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Public Choice (2009) 140: 463–478DOI 10.1007/s11127-009-9430-2

Political economy of crime and punishment under Stalin

Eugenia Belova

Paul Gregory

Received: 13 November 2008 / Accepted: 12 March 2009 / Published online: 24 March 2009© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2009

Abstract

Why do dictatorships favor harsher punishments than democracies? We use arational choice approach to explain the stylized facts of Stalin’s dictatorship—preference forharsh sanctions, higher incarceration rates, greater use of capital punishment, low tolerancefor theft of state property and workplace violations. They are shown to be explained by thepreferences of a rational dictator, who does not internalize the social and private cost of punishment.

Keywords

Economics of crime

Comparative economics

Dictatorship

Socialism

JEL Classiﬁcation

N14

1 Introduction

The formerly secret Soviet archives yield the stylized facts about crime and punishmentduring the quarter century of Stalin’s rule, which we date to 1928–1953. In addition to ex-tremely high incarceration rates, these facts include forced labor camps in place of prisons,presumption of guilt, criminal offenses as political crimes, high rates of capital punishment,zero tolerance forcrimes againststate property, andcriminalization ofworkplace violations.Stalin’s law enforcement represents a case study of a dictatorial objective function unﬁl-tered by collective leadership or intermediaries. The mining of the archives has establishedbeyond a shadow of doubt the tight personal control Stalin exerted over repressive policies(Khlevnyuk 1996; Baberowski2003; and ISG2004: introduction). The archives rule out the

E. BelovaHoover Institution, Stanford University, Galvez Mall, Stanford, CA 9435-6010, USAe-mail:ebelova@yahoo.comP. Gregory (



)Department of Economics, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77204-5882, USAe-mail:pgregory@uh.edu

464 Public Choice (2009) 140: 463–478

“Stalin as an uninformed pawn” interpretation of repression (Getty1985). Stalin’s repres-sion policies, therefore, allow us to penetrate directly into the mind of a dictator, exercisingstrict control over a large society, military, and economy.Inthispaper,weadaptaneconomictheoryofcrimeframeworkasformulatedbyPolinskyand Shavell (1992,2000) to explain the facts of Stalinist justice. We are not the ﬁrst to employ such models for this purpose: Becker (1968: 184) used communist countries as anillustration for a central point of his seminal article: “There was a tendency... even todayin many Communist and underdeveloped countries, to punish those convicted of criminaloffences rather severely, at the same time that the probability of capture and convictionwas set at rather low values.” In other words, a “rational” Stalin offset low apprehensionprobabilities with severe penalties.Section2presents the empirical ﬁndings and stylized facts. Section3presents the theory of crime and law enforcement and our extension of the standard model. In Sect.4we usethe model to explain the logic of Stalin’s law enforcement policies and draw some generalconclusions in Sect.5.

2 Speciﬁcs of Stalinist law enforcement

2.1 Preference for harsh sanctionsThe most notorious feature of Soviet law enforcement in general, and especially that of the Stalin period, is its strong preference for harsh sanctions—long incarcerations and ex-ecutions. Even labor discipline violations and managerial miscues were subject to harshpunishment. Fines were rarely used. In contrast, democracies have a strong preference forfines relative to prison sentences or executions. Fines in civil cases are mostly transfers froma wrongdoer to the wronged party. Only criminal fines are transfers to the state. In a so-cialist dictatorship, most crimes are against the dictator (the “owner” of all assets) and areinterpreted and punished differently.Figure1shows that Stalin’s Russia used fines infrequently relative to custodial sentencesand corrective labor sentences. Custodial sentences were used to punish political crimes,theft, and “more serious” violations of labor discipline, like unauthorized job changes. Cor-rective labor sentences were used to punish minor labor offenses such as tardiness, slacking,and poor work. They were comprised of two components—a reduction in pay and the possi-bility of being sent to remote locations or commandeered to construction projects. Notably,near the end of the Czarist period, less than ten percent of criminal convictions resulted inprison sentences. More than 90 percent were sentenced to “corrective punishments” otherthan prison.

The high frequency of the death penalty, euphemistically called the “highest measure of social defense”, is the starkest evidence of the preference for harsh punishment. From 1940to 1953, the Soviet Union executed an average of 19,000 people per year. If we add in theGreat Terror of 1937–1938, executions rise to almost 54,000 per year. Executions sloweddown in the last eight years of Stalin’s rule to 918 per year (if we accept the unlikely claimof no executions in 1948 and 1949). These high rates of capital punishment representeda break with the Czarist past, despite its waves of political assassinations and rebellions.Between 1901 and 1912, 4,191 persons were executed, yielding an annual average of 349(ISG2004: 607).

Statistichesky Ezhegodnik Rossii

(1913): IV, 5.

Public Choice (2009) 140: 463–478 465

Fig. 1

Fines, corrective labor, and custodial sentences

Table 1

USSR criminal statisticsNumber Per100,0001. Institutionalized population in camps, colonies and prisons, 1953 2

621

000 1

5582. Institutionalized population plus special settlers (excluding children) 4

301

000 2

6053. Prison sentences per year (1940–1953) 7104. Average annual executions (1940–1953) 18

9005. Average annual executions (1937–1953) 53

500

Sources:

Zemskov1991; Poliakov2001: 180–183; Luneev2006

2.2 High rates of incarcerationAt the time of Stalin’s death in 1953, the institutionalized population was over 2.5 million,or 1,558 prisoners per 100,000 population (Table1). This incarceration rate was ten timesthat of the United States for the same year.

On the eve of the October revolution in 1917,there were fewer than 100,000 persons incarcerated in a country of roughly the same size.

The Soviet incarceration ﬁgure does not include deportees to remote regions. Such “specialsettlers” technically were not imprisoned, but they were forbidden to leave their settlements

Available fromhttp://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs.

Statistichesky Ezhegodnik Rossii

(1913): IV, 9.