IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/18182.html

If You Do Not Change Your Behavior: Preventive Repression in Lithuania under Soviet Rule

Author

Listed:
  • Nazrullaeva, Eugenia
  • Harrison, Mark

Abstract

Who is targeted by preventive repression and why? In the Soviet Union, the KGB applied a form of low-intensity preventive policing, called profilaktika. Citizens found to be engaging in politically and socially disruptive misdemeanors were invited to discuss their behavior and to receive a warning. Using novel data from Lithuania, a former Soviet republic, in the late 1950s and the 1970s, we study the profile and behaviors of the citizens who became subjects of interest to the KGB. We use topic modeling to investigate the operational focuses of profilaktika. We find that profilaktika began as a way of managing specific threats or “known risks†that arose from the experience of postwar Sovietization. The proportion of “unknown risks†– people without risk factors in their background or personal records – increased by the 1970s. These people were targeted because of their anti-Soviet behaviour, which the KGB attributed to “contagious†foreign influences and the spread of harmful values.

Suggested Citation

  • Nazrullaeva, Eugenia & Harrison, Mark, 2023. "If You Do Not Change Your Behavior: Preventive Repression in Lithuania under Soviet Rule," CEPR Discussion Papers 18182, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:18182
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP18182
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • N44 - Economic History - - Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation - - - Europe: 1913-
    • P37 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Socialist Institutions and Their Transitions - - - Legal

    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:cpr:ceprdp:18182. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cepr.org .

    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.