modest role as compared with the Far East. The author suggests that the economic history approach allows to discover the sources of divergences and convergences in trajectories of institutional development of the three Russia’s macroregions which have been realized to a large extent in the Soviet and post-Soviet periods.