Economic Policies and Demographic Changes

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel examines three distinct cases of state policy affecting demographic patterns across Russian history. The first paper investigates how the Kremlin's 1931-32 grain procurement campaign in Soviet Ukraine -- particularly intensified during Molotov's critical December 1931 visit -- created and exacerbated the famine conditions that preceded the Holodomor. The second study tracks female property ownership among Russian nobility from 1700-1850, documenting a remarkable rise from 10% to 40% during the 18th century before declining to pre-1700 levels, revealing changing inheritance patterns across Imperial Russia. The final paper analyzes over 100 underground industrial nuclear explosions conducted throughout the USSR between 1964 and 1988, finding modest increases in nearby urban populations but no significant long-term mortality effects. Together, these papers illuminate how state policies, inheritance practices, and industrial development shaped population patterns and demographic outcomes across three centuries of Russian and Soviet history.

Sub Unit

• Economic History/Economics/Business

Chair

• Natalya Naumenko, George Mason U

Papers

• The Kremlin’s Demands for Grain from Soviet Ukraine in Late 1931- Early 1932 and Its Consequences - Bohdan Klid, U of Alberta (Canada)

• Wealth, Inequality, and Sex: The Changes in Female and Male Wealth of Nobility in Russia (the 1700s to the 1850s) - Elena Sergeevna Korchmina, U of Bologna (Italy)

• American Relief and the Soviet Famine of 1921–1922 - Natalya Naumenko, George Mason U

Discussants

• Konstantin Sonin, U of Chicago

• William Henszey Pyle, Middlebury College