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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.

Recent work on dictatorship has focused on how repression is used by dictators to eradicate political opposition. This paper 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 paper proposes an explanation, one broadly consistent with Mancur 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 paper 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. Secondly, it demonstrates how, as property rights theorists would predict, the main objects of theft legislation are generic or homogeneous goods with few property attributes.

The Soviet Union under Stalin is not often thought of as an environment conducive to inter-personal trust. The article builds on recent research which suggests that trust may exist in contexts marked by high levels of coercion, to look for signs of trust at the apex of the Stalinist political system. It identifies two sources of trust, one consisting of incipient institutions whose rules were only ambiguously defined, and the other of komprotnat whose practice in certain areas was sufficiently systematic to support trust on certain issues. The article concludes by arguing that although the practice of komprotnat persisted, the social values supporting it changed with Stalin's death.

Why did the campaign for "trust in cadres" (doverie k kadram) come to be so emblematic of the Brezhnev era? In this article, Yoram Gorlizki argues that following the failure of Nikita Khrushchev's institutional experiments, Leonid Brezhnev turned to "trust"—ties grounded in ongoing personal relationships—as a means of lowering the Soviet system's high transaction costs. Focusing on in-depth studies of three regions, Kabardino-Balkaria, Kirov, and Krasnodar, Gorlizki suggests that the leadership system in each shifted towards a pattern marked by modest but stable institutional constraints on regional leaders, a carefully calibrated system of seniority, and a set of order-enhancing norms that are referred to as "hierarchical ethics." Mirroring the new leadership arrangements in Moscow, this combination of regional institutional constraints and political norms was the most compatible with a pattern of informal devices for cooperation that would come under the label of "trust" (doverie). Gorlizki contends that while Soviet officials had always resorted to personal relationships in order to attain their official goals, the campaign for "trust in cadres" gave cover to such practices by in effect elevating them into a component part of the regime's ideology. Gorlizki concludes by describing the variety of dangers these arrangements carried with them.

Why did the campaign for "trust in cadres" (doverie k kadram) come to be so emblematic of the Brezhnev era? In this article, Yoram Gorlizki argues that following the failure of Nikita Khrushchev's institutional experiments, Leonid Brezhnev turned to "trust"-ties grounded in ongoing personal relationships-as a means of lowering the Soviet system's high transaction costs. Focusing on in-depth studies of three regions, Kabardino-Balkaria, Kirov, and Krasnodar, Gorlizki suggests that the leadership system in each shifted towards a pattern marked by modest but stable institutional constraints on regional leaders, a carefully calibrated system of seniority, and a set of order-enhancing norms that are referred to as "hierarchical ethics." Mirroring the new leadership arrangements in Moscow, this combination of regional institutional constraints and political norms was the most compatible with a pattern of informal devices for cooperation that would come under the label of "trust" (doverie). Gorlizki contends that while Soviet offi cials had always resorted to personal relationships in order to attain their offi cial goals, the campaign for "trust in cadres" gave cover to such practices by in effect elevating them into a component part of the regime's ideology. Gorlizki concludes by describing the variety of dangers these arrangements carried with them.