Process tracing, followed by a survey of Revolution participants provides further proof. A vast majority stated they were motivated by a "duty to participate" and it being the "right thing to do", while most did not believe regime change was possible at the outset.

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They were also more likely to vote against neo-communist presidential candidates in the 1992 and 2004 elections.

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These anti-communist norms persisted long after 1989. In the early 1990s, "Gulag localities" saw more anti-government protests against the communist successors.

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We also provide preliminary evidence for our norm-based mechanism. First, exposure to the Gulag is linked to lower membership in the Romanian Communist Party. People in these areas were less likely to join the party, even when it was beneficial to do so.

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Our key finding?

On average, localities with Gulag facilities had nearly 5 times more people seriously injured in confrontations with government forces during the Revolution (on average 3 injured, compared to a mean of 0.605).

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To test this, we examine one of the 20th century's most brutal episodes: the Romanian Gulag before 1965. We collect data on the distribution of labor camps, prisons, and extermination sites, matching it to the locality-level death and injury counts during the Revolution.

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Romania's was the only violent anti-communist revolution in 1989, with thousands either killed or injured. Yet protests grew monotonically with violence: the more the army shot, the more people joined. This is hard to explain using a purely consequentialist logic.

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🚨 Why do people protest against authoritarian regimes even when facing extreme danger? 🚨

In our new paper on Romania's 1989 Revolution, we find that communities exposed to the communist Gulag showed 5x higher dissent levels.

doi.org/10.1177/0010...

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