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Repressions and Punishment Under Stalin: Evidence from the Soviet Archives
Abstract
This chapter explores patterns of repressions and punishment under Stalin using two unique datasets extracted from the Soviet archives. First, I study the profile of the Great terror at one of Soviet industrial ministries, the chief administration of metallurgy. I find that the probability of arrest was higher for party members, high-rank officials, ethnic minorities, and employees with higher education in 1937. Second, my analysis of plan fulfilment by industrial ministries during the postwar years shows that penalties were negatively correlated with production achievements. I discuss these findings in the light of political and economic explanations of Soviet repressive policy.
... About 20 million people were at some point inmates at gulag camps (Khlevniuk and Nordlander, 2004;Markevich, 2016, see also 2 A flourishing scholarship in economics has examined how past events and circumstances affect current socioeconomic outcomes and institutions. For overviews, see Cioni et al. (2021), Michalopoulos and Papaioannou (2017), Nunn (2009Nunn ( , 2014Nunn ( , 2020, Spolaore and Wacziarg (2013), and Voth (2020). ...
... While this dataset is the only one with information on roundups, it only has a subset of the victims of Stalin's terror. Specifically, while we know from historical sources that about 20 million people were at some point inmates in gulag camps (Markevich, 2016), the arrests data from Zhukov and Talibova (2018) only contain 359,408 individuals who were sentenced to prison or penal units. According to the Memorial organization, the database contains at most a quarter of all victims. ...
We examine current differences in trust levels within the countries of the former Soviet Union (FSU) and trace their origins back to the system of forced labor during Stalin, which was marked by high incarceration rates and harsh punishments. We explore whether those exposed to knowledge about the repressions became less trusting and transferred this social norm to future generations and communities. We argue that political repressions were more salient and visible to local communities living near forced labor camps (gulags), which symbolized the harshness of Stalin’s regime. Combining contemporary survey data with the geolocation of forced labor camps, we find that living near former gulags lowers present-day social trust and civic engagement. These effects are independent of living near places where Stalin’s victims were arrested. Moreover, they are above and beyond any experiences with war or civil conflict that the extant literature documents, indicating that the gulag system's repressiveness is a crucial trigger of the mistrust culture within the FSU countries today. As such, we furnish novel evidence on how past political repression matters for current socioeconomic outcomes.
... Surely, one may object that the toll of Stalin's repressions can reach 20 million (Markevich, 2016). Thus, the above arithmetic does not work. ...
If one favors Moral Intuitivism in order to deal with Skeptical argument, then thinking by analogy with mathematical knowledge is of use. A major objection to the mathematical analogy in Moral epistemology is the threat of moral relativism in practical applications of moral pluralism if we employ mathematical pluralism as a vector to proceed. Thus, the advocacy for moral pluralism faces an obstacle which should be addressed: a problem of moral «vague» predicates. This article addresses moral vagueness and considers objections toward several treatments of related Sorties series through possibility of deepening a proper mathematical intuition. However, the issue of human moral competency cannot be erased from the picture. It is a critical question for morality which very likely falls beyond the scope of Moral epistemology.
This survey discusses recent developments in the growing literature on the economic history of Russia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Using novel data and modern empirical methods, this research provides important lessons for development and political economy. We address four strands of this literature. First, we present long-term trends in economic development, illustrating that throughout history, Russia significantly underperformed advanced economies, and quantify the human cost of Joseph Stalin’s dictatorship. Second, we discuss studies of imperial Russia focusing on the causes of Russia’s relatively low level of economic development and the 1917 revolution. The third strand of the literature focuses on the Soviet period, explaining its slowdown over time and eventual collapse. The fourth strand documents the long-term economic, social, and political consequences of large-scale historical experiments that took place during both the imperial and Soviet periods. We conclude by discussing the lessons from this research and highlighting open questions. (JEL N10, N30, N40, N60, P20, P30, Z13)
We examine the value of a statistical life of a citizen in the interwar Soviet Union based on the preferences of its dictator. We model and specify Stalin’s preferences for a policy of statistical repression, an integral feature of the Great Terror (1937 - 1938). We use regional variation in the victims generated by this policy to structurally estimate the value that Stalin would have been willing to accept for a reduction in citizens’ fatality risk. Our estimate of this value, roughly $85,000 (in 2019 U.S. dollars), is substantially smaller than estimates based on citizens’ willingness to pay in modern India and in the United States in 1940.
This paper was published in Soviet Studies 42:1 (1990), pp. 39-58. In the text of the paper, reference is made to a number of technical appendices. These cover: (A) Economic ministries, 1945-54: summary of their reorganization (a set of charts showing the process of ministerial subdivisions and amalgamations) (B) Ministries and ministerial appointments, 1945-54 (names and dates of appointment and dismissal or transfer, by ministry) (C) The number of production branch ministries and the renewal of ministers, 1945-54 (a quantitative summary of Appendices A and B) (D) The year of birth of production branch ministers, 1945-54 (names listed by year of birth, where known) (E) The USSR Council of Ministers, 1945-54 – an index of names (cross-referenced for Appendix B) (F) Sources for Appendices A-E. These appendices are not published below, but are available on application to Mark Harrison at the address below. Soviet planning after 1945. John Crowfoot's involvement in the project during 1984-85 was made possible by the financial support of the Nuffield Foundation, for which the authors express their gratitude. We are also grateful to Peter Law (Warwick) and an anonymous referee for helpful comments.
There is no agreement about the reasons for Stalin's Great Terror of 1937-1939. This paper argues that the problem faced by Stalin was similar to the standard principal-agent problem: the country was run as one enormous firm with Stalin as the only residual claimant. The monetary incentive structure was inadequate and the threat of mass shirking by the agents was real. A simple model of a principal with two agents is developed to address the problem. Assuming that the agents can observe and can reveal each other's shirking, it is shown that, under some assumptions, an equilibrium exists with the following strategy profiles: unless someone's shirking is revealed, the principal is committed to randomly punishing one of the agents with positive probability; an individual agent never shirks and always reveals a co-worker's shirking. A case study of the period is used to check the plausibility of this hypothesis. Copyright 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd..
In Restructuring the Soviet Economic Bureaucracy, Paul R. Gregory takes an inside look at how the system worked and why it has traditionally been so resistant to change. Gregory's findings shed light on a bureaucracy that was widely considered the greatest threat to Gorbachev's efforts at perestroika, or restructuring. Restructuring the Soviet Economic Bureaucracy is based on Soviet and Western published accounts as well as interviews with former members of the Soviet economic bureaucracy, mainly from the middle elite. These informants, with their expert knowledge of the system, tell how bureaucrats big and small made the routine and extraordinary decisions that determined Soviet resource allocation. The often-criticized irrationalities of the Soviet bureaucracy are revealed to contain their own internal logic and consistency.
In 1936–38 the USSR experienced a mass repression against executives at all levels on such a scale that it could be called a ‘cadres’ (or nomenklatura) revolution. These purges, which at first seem random and chaotic, had a centralised character. The cadre purge had a number of stages, which coincided with those of the terror as a whole. They also had their own characteristics. This chapter considers the process and results of the purge of the leading managerial personnel in the Soviet economic agencies. Despite its importance, this purge accounted for only a fraction of the mass terror unleashed by Stalin in this period.
This original analysis of the workings of Soviet state security organs under Lenin and Stalin addresses a series of questions that have long resisted satisfactory answers. Why did political repression affect so many people, most of them ordinary citizens? Why did repression come in waves or cycles? Why were economic and petty crimes regarded as political crimes? What was the reason for relying on extra-judicial tribunals? And what motivated the extreme harshness of punishments, including the widespread use of the death penalty? Through an approach that synthesizes history and economics, Paul Gregory develops systematic explanations for the way terror was applied, how terror agents were recruited, how they carried out their jobs, and how they were motivated. The book draws on extensive, recently opened archives of the Gulag administration, the Politburo, and state security agencies themselves to illuminate in new ways terror and repression in the Soviet Union as well as dictatorships in other times and places. © 2009 by Yale University and the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. All rights reserved.
For this book a distinguished team of economists and historians-R. W. Davies, Paul R. Gregory, Andrei Markevich, Mikhail Mukhin, Andrei Sokolov, and Mark Harrison-scoured formerly closed Soviet archives to discover how Stalin used rubles to make guns. Focusing on various aspects of the defense industry, a top-secret branch of the Soviet economy, the volume's contributors uncover new information on the inner workings of Stalin's dictatorship, military and economic planning, and the industrial organization of the Soviet economy.
An ‘efficiency wage’ model developed for Western economies is reinterpreted in the context of Stalin’s Russia, with imprisonment – not unemployment – acting as a ‘worker discipline device’. The threat of imprisonment allows the state to pay a lower wage outside the Gulag than otherwise, thereby raising the “surplus” left over for investment: this externality provides a reason for coercion over and above the direct productivity of those in custody.
Just how credible the threat of imprisonment was under Stalin is documented using archival data now available; but the enormous scale of random imprisonment involved is, we argue, attributable not to economic factors but to Stalin’s insecurity in the absence of a legitimate process for succession.
We develop a model of demand and supply for industrial labour in such a command economy. To get more resources for investment or war, the state depresses the level of real wages; to avoid incentive problems in the wider economy, the harshness of prison conditions can be intensified. This is the logic of coercion we analyse.
Abstract The paper investigates an aspect of the principal-agent problem,in a command economy,using the example,of the Stalin’s state. Given wide scope for hidden information and hidden action and the associated moral hazards, Soviet rulers had much,to gain from supplementing,output-related incentives by additional external “control” of the agent. Control is defined (in the military sense of command-and- control) as monitoring,the process of implementation,of commands,by the agent combined,with further intervention to redirect the agent’s activities as necessary. The paper examines the dictator’s rational preferences and historical decisions over (a) the size, and number of control organizations and the overlap among them (b) which orders they were to monitor, and (c) the extent of their authority. We find that Stalin placed limits on the answers to all three questions. Cost was the main limiting factor in his decisions. Other factors included the problem,of ensuring the loyalty of the
THIS ARTICLE PRESENTS some preliminary empirical findings about the impact of the great terror in Leningrad (city and oblast'). The sheer scale of the purges makes a quantitative analysis of their impact viable, even within a very limited time span and within a defined geographical region. Leningrad itself offers an interesting case study because of its unique position as the Soviet Union's 'second city' (and former capital). It was an important political and administrative area, located on the borders of the Soviet empire. Its industrial base was relatively advanced, and the local economy had strategic importance for national defence and international trade. The city was surrounded by extensive agricultural regions, which were home to a varied population. The aim here is to offer an insight into the social composition of the victims of the terror, as well as the waves of arrests, trials and executions. As such, rather than attempting to determine who was responsible for instigating and perpetuating the Great Terror, or examining the impact of mass repression on Soviet society as a whole in the second half of the 1930s, this article addresses such historiographical questions as the scope and scale of mass repression and identifies those who were the victims of the purges.' The purges: historiographical debates Historical research into the purges has served to illustrate some of the most highly contested debates concerning the nature of the Stalinist regime in the Soviet Union in the 1930s.2 Conquest's study of the Great Terror, published originally in 1968 and subsequently revised in 1990, offered an early and extensive investigation of the purges.3 Conquest set out to expose the 'immense scale' of mass repression, the methods employed, specifically in terms of the reliance on 'the confessional trial', and the official secrecy surrounding these events.4 Basing his study on published memoirs, oral testimonies, the revelations of the Khrushchev 'thaw' and the limited selection of official primary documents available in such collections as the Smolensk archive, Conquest's monograph drew together previously dispersed evidence and materials about the impact of the purges on individuals as well as a variety of social groups. It also reflected, firstly, the cold war climate of Western antagonism towards the Soviet Union under which much of the research for the book had been conducted, and, secondly, the prevailing political
Monopoly is a particular problem in markets where experience goods are traded, since the consumer cannot respond to bad experiences by switching repeat purchases to another supplier. New evidence shows how the defence ministry as buyer in the Soviet market for military goods responded to this problem by investing in an evaluation of quality prior to purchase, by showing reluctance to buy, and by exploiting the available non-market means to influence the defence industry as supplier. The effectiveness of these stratagems was limited by the defence industry's counteractions and because the buyer had no choice but to come to a compromise with the supplier.
Are command systems that rest on coercion inherently unstable, and did the Soviet economy collapse for this reason? Until it collapsed, the Soviet economy did not appear unstable. Why, then, did it collapse? A game between a dictator and a producer shows that a high level of coercion may yield a stable high–output equilibrium, that stability may rest in part on the dictator's reputation, and that a collapse may be brought about by adverse trends in the dictator's costs and a loss of reputation. The facts of the Soviet case are consistent with a collapse that was triggered by the strike movement of 1989.
We posit a rational choice model of dictatorship to explain the tendency of dictators to repress innocent citizens. This model demonstrates that, when the quality of information about regime enemies is low, a rational dictator will knowingly kill and imprison citizens who are not real enemies. We use the formerly secret Stalin archives to test this proposition against the stylized facts of Stalin's three major repressions. Journal of Comparative Economics 39 (1) (2011) 34-42. University of Houston and Hoover Institution, Stanford University, tinned States: Aarhus University. Denmark: New Economic School, Moscow, Russia. (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier Inc. on behalf of Association for Comparative Economic Studies.
Why do dictatorships favor harsher punishments than democracies? We use a rational choice approach to explain the stylized
facts of Stalin’s dictatorship—preference for harsh sanctions, higher incarceration rates, greater use of capital punishment,
low tolerance for theft of state property and workplace violations. They are shown to be explained by the preferences of a
rational dictator, who does not internalize the social and private cost of punishment.
Given wide scope for asymmetric information in huge hierarchies agents have a large capacity for opportunistic behaviour. Hidden actions increase transactions costs and cause the demand for monitoring and enforcement. Once the latter are costly, this raises questions about their scope, logistics and type. Using historical records, this paper examines the Stalin’s answers to them. We find that Stalin maximised efficiency of the Soviet system of control but had to mitigate with the problems of the loyalty of inspectors themselves and the necessity to lessen the risk of a “chaos of orders” arising from parallel centres of power.
Studies of the mature Soviet economy focus on the structural weaknesses of rent seeking and corruption. Such an economy is presumed to perform better in its adolescent phase under a strong stationary-bandit dictator, dedicated to growth and able to control rent-seekers. We use the recently opened Soviet state and party archives to show the process that began in the 1930s of transforming the inner circle of the Soviet stationary bandit into a rent-seeking bureaucracy lacking long-term goals. Copyright 2002 by Kluwer Academic Publishers
Comparative economic systems
- Paul Gregory
- Robert Stuart
Kak terror stal bolshim. Sekretnij prikaz N004447 i telhnologii ego ispolneniya [How terror became great. A history of the secret odere N00447 and mechanisms of its implementation]
- Mark Junge
- Rolf Binner
The Soviet economy and the launching of the Great Terror
- Robert Davis
2013. The anatomy of terror. Political violence under Stalin
- James Harris
Vertikal’ Bolshogo terrora. Istoriya operatsii po prikazu NKVD N00447 [Vertical of Great Terror. A history of the operation of NKVD order N00447]
- Mark Junge
- Gennadij Bordukov
- Rolf Binner
Istoriya Stalinskogo Gulaga [A history of Stalin’s gulag
- S V Mironenko
- N Vert
Ne po svoej vole: istoriya I geografiya prinuditelnoj migratsii v SSSR [Against their wills: History and geography of forced migrations in the USSR]
- Pavel Polyan
Stalin’s terror revisited
- Melanie Ilič
Politburo. Mekhanizmi vlasti v 1930-e godi. [Politburo. Mechanisms of Power in the 1930s]
- Oleg Khlevnuk
O mashtabe politicheskikh repressii v SSSR pri Staline: 1921–1953 [About the scales of political repressions in the USSR under Stalin
- N G Okhotin
- A B Roginskii
Terror raionnogo mashtaba: Massovie operatsii NKVD v Kuntsevskom raione Moskovskoj oblasti 1937–1938 gg [Terror in a district: Mass operations of NKVD in Kuntsevo district of the Moscow region
- A Vatlin
- Yu
Sovetskaya ustitziya pri Staline [The Soviet Justice under Stalin]
- Peter Solomon