If You Do Not Change Your Behavior: Preventive Repression in Lithuania under Soviet Rule

Eugenia Nazrullaeva and Mark Harrison ()
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Eugenia Nazrullaeva: School of Public Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science; CAGE, University of Warwick

The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) from University of Warwick, Department of Economics

Abstract: Who is targeted by preventive repression and why? In the Soviet Union, the KGB applied a form of low-intensity preventive policing, called profilaktika. Citizens found to be engaging in politically and socially disruptive misdemeanors were invited to discuss their behavior and to receive a warning. Using novel data from Lithuania, a former Soviet republic, in the late 1950s and the 1970s, we study the profile and behaviors of the citizens who became subjects of interest to the KGB. We use topic modeling to investigate the operational focuses of profilaktika. We find that profilaktika began as a way of managing specific threats or “known risks” that arose from the experience of postwar Sovietization. The proportion of “unknown risks” – people without risk factors in their background or personal records – increased by the 1970s. These people were targeted because of their anti-Soviet behaviour, which the KGB attributed to “contagious” foreign influences and the spread of harmful values.

Keywords: coercion; communism; preventive repression; security; social norms; surveillance; Soviet Union JEL codes: N44; P37 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cis and nep-his
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Related works:
Journal Article: If you do not change your behavior: preventive repression in Lithuania under Soviet rule (2025)
Working Paper: If You Do Not Change Your Behavior: Preventive Repression in Lithuania under Soviet Rule (2023)
Working Paper: If You Do Not Change Your Behavior: Preventive Repression in Lithuania under Soviet Rule (2023)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wrk:warwec:1462

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