IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/aejmac/v17y2025i1p310-42.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Enemies of the People

Author

Listed:
  • Gerhard Toews
  • Pierre-Louis Vézina

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Gerhard Toews & Pierre-Louis Vézina, 2025. "Enemies of the People," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 17(1), pages 310-342, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:aea:aejmac:v:17:y:2025:i:1:p:310-42
    DOI: 10.1257/mac.20220231
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/mac.20220231
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/mac.20220231.appx
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/mac.20220231.ds
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1257/mac.20220231?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D22 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior: Empirical Analysis
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • J82 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Standards - - - Labor Force Composition
    • N34 - Economic History - - Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy - - - Europe: 1913-
    • N94 - Economic History - - Regional and Urban History - - - Europe: 1913-
    • P31 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Socialist Institutions and Their Transitions - - - Socialist Enterprises and Their Transitions
    • R12 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Size and Spatial Distributions of Regional Economic Activity; Interregional Trade (economic geography)

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:aea:aejmac:v:17:y:2025:i:1:p:310-42. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Michael P. Albert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aeaaaea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.