American Economic Journal:
Macroeconomics
ISSN 1945-7707 (Print) | ISSN 1945-7715 (Online)
Enemies of the People
American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics
(pp. 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.Citation
Toews, Gerhard, and Pierre-Louis Vézina. 2025. "Enemies of the People." American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics 17 (1): 310–42. DOI: 10.1257/mac.20220231Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- D22 Firm Behavior: Empirical Analysis
- J24 Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
- J82 Labor Standards: Labor Force Composition
- N34 Economic History: Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy: Europe: 1913-
- N94 Regional and Urban History: Europe: 1913-
- P31 Socialist Enterprises and Their Transitions
- R12 Size and Spatial Distributions of Regional Economic Activity