Theft under Stalin
A Property Rights Analysis
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4354284 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Yoram Gorlizki (0000-0003-3382-5853, University of Manchester, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2016 |
| Volume | 69 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 288-313 |
| Publication date | 2016-02-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Economic History Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0013-0117 • E-ISSN: 1468-0289 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/ehr.12121 |
| OpenAlex | W1942384563 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 53 |
Recent work on dictatorship has focused on how repression is used by dictators to eradicate political opposition. This article examines evidence from one of the most important dictatorships of the twentieth century to suggest that this may tell only half the story. As Stalin's dictatorship progressed, repression was increasingly administered neither by the secret police nor the military-as in most dictatorships-but through the ordinary courts. The article proposes an explanation, one broadly consistent with Olson's hypothesis that Stalin was a 'proprietary dictator', an autocrat with a long time horizon who made major investments in public goods. Stalin's new form of property-'socialist property'-was one such public good. To legitimize the new form of ownership, Stalin ruled that it should be enforced through the ordinary justice system, albeit initially with high levels of repression. The article also makes two further contributions. It shows, first, how Stalin's theft campaigns are a striking historical example of what happens when an unpopular law clashes with social norms, and of how it might backfire. Second, it demonstrates how, as property rights theorists would predict, the main objects of theft legislation are generic or homogeneous goods with few property attributes
Autocracy · Democracy · Dictator · Dictatorship · Law and economics · Legislation · Opposition (politics) · Political economy · Political repression · Political science · Politics · Property (philosophy) · Property rights · Sociology · Crime, Illicit Activities, and Governance · Law · Philosophy · Political Conflict and Governance · Soviet and Russian History
The Making of the Soviet System
Structure and change in economic history
Power and prosperity
Political repression in modern America from 1870 to 1976
The Anatomy of Terror
Economic Analysis of Property Rights
Economic Behavior and Institutions
The Politics of Authoritarian Rule
The Political Economy of Dictatorship
The Socialist System
The Rise of the Western World
Oligarchic Versus Democratic Societies
Property and contract rights in autocracies and democracies
Informers and the State under Late Stalinism
The Art of the Bribe
Comparative analysis of machine learning versus traditional method for early detection of parental depression symptoms in the Nicu
Political Institutions under Dictatorship
The Limits of the Criminal Sanction
Constructing Capitalism
Rules, Incentives and Soviet Campaign Justice After World War II
Crime and Justice in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century England
Rethinking criminal law
The Property Right Paradigm
Albion's Fatal Tree
The Soviet Union after 1945
Economic origins of dictatorship and democracy
What is Ideology? Theoretical Problems and Lessons from Soviet-Type Societies
Repression, political threats, and survival under autocracy
State Repression and Political Order
Allocation under Dictatorship
Theft in the Qing Code
Repression of Human Rights to Personal Integrity in the 1980s
War, Dearth and Theft in the Eighteenth Century
Vyshinskii, Krylenko, and the Shaping of the Soviet Legal Order
State Repression and the Tyrannical Peace
Dictatorship, Democracy, and Development
The Autocrat's Credibility Problem and Foundations of the Constitutional State
Political Repression
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,14 |
| Citation span | 2019 - 2019 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |