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Introduction. The article is devoted to a topic that has been insufficiently studied in Russian historiography – female labor in state institutions of Russia in the late 19th – early 20th centuries. The reader will find out how difficult it was to get into the ranks of the bank employees, what requirements were put forward by the leadership of this institution for candidates for a position at the Central Office and Saint Petersburg branch. Methods and materials. Based on archival materials the author examines the practice of recruiting women for service in the Central Office of the State Bank and its metropolitan branch. The author applies traditional methodological foundations: scientific objectivity, the systematic approach and historicism, as well as the general scientific method of structural and functional analysis. Analysis. The article focuses on the working conditions of women and their wages. It also provides some information about the social origin of women employees in the bank, their educational level. The author dwells on the changes in the practice of recruiting women in the early 20th century, especially during the First World War. It is important to note that the bank leadership's requirements for women employed have undergone tangible changes over the thirty years since their first recruitment. If at the first stage relatives of bank officials were mainly recruited into the main credit institution of the country, then by the First World War these conditions had substantially softened. The defining requirements were the educational level, personal qualities and discipline of persons who were members of the bank staff. It was these qualities that convinced the bank leadership of the equivalence of female labor in relation to male labor, especially after the mass recruitment of the latter into the army. Results. The processes of staffing the State Bank by women employees, considered in the article, convincingly indicate a gradual revision of the relationship traditionally seen in Imperial Russia to women as subjects of socio-economic life in society. It is important to note that these changes largely occurred not due to the struggle of women for their rights, but as a result of the economic development of the country, in which labor resources of the male part of the empire were more and more exhausted. This factor played a key role in attracting women to public service.

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.