The Effect of Stalin's Deportations on Distrust in Central Authority

We investigate the effect of deportations under Stalin on the long run distrust in central authority. In the Soviet Union about 2.8 million people of nine ethnic groups were deported by Stalin from their homelands to Siberia and Central Asia in the 1940s. Unlike other deported ethnic groups, Germans, Crimean Tatars and Turks-Meskhetians were not rehabilitated after Stalin’s death and stayed in the areas of their deportations till the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Using regional data from the 1991 referendum on the future of the Soviet Union and data from the Life in Transition survey, we find that deportations have a negative effect on trust in central authority. The long-term effect is stronger for unrehabilitated ethnic groups, especially Germans who were the most numerous deported ethnic group. The quantitative effect is significant: an increase in the share of deported Germans by 1% implies a decrease in the percentage of votes in favor of the Soviet Union in the referendum by 0.75% and a decrease in probability of trust in president by 5% nowadays.