Enemies of the People

Gerhard Toews and Pierre-Louis Vézina

American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, 2025, vol. 17, issue 1, 310-42

Abstract: The Soviet regime forcedly sent millions of enemies of the people, i.e. the educated elite considered a threat to the regime, to Gulag camps across the USSR. We use this large-scale episode of terror as a natural experiment to provide evidence on the long-run persistence of human capital across generations and its effect on economic growth. We combine archive data from the Gulag with the 2018 Russian firm census to show that areas around camps with a larger share of enemies among camp prisoners are more prosperous today, as captured by firms' wages and profits, and night lights per capita.

JEL-codes: D22 J24 J82 N34 N94 P31 R12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Working Paper: Enemies of the people (2020)
Working Paper: Enemies of the people (2020)
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DOI: 10.1257/mac.20220231

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