Cooption and Repression in the Soviet Union

Hershel Grossman and Dmitry Gershenson

No 2000/201, IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund

Abstract: The Soviet ruling elite, the nomenklatura, used both cooption and political repression to encourage loyalty to the communist regime. Loyalty was critical both in defusing internal opposition to the rule of the nomenklatura and in either deterring or defeating foreign enemies of the Soviet Union. We assume that the nomenklatura determined the extent of cooption and the intensity of political repression by equating their perceived marginal benefits and marginal costs. We use this assumption to construct an account of the historical evolution of policies of cooption and political repression in the Soviet Union.

Keywords: WP; nomenklatura; choice problem; nomenklatura's agent; members of the nomenklatura; Cooption; Repression; Soviet Union; Communist Party; arms race; party membership; Income distribution; Administration in revenue administration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 22
Date: 2000-12-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=3915 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:imf:imfwpa:2000/201

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/pubs/ord_info.htm

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IMF Working Papers from International Monetary Fund International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Akshay Modi ().