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Accounting for Secrets

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 November 2013

Mark Harrison
Mark Harrison*
Affiliation:
Professor, Department of Economics, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, United Kingdom. Department of Economics, University of Warwick, University of Birmingham, Birmingham B15 2TT, United Kingdom. the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-6010. E-mail: mark.harrison@warwick.ac.uk.
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Abstract

The Soviet dictatorship used secrecy to shield its processes from external scrutiny. A system of accounting for classified documentation assured the protection of secrets. The associated procedures resemble a turnover tax applied to government transactions. There is evidence of both compliance and evasion. The burden of secrecy was multiplied because the system was also secret and so had to account for itself. Unique documentation of a small regional bureaucracy, the Lithuania KGB, is exploited to yield an estimate of the burden. Measured against available benchmarks, the burden looks surprisingly heavy.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 73 , Issue 4 , December 2013 , pp. 1017 - 1049
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 2013 

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Footnotes

I thank participants in the 2011 National Convention of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, Washington, DC, the 2011 Vilnius Symposium on Late Soviet and Post-Soviet Issues, the 2012 World Economic History Conference, Stellenbosch, seminars at the Universities of Warwick and Uppsala and the Graduate Institute, Geneva, and especially Steven Aftergood, Golfo Alexopoulos, Richard Aldrich, Gareth Austin, Johann Custodis, R. W. Davies, Marc Flandreau, Saulius Grybkauskas, Alex Hazanov, James Heinzen, Emily Johnson, Andrei Markevich, David Alan Rich, Leonora Soroka, Amir Weiner, Inga Zaksauskiene, and Amy Zegart for advice; the University of Warwick for research leave and the Centre on Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy for research support; the Hoover Institution and its Workshop on Totalitarian Regimes for generous hospitality; and the staff of the Hoover Archive for excellent assistance.

References

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Mironenko, S. V., and Kozlov, V. A., eds. Istoriia Stalinskogo Gulaga, vol. 7. Sovetskaia repressivno-karatel'naia politika i penitentsiarnaia sistema v materialakh Gosudarstvennogo arkhiva Rossiiskoi Federatsii. Annotirovannyi ukazatel' del. Moscow: Rosspen, 2005.Google Scholar
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9/11 Commission. Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. Washington, DC: GPO, 2004.Google Scholar
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Reklaitis, George.Cold War Lithuania: National Armed Resistance and Soviet Counter-Insurgency. The Carl Beck Papers in Russian & East European Studies No. 1806. University of Pittsburgh, Centre for Russian and East European Studies, 2007.Google Scholar
Rosenfeldt, Niels Erik.Knowledge and Power: The Role of Stalin's Secret Chancellery in the Soviet System of Government. Copenhagen University Institute of Slavonic Studies, 1978.Google Scholar
Rosenfeldt, Niels Erik.Stalin's Special Departments: A Comparative Analysis of Key Sources. Copenhagen: Copenhagen University Institute of Slavonic Studies, 1989.Google Scholar
Rosenfeldt, Niels Erik.The Special World: Stalin's Power Apparatus and the Soviet System's Secret Structures of Communication. Vols. 1–2. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Statiev, Alexander.The Soviet Counterinsurgency in the Western Borderlands. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Treml, Vladimir G., and Hardt, John P., eds. Soviet Economic Statistics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1972.Google Scholar
U.S. Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO). 2011 Report to the President. Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration, 2012a.Google Scholar
U.S. Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO). 2011 Report to the President: Cost Estimates for Security Classification Activities. Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration, 2012b.Google Scholar
U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Budget of the U.S. Government. Fiscal Year 2013. Historical Tables. Washington, DC: USGPO, 2012.Google Scholar
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Usol'tsev, Vladimir.Sosluzhivets. Neizvestnye stranitsy zhizni Prezidenta. Moscow: EKSMO, 2004.Google Scholar
Weiner, Amir, and Rahi-Tamm, Aigi. “Getting to Know You: The Soviet Surveillance System, 1939–1957.” Kritika 3, no. 1 (2012): 5–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wheatcroft, S. G., and Davies, R. W.. “The Crooked Mirror of Soviet Economic Statistics.” In The Economic Transformation of the Soviet Union, 1913–1945, edited by Davies, R. W., Harrison, Mark, and Wheatcroft, S. G., 24–37. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.Google Scholar
Williamson, Oliver E.The Mechanisms of Governance. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wintrobe, Ronald.The Political Economy of Dictatorship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Zegart, Amy B.Spying Blind: The CIA, the FBI, and the Origins of 9/11. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoover/GARF: Archives of the Soviet Communist Party and Soviet State Microfilm Collection at the Hoover Institution. Records of the State Archive of the Russian Federation (Moscow).Google Scholar
Hoover/LYA: Lietuvos ypatingasis archyvas (Lithuanian Special Archive), Lietuvos SSR Valstybės Saugumo Komitetas (Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic, Committee of State Security) at the Hoover Institution, selected records, 1940–1985.Google Scholar
Hoover/RGANI: Archives of the Soviet Communist Party and Soviet State Microfilm Collection at the Hoover Institution. Records of the Russian State Archive of Recent History (Moscow)Google Scholar
Anušauskas, Arvydas.KGB Lietuvoje. Slaptosios veiklos bruožai. Vilnius: Atvažiavo Meška, 2008.Google Scholar
Bergson, Abram. “Reliability and Usability of Soviet Statistics.” The American Statistician 7, no. 3 (1953): 13–16.Google Scholar
Bone, Jonathan. “Soviet Controls on the Circulation of Information in the 1920s and 1930s.” Cahiers du Monde russe 40, nos. 1–2 (1999): 65–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burinskaitė, Kristina. “The Ideological and Political Aspects of the Lithuanian SSR: KGB Activities in 1954–1990.” Summary of Doctoral Dissertation. Humanities, History (05 H). Vilnius: Vilnius University, 2011.Google Scholar
Elsea, Jennifer K. “The Protection of Classified Information: The Legal Framework.” RS21900. Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 2013. http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/secrecy/RS21900.pdf (accessed 22 January 2013).Google Scholar
Fitzpatrick, Sheila. “A Closed City and Its Secret Archives: Notes on a Journey to the Urals.” Journal of Modern History 62, no. 4 (1990): 771–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Funder, Anna.Stasiland: Stories from Behind the Berlin Wall. London: Granta, 2003.Google Scholar
Glaeser, Edward L., Sacerdote, Bruce, and Scheinkman, José A.. “Crime and Social Interactions.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 111, no. 2 (1996): 507–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goriaeva, T. M.Politicheskaia tsenzura v SSSR, 1917–1991 gg. Moscow: Rosspen, 2002.Google Scholar
Gorlizki, Yoram, and Khlevnyuk, Oleg. Cold Peace: Stalin and the Soviet Ruling Circle, 1945–1953. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gregory, Paul R., and Harrison, Mark. “Allocation Under Dictatorship: Research in Stalin's Archives.” Journal of Economic Literature 43, no. 3 (2005): 721–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grybkauskas, Saulius. “The Soviet Dopusk System as Society Control Lever in the Industry of Soviet Lithuania During 1965–1985.” In Latvia and Eastern Europe in the 1960s-1980s: Materials of an International Conference, 10 October 2006, Riga, edited by Caune, Andris, Bleiere, Daina, and Nollendorfs, Valters, 79–86. Riga: Latvijas vēstures institūta apgāds, 2007a.Google Scholar
Grybkauskas, Saulius. “State-Security Clearance as an Instrument of Social Control in the Industry of Soviet Lithuania, 1965 to 1985.” PERSA Working Paper No. 48. University of Warwick, Department of Economics, 2007b. Available online at http://warwick.ac.uk/persa/ (accessed 27 July 2011).Google Scholar
Grybkauskas, Saulius. “KGB veikla sovietinės Lietuvos pramonės imonėse, 1965–1985 m.” Genocidas ir rezistencija 25 (2009): 94–110.Google Scholar
Haines, Gerald K., and Langbart, David A.. Unlocking the Files of the FBI: A Guide to Its Records and Classification System. Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, Inc., 1993.Google Scholar
Harrison, Mark. “Economic Information in the Life and Death of the Soviet Command System.” In Reinterpreting the End of the Cold War: Issues, Interpretations, Periodizations, edited by Pons, Silvio and Romero, Federico, 93–115. London: Frank Cass, 2005.Google Scholar
Harrison, Mark. “Secrecy.” In Guns and Rubles: The Defense Industry in the Stalinist State, edited by Harrison, Mark, 230–54. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harrison, Mark. “Secrecy, Fear, and Transaction Costs: The Business of Soviet Forced Labour in the Early Cold War.” Europe-Asia Studies 65, no. 6 (2013): 1112–35.Google Scholar
Hutchings, Raymond.Soviet Secrecy and Nonsecrecy. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1987.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Inkeles, Alex, and Bauer, Raymond A.. The Soviet Citizen: Daily Life in a Totalitarian Society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1959.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Istochnik. “Praviashchaia partiia ostavalas' podpol'noi.” Istochnik 1, nos. 5/6 (1993): 88–95.Google Scholar
Khlevniuk, O. V., Gorlitskii [Yoram Gorlizki], I., Kosheleva, L. P., Miniuk, A. I., Prozumenshchikov, M. Iu., Rogovaia, L. A., and Somonova, S. V., eds. Politbiuro TsK VPK(b) i Sovet Ministrov SSSR. 1945–1953. Moscow: Rosspen, 2002.Google Scholar
Khlevniuk, O. V., Kvashonkin, A. V., Kosheleva, L. P., and Rogovaia, L. A., eds. Stalinskoe Politbiuro v 30-e gody. Sbornik dokumentov. Moscow: AIRO-XX, 1995.Google Scholar
Li, Eric X. “The Life of the Party.” Foreign Affairs 92, no. 1 (2013): 34–46.Google Scholar
Maggs, Peter B. “Nonmilitary Secrecy Under Soviet Law.” Report P2856-1. Santa Monica: The Rand Corporation, 1964.Google Scholar
Mironenko, S. V., and Kozlov, V. A., eds. Istoriia Stalinskogo Gulaga, vol. 7. Sovetskaia repressivno-karatel'naia politika i penitentsiarnaia sistema v materialakh Gosudarstvennogo arkhiva Rossiiskoi Federatsii. Annotirovannyi ukazatel' del. Moscow: Rosspen, 2005.Google Scholar
Moynihan Commission. Report of the Commission on Protecting and Reducing Government Secrecy. Senate Document 105-2 Pursuant to Public Law 236, 103rd Congress. Washington, DC: USGPO, 1997.Google Scholar
Nikitchenko, V. F. et al. ., eds. Kontrrazvedyvatel'nyi slovar'. Vysshaia kranoznamennaia shkola Komiteta gosudarstvennoi bezopasnosti pri Sovete Ministrov SSSR imeni F. D. Dzerzhinksogo. Nauchno-izdatel'skii otdel, 1972. Available online at http://www.kgbdocuments.edu (accessed 27 July 2011).Google Scholar
9/11 Commission. Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. Washington, DC: GPO, 2004.Google Scholar
Normington, David.Reducing the Data Burden on Police Forces in England and Wales. London: Home Office, 2009.Google Scholar
North, Douglass C.Institutions, Institutional Change, and Economic Performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Putin, Vladimir.First Person: An Astonishingly Frank Self-Portrait by Russia's President Vladimir Putin. With Nataliya Gevorkiyan, Natalya Timakova, and Andrei Kolesnikov. London: Hutchison, 2000.Google Scholar
Quist, Arvin S.Security Classification of Information. Vol. 1, Introduction, History, and Adverse Impacts. Revised edn. Oak Ridge, TN: Oak Ridge Classification Associates, 2002. Available online at http://www.fas.org/sgp/library/quist/ (accessed 31 July 2012).Google Scholar
Reklaitis, George.Cold War Lithuania: National Armed Resistance and Soviet Counter-Insurgency. The Carl Beck Papers in Russian & East European Studies No. 1806. University of Pittsburgh, Centre for Russian and East European Studies, 2007.Google Scholar
Rosenfeldt, Niels Erik.Knowledge and Power: The Role of Stalin's Secret Chancellery in the Soviet System of Government. Copenhagen University Institute of Slavonic Studies, 1978.Google Scholar
Rosenfeldt, Niels Erik.Stalin's Special Departments: A Comparative Analysis of Key Sources. Copenhagen: Copenhagen University Institute of Slavonic Studies, 1989.Google Scholar
Rosenfeldt, Niels Erik.The Special World: Stalin's Power Apparatus and the Soviet System's Secret Structures of Communication. Vols. 1–2. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Statiev, Alexander.The Soviet Counterinsurgency in the Western Borderlands. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Treml, Vladimir G., and Hardt, John P., eds. Soviet Economic Statistics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1972.Google Scholar
U.S. Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO). 2011 Report to the President. Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration, 2012a.Google Scholar
U.S. Information Security Oversight Office (ISOO). 2011 Report to the President: Cost Estimates for Security Classification Activities. Washington, DC: National Archives and Records Administration, 2012b.Google Scholar
U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Budget of the U.S. Government. Fiscal Year 2013. Historical Tables. Washington, DC: USGPO, 2012.Google Scholar
U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). Report on Security Clearance Determinations, 2011. 2012. Available online at http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/intel/clear-2011.pdf (accessed 31 July 2012).Google Scholar
Usol'tsev, Vladimir.Sosluzhivets. Neizvestnye stranitsy zhizni Prezidenta. Moscow: EKSMO, 2004.Google Scholar
Weiner, Amir, and Rahi-Tamm, Aigi. “Getting to Know You: The Soviet Surveillance System, 1939–1957.” Kritika 3, no. 1 (2012): 5–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wheatcroft, S. G., and Davies, R. W.. “The Crooked Mirror of Soviet Economic Statistics.” In The Economic Transformation of the Soviet Union, 1913–1945, edited by Davies, R. W., Harrison, Mark, and Wheatcroft, S. G., 24–37. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994.Google Scholar
Williamson, Oliver E.The Mechanisms of Governance. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wintrobe, Ronald.The Political Economy of Dictatorship. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Zegart, Amy B.Spying Blind: The CIA, the FBI, and the Origins of 9/11. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar