This project examines how citizens in authoritarian regimes with tight ideological control respond to periods of political upheaval — either by increasing or withdrawing their support for the regime. Specifically, it focuses on the political economy of the book trade in Russia before and after the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Using natural language processing tools and combining novel data from book abstracts and internet searches, I explore how the invasion reshaped the space of political ideas in Russia, as reflected in the supply of and the demand for books in history and social sciences. Methodologically, the project develops a new approach to capturing trends in public opinion in data-sparse contexts, under the scope condition of a relatively unregulated book market.
Research
Work in Progress
Reading Orwell in Moscow: the Full-Scale Invasion of Ukraine and the Market for Political Ideas in Russia
Establishing a Parliament: the Political Economy of Elections in Late Imperial Russia (with Eugenia Nazrullaeva)
Which strategies does an authoritarian state employ to stall the process of democratization? This project examines the historical case of the Russian Empire to study the functioning of a legislative institution under autocratic pressure. In 1905, Tsar Nicholas II, yielding to the demands of the popular uprising, announced the creation of a new national institution of elected parliament, the State Duma. However, the tsarist regime imposed multiple constraints to control candidate selection and elections, including a class-based male suffrage system, an indirect electoral process, the persecution of the opposition leaders, and the manipulation of the electoral laws throughout the State Duma’s existence. Drawing from archival data and records of parliamentary debates, the project compares the effects of the two major events: the disenfranchisement of the members of the First Duma who signed the Vyborg Manifesto, which called for civil resistance against the dissolution of the State Duma in 1906, and the changes in electoral law following the dissolution of the Second Duma in 1907.
Working Papers
Peasant Commune and the Demand for Land Titling in Imperial Russia
Despite their potential economic benefits, land titling reforms around the globe often encounter moderate participation rates. Why do farmers hesitate to claim private land titles? To address this question, this paper examines the historical case of the 1906 land reform in the Russian Empire. For the first time in the country's history, the reform enabled peasants to title their plots, which had previously been under communal tenure. Drawing on newly digitized commune-level data from the province of Simbirsk, the paper argues that differences in the practice of land reallocation among the members of a commune, known as repartitions, shaped the benefits and costs of transitioning to private property. I find that the reform was much less successful in communes where repartitioning practices developed as a substitute for the land market, trapping them in an inefficient equilibrium. The results suggest that the design of land reforms should take into account the incentive structures created by traditional property rights regimes.
Immigrant Knowledge and the Growth of American Agriculture: the Case of Russian Germans (with Jennifer Kowalski)
This paper studies the effect of immigrant location-specific knowledge on agricultural development in a historical perspective. We exploit a unique historical case in which immigrants brought over a better knowledge of farming in recipient areas than the one widespread among the local population. In the 1870-s, Russian Germans, who immigrated from arid and cold Russian steppe regions, settled on the sparsely populated Great Plains. The first-coming settlers, in contrast, came primarily from more humid environments of the American East. This paper shows that the newcomers ended up in areas that closely resembled their sending regions in climatic conditions but lacked extensive wheat production. Having established that, we demonstrate that the inflow of Russian Germans triggered the shift in agricultural practices from less adapted to more adapted to local environmental conditions, more specifically, crowding out corn farming in favor of wheat farming.
Publications
Ethnic-Specific Infant Care Practices and Infant Mortality in Late Imperial Russia (with Timur Natkhov)
Economic History Review, August 2023, Vol. 76 (3): 783-806.
The Russian Empire had the highest infant mortality rate in Europe at the beginning of the twentieth century. Using a variety of official statistical sources and qualitative evidence, this paper documents uniquely high infant mortality among ethnic Russians. In contrast, among other ethnic groups of the Empire infant mortality rates did not exceed those of the European countries by much. The evidence suggests that the explanation for the Russian infant mortality pattern was ethnic-specific infant care practices, such as the early introduction of solid food, which increased the incidence of lethal gastrointestinal diseases. Our findings highlight the importance of traditional infant feeding practices for mortality in pre-industrial societies.
Skilled Immigrants and Technology Adoption: Evidence from the German Settlements in the Russian Empire (with Timur Natkhov)
Explorations in Economic History, July 2021, Vol. 81, p. 1-18.
Larry Neal prize 2022 for best article in Explorations in Economic History
This paper examines knowledge spillovers across ethnic boundaries. Using the case of skilled German immigrants in the Russian Empire, we study technology adoption among Russian peasants. We find that distance to German settlements predicts the prevalence of heavy iron ploughs, fanning mills and wheat sowing among Russians, who traditionally ploughed with a light wooden ard and sowed rye. The main channel of technology adoption was German fairs. We show that heavy ploughs increased the labor productivity of Russian peasants. However, communication barriers precluded Russians from adopting skill-intensive occupations like blacksmithing, mechanics, carpentry, and other crafts. The results suggest that skilled immigrants may enhance local development through the introduction of advanced tools without transmitting their skills to a receiving society.