Elite Murder and Popular Resistance: Evidence from Post–World War II Poland

• In Event: New Agendas in Historical Political Economy

Abstract

Does killing opposition elites prevent resistance against foreign-imposed regimes? On the one hand, the elimination of elites can undermine the opposition’s capacity for anti-regime resistance. Yet killing opposition elites deprives the new regime of useful human capital. Co-optation of elites becomes a tempting alternative. We examine this trade-off by studying the effects of elimination vis-à-vis survival of Polish elites during World War II. Our focus is on the Polish nobility, intellectuals, and (reserve) army officers. We exploit plausibly random variation in the officers’ wartime deployment and subsequent imprisonment. While most officers in Nazi captivity survived, almost all those in Soviet captivity were murdered. We find that municipalities with more surviving elites saw fewer protests against the postwar Soviet-backed regime during the Solidarność-led uprising in the 1980s. Historical evidence suggests that the regime had benefited from the surviving elites’ human and social capital. Surviving elites positively influenced local-level economic development, reducing citizens’ hardship — and thus grievances against the regime.

Authors

• Krzysztof Krakowski, King’s College London

• Max Schaub, University of Hamburg