Enduring Repression: Narratives of Loyalty to the Party Before, During and After the<b><i>Gulag</i></b>

Adler, Nanci

doi:10.1080/09668130903506797

Cited by 10 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Several macro-level studies have found that communist rule – though not repression specifically – can have lasting effects on political preferences (Pacek, Pop-Eleches & Tucker, 2009; Pop-Eleches & Tucker, 2011). A handful of papers have more directly studied the impact of repression on support for communism, finding mixed results (Kapelko, 2010; Levkin, 2014; Adler, 2010). Two recent studies on Ukraine have found reduced support for pro-Russian parties among families and communities exposed to deportation (Lupu & Peisakhin, 2017; Rozenas, Schutte & Zhukov, 2017).…”

Section: History Of Soviet Repressionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stalin’s terror and the long-term political effects of mass repression

Zhukov

Talibova

2018

Journal of Peace Research

115

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Repression has a long-term negative effect on political participation. Using millions of arrest records from archival documents, and polling station-level election results, we examine how exposure to Stalin-era repression affects voter turnout in Putin’s Russia. To estimate the effect of repression on voting, we exploit exogenous variation in repression due to the structure of mid-century Soviet railroads, and travel distances to prison camps. We find that communities more heavily repressed under Stalin are less likely to vote today. The electoral legacy of Stalin’s terror – decades after the Soviet collapse, and across multiple election cycles (2003–12) – is systematically lower turnout. To show that our result is not unique to the Putin regime, we replicate our analysis in Ukraine (2004–14), and find similar patterns. These results highlight the negative consequences of repression for political behavior, and challenge the emerging view that exposure to violence increases political engagement. While past research has emphasized the short-term effects of repression over several months or years, we show that these effects may be durable over generations and even changes of political regime. Our findings also demonstrate that repression need not be collective or indiscriminate to have community-level effects.

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Section: History Of Soviet Repressionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stalin’s terror and the long-term political effects of mass repression

Zhukov

Talibova

2018

Journal of Peace Research

115

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“…1 One strand of the literature has found that repression works, by producing obedience to the government. An authoritarian state can extract obedience by encouraging citizens to falsify their preferences (García-Ponce and Pasquale, 2015; Kuran, 1991; Lichbach, 1987; Young, 2019), inducing psychological adaptations in survivors of repression (Adler, 2010), and changing expectations about what the regime’s response will be to potential challenges (Beissinger, 2002; Truex, 2019). Even after the relevant authorities pass from the scene, localities that experienced more repressive violence are more likely to abstain from politics (Zhukov and Talibova, 2018).…”

Section: Theoretical Expectationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…While we have learned a great deal about the historical legacies of authoritarianism and repression, most of what we have learned comes from studies of cases where the public has had a chance to investigate the causes and consequences of political violence. Collective commemorations play a major role in helping define the legacy of violence in historical memory by allowing citizens the chance to move beyond official positions and dissident narratives (Adler, 2010). The impact of violence that remains taboo is less clear; we might anticipate that the legacy of the crackdown would be more muted as a result of the absence of a collective historical image.…”

Section: Theoretical Expectationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Long-Term Impact of Mobilization and Repression on Political Trust

Desposato

Gang

2021

Comparative Political Studies

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Authoritarian regimes respond to threatening student movements with repression and censorship. In many cases, failed movements are effectively erased from public memory. Do such movements affect long-term attitudes? We use a survey of college graduates to measure the impact of a failed student movement. Some of our respondents began college immediately before a major protest; others started after the movement had been suppressed. Using a fuzzy regression discontinuity, we find that individuals who attended college during the movement are significantly less likely to trust the government, more than 25 years later, than individuals who enrolled after the protests. The effects are strongest for trust in the central government, and weakest for local government. These results are robust to a range of specifications, and show that the experience of mass mobilization and state repression can have a long-term impact on public attitudes, even if the event in question remains taboo.

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“…We expect that these individuals would have mistrusted others in general but trusted state institutions. In addition, individuals who benefited from the gulags without being victims or perpetrators, e.g., those who appreciated the infrastructure and industrial complexes built by the gulag, as well as former prisoners who became loyal to the state as part of their camp experiences (Adler, 2010), may have strengthened their support for the state, which, paradoxically, may have translated into higher trust for staterelated institutions.…”

Section: Channelsmentioning

confidence: 99%