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Sturgeon's House

Deaths Attributed to Stalin


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I'd like to know an accurate estimate of the deaths that can be attributed to Stalin's Regime. I'm fairly confident that estimates over 20 million are Cold War-era propaganda that attempted to portray the Soviets as equivalent to the Nazis. These are the figures of deaths I found on the massviolence.org page on Stalin.

 

Dekulakization

 

20,000 - The OGPU troika sentenced approximately 20,000 persons to death in 1930 (GARF 9401/1/4157/201). Mass arrests of "1st category Kulaks"

 

84,000 - Approximately 15% of deported(560,000) died in the months following deportation. First wave of "2nd category kulaks" deportations.

 

 487,000 -The first general census of the "specially displaced" population on January 1, 1932 recorded only 1,317,000 individuals when 1,804,000 had been deported in 1930-1931, indicating a loss of nearly half a million individuals over a two year period. Third wave of "2nd category kulaks" deportations

 

The Great Famine

 

1,400,000 - between 1.1 and 1.4 million died of hunger or epidemics in Kazakstan.

 

4,500,000 - The estimated number of death by famine in the Ukraine and in Kuban varies from four million to four and a half million (Shapoval & Vassiliev, 2001; Danilov, Manning & Viola, eds, 2003, vol. III).

 

400,000 - The most afflicted areas were the Lower and Middle Volga where excess mortality reached 300,000 to 400,000 in 1933 (Kondrasin & Penner, eds, 2002).

 

151,000 - According to centralized statistics from the Department of Special Settlements of the Gulag, 151,000 "specially displaced" persons died in 1933

 

Great Terror

 

800,000 - Within sixteen months, over one and a half million persons were arrested. Half of these persons (800,000) were sentenced to death

 

Katyn Massacre

 

25,700 - Katyn Massacre

 

Grand Sum: 7,867,700 (approximately half that of the number killed by the Nazis in the USSR)

 

I assume many prisoners who were not executed died in prisons and mass deportations took a good deal of lives but I do not see how this number can increase signifigantly like the 20-30 million figure that is tossed around to "prove" Stalin killed more than Hitler. 

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I don't think all of the famine deaths can be attributed to Stalin. Yes, he might have made it worse through mismanagement (willful or otherwise), but it's not as though he personally caused the wheat to die or rain to not fall. That probably drops the total down to about 5-6 million. Add in excess deaths in gulags, etc., and you're back up into the 6-7 million range.

 

I'd like to make the point that this is what happened when Stalin held power for over 20 years. Yes, 7 million people dying is horrible, but if a certain other asshole had ruled a similar area for over two decades, the death toll would have been at least an order of magnitude higher.

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I don't think all of the famine deaths can be attributed to Stalin. Yes, he might have made it worse through mismanagement (willful or otherwise), but it's not as though he personally caused the wheat to die or rain to not fall. That probably drops the total down to about 5-6 million. Add in excess deaths in gulags, etc., and you're back up into the 6-7 million range.

 

I'd like to make the point that this is what happened when Stalin held power for over 20 years. Yes, 7 million people dying is horrible, but if a certain other asshole had ruled a similar area for over two decades, the death toll would have been at least an order of magnitude higher.

I agree that the famines where not completely the fault of Stalin and that many of these deaths can be viewed more as "manslaughter" than as "murder" in a legal sense. I decided to include them anyway in order to get the highest number I could. I guess you can include the ~300,000 German POWs who died in the USSR, but I do not know how many of these could have been tied to war crimes hence justifying their deaths. 

 

I would say the safe number for deaths by Stalin would be about 7.5 million.

 

 Hitler apparently killed more Soviet citizens in 3 odd years than Stalin could in 6x the amount of time. 

 

 

Just for the record. Just because I'm a comieboo, doesn't mean I feel the need to apologize for Stalin's wickedness. But I do agree with getting accurate numbers out there.

 

I just want to get an accurate figure on the number dead to counter those who think Hitler was better or that he killed less when that is obviously not the case. 

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I think it should be noted that the death rate of the gulag is vastly overstated:

 

What was the average Gulag prisoner population over that stretch? We can calculate that about 5% death rates for the Gulag system over Stalin's reign so we should be able to calculate the amount of prisoner deaths if we have the population. 

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What was the average Gulag prisoner population over that stretch? We can calculate that about 5% death rates for the Gulag system over Stalin's reign so we should be able to calculate the amount of prisoner deaths if we have the population. 

 

This is from the Russian Wikipedia and is pretty consistent with the chart posted above:

 

4WrnvlW.png

 

Wikipedia cites GARF. F. 9414 so I think we can trust it.

 

Also the gulag encompassed the entirety of the USSR's penal needs, because of that not all of them were imprisoned due to political repression. According CGAOR USSR only 32.9% of the imprisoned were charged with "counterrevolutionary activity".

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  • 1 year later...

"From 1941 to 1950, 377,554 of about 3.2 million special settlers(deportees) died."

 

382 deportees died during prewar deportations and population transfers. 

 

Source

 

The author concludes that Soviet mismanagement, mostly due to Germany fucking things up, was the cause of most deaths. 

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