This article attempts to study the history of the cooperative industry in the capital region using statistical sources of cooperative origin stored in the archives of the Central State Archive of Moscow. The research aims to examine the dynamics of the economic activities of Soviet production cooperatives in the capital region in the context of issues related to the output of gross product and the payment of wages to workers in handicraft cooperatives. This goal is supported by tasks to track the dynamics of production in selected trade unions and wage payments in them for selected years of post-war reconstruction, identify the presence or absence of a correlation between wage levels and performance results in terms of gross product output, and determine whether hired labor plays a significant role in the productive activities of handicraft cooperatives. The work is conducted using methods of historical informatics: creating databases and performing statistical analysis, including correlation and regression analysis. The novelty of the article lies in the author's attempt to use statistical analysis methods to study the Soviet cooperative industry. The quantitative research conducted has led to the conclusion about the premature nature of conclusions regarding the presence of a correlation between the incomes of cooperative members and the economic performance of the enterprises where they worked, which does not allow us to draw conclusions about the existence of any significant incentives for increasing labor productivity in production cooperative enterprises at this time. Furthermore, the analysis of hired labor statistics in most trade unions of Soviet production cooperatives also did not meet our expectations—due to their extreme scarcity, hired workers could not exert any— or almost any— influence on production processes. An exception in this regard were representatives of the disability cooperatives, for whom hired labor proved to be a more optimal form considering their living and working conditions.
Artur Ravilevich Khusnulin (Thu,) studied this question.