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# In the old days, when I lectured, a professor's salary of 3000 roubles was so ample that I could even keep a footman – I took on Alyosha, you know
- URL: https://theparnassian.com/en/prezhde-kogda-ia-vystupal-zhalovane-professora-v-3000-rub-tak-obespechivalo-chto-ia-mog-dazhe-lakeia-derzhat-vot-aleshu-vzial/
- Published: 2026-02-15T14:22:23.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-01T05:26:58.000Z
- Author: Alexandr Radayev
- Tags: Archive, Science, Education, Society

> In the old days, when I lectured, a professor's salary of 3000 roubles was so ample that I could even keep a footman – I took on Alyosha, you know. But does it provide so well now? If I were a minister and were asked to name what a professor ought to be paid, I should say: not less than 10000 roubles. Outside earnings, literary work or consultancy, are also much harder to come by nowadays. For literary work, a great many people have sprung up, and in consultancy the need for professors is far smaller. Formerly a professor with a general training could be a valued adviser anywhere, but now any good factory has such specialists that they would put a professor in the shade. And the public standing of professors? Once their opinions were heeded, but who pays them any attention now? You, of course, are in no hurry, a suitable post will turn up – at our Chamber, for one. And if you do not wish to tear yourself away from science, well, science can be pursued anywhere. Science is a mistress who will embrace you wherever you are – only do not push her away yourself.

**Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleev on professors' salaries, in conversation with the young chemist Vyacheslav Tishchev in 1890.**

10,000 roubles at that time, calculated by the gold parity method from present-day gold prices, would be equivalent to roughly 150 million present-day roubles. Per year.

There are other methods of converting nineteenth-century roubles into modern ones, for example by purchasing power, by which this sum would correspond to 10–25 million roubles, which is still very considerable. By the wage method, a salary of 10,000 roubles in 1890 corresponds to 50 million in 2026\. Calculated via the silver rouble, it comes to a little over 40 million roubles.

In any case, it is hard to picture a university professor in Russia today on a salary of several million roubles a month, let alone tens of millions. One would sooner believe in a mere 10 thousand roubles 😆