A history of resistance to privatization in Russia

Abstract

We investigate the connection between privatization in post-communist Russia and a mass privatization reform in Imperial Russia, the 1906 Stolypin land reform. Specifically, we relate historical measures of conflicts associated with the Stolypin reform to contemporary views on whether the privatization of the 1990s should be revised. These historical measures could influence contemporary views in two ways: first, differences in privatization-related conflicts in the past could have directly altered attitudes towards privatization in the 1990s and, second, these differences could merely reflect pre-determined dissimilarities in preferences. We first show that historical measures of resistance to privatization are associated with views that favor state ownership. One standard deviation increase in the historical resistance to privatization explains a quarter of the negative sentiment toward private property today. We also find that negative experiences with the Stolypin reform are associated with views on the procedural unfairness of modern privatization reforms, suggesting that pre-determined preferences cannot fully explain the weight of history.