DP6014 Dictators, Repression and the Median Citizen: An “Eliminations Model” of Stalin’s Terror (Data from the NKVD Archives)

Author(s): Paul Gregory , Philipp Schrôder , Konstantin Sonin

Publication Date: December 2006

Keyword(s): Dictatorial systems , NKVD , OPGU , Soviet State and Party archives , Stalinism

JEL(s): N44 , P00 , P26

Programme Areas: Public Policy

Initiatives: Economic History

Link to this Page: www.cepr.org/pubs/dps/DP6014.asp.asp

This paper sheds light on dictatorial behavior as exemplified by the mass terror campaigns of Stalin. Dictatorships - unlike democracies where politicians choose platforms in view of voter preferences - may attempt to trim their constituency and thus ensure regime survival via the large scale elimination of citizens. We formalize this idea in a simple model and use it to examine Stalin’s three large scale terror campaigns with data from the NKVD state archives that are accessible after more than 60 years of secrecy. Our model traces the stylized facts of Stalin’s terror and identifies parameters such as the ability to correctly identify regime enemies, the actual or perceived number of enemies in the population, and how secure the dictator's power base is, as crucial for the patterns and scale of repression.