This paper investigates part-year factory operation, a common but understudied dimension of industrializing economies, in a prototypical late-industrializing setting that offers rich factory-level data: Imperial Russia. Newly compiled data provides detailed descriptions of all Russian manufacturing firms operating in 1894 and shows that factories operating a greater number of annual working days were more mechanized, more urban, more likely to employ women and children, more productive, and more likely to survive. Rather than arguing that part-year operation demonstrated Russia’s uniquely inexorable backwardness, we stress operating time’s relationship to fundamental drivers of growth, including urbanization, geography, and institutions.

本文调查了部分年度工厂运营，这是工业化经济体的一个常见但未被充分研究的维度，在一个典型的晚期工业化环境中提供了丰富的工厂级数据：俄罗斯帝国。新编制的数据详细描述了 1894 年运营的所有俄罗斯制造企业，并显示年工作日数更多的工厂机械化程度更高、城市化程度更高、更有可能雇用妇女和儿童、生产率更高且更有可能生存。与其争辩说部分年度运营证明了俄罗斯独特的不可阻挡的落后，我们强调运营时间与增长的基本驱动因素的关系，包括城市化、地理和制度。