Across several disciplines, a number of authors have documented a causal relationship between proximity to former Gulag sites and a variety of current socio-economic outcomes. Given the immensity and brutality of this penal system, it is unsurprising that a growing number of studies have directed attention towards measuring the legacy of its impact on affected communities. This article extends this literature by illustrating misspecificatios which arise from using the most widely utilised data source on Gulag locations. We show that research which relies on the data source on which such analyses are based do not hold up with lowerlevel data. We address the ramifications of this on research findings. We employ original GIS mapping of a large prison-camp complex to compare differences between higher- and lower-level units of Soviet-era punishment facilities, providing new evidence of the legacy of the Gulag.
Our study supports previous work pointing towards spatial effects on measures of trust, but calls into question specific findings. In particular, we find that distance to lower-level units associate with less trust, while this association disappears for the higher-level units used in previous studies. This article demonstrates a critical need for refinement in studies of the spatial significance of the Gulag specifically, and of systems of punishment more generally. It also provides support for increased momentum for the blending of geographic and social sciences to re-interrogate long-held assumptions of the Soviet Gulag’s local impact on economies and social attitudes.
