An ‘efficiency wage’ model developed for Western economies is reinterpreted in the context of Stalin’s Russia, with … imprisonment was under Stalin is documented using archival data now available; but the enormous scale of random imprisonment … involved is, we argue, attributable not to economic factors but to Stalin’s insecurity in the absence of a legitimate process …

An ‘efficiency wage’ model developed for Western economies is reinterpreted in the context of Stalin’s Russia, with … imprisonment was under Stalin is documented using archival data now available; but the enormous scale of random imprisonment … involved is, we argue, attributable not to economic factors but to Stalin’s insecurity in the absence of a legitimate process …