Excess mortality in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin#Genocide allegations

File:HolodomorUcrania9.jpg, 1932]]

{{main|Gulag}}

According to official Soviet estimates, more than 14 million people passed through the Gulag from 1929 to 1953, and a further 7 to 8 million were deported and exiled to remote areas of the Soviet Union.{{cite journal|last=Conquest|first=Robert|year=1997|title=Victims of Stalinism: A Comment|url=http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/CNQ-Victims_Stalinism.pdf|journal=Europe-Asia Studies|volume=49|issue=7|pages=1317–1319|doi=10.1080/09668139708412501|quote=We are all inclined to accept the Zemskov totals (even if not as complete) with their 14 million intake to Gulag 'camps' alone, to which must be added 4–5 million going to Gulag 'colonies', to say nothing of the 3.5 million already in, or sent to, 'labour settlements'. However taken, these are surely 'high' figures.}}

According to a 1993 study of recently declassified archival Soviet data, a total of 1,053,829 people died in the Gulag (not including labor colonies) from 1934 to 1953 (there was no archival data for the period 1919–1934).{{cite journal|last1=Getty|first1= J. Arch|last2=Rittersporn|first2=Gábor |last3=Zemskov |first3=Viktor |title=Victims of the Soviet penal system in the pre-war years: a first approach on the basis of archival evidence|journal=American Historical Review|date=1993 |volume=98 |issue=4 |pages=1017–1049 |doi=10.2307/2166597 |jstor=2166597|url=http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/GTY-Penal_System.pdf}}{{rp|1024}} More recent archival figures for the deaths in the Gulag, labor colonies and prisons combined for 1931–1953 were 1.713 million.{{cite journal|last1=Ellman|first1=Michael|date=2002|title=Soviet Repression Statistics: Some Comments|url=http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/ELM-Repression_Statistics.pdf|journal=Europe-Asia Studies|volume=54|issue=7|page=1172|doi=10.1080/0966813022000017177|s2cid=43510161}} According to historian Michael Ellman, non-state estimates of the actual Gulag death toll are usually higher because historians such as Robert Conquest took into account the likelihood of unreliable record keeping.{{cite journal |last1= Ellman|first1=Michael|date= 2002|title=Soviet Repression Statistics: Some Comments|url=http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/ELM-Repression_Statistics.pdf|journal=Europe-Asia Studies|volume=54 |issue=7 |page=1153|doi=10.1080/0966813022000017177|s2cid=43510161}} According to author Anne Applebaum, it was common practice to release prisoners who were either suffering from incurable diseases or near death.Applebaum, Anne (2003) Gulag: A History. Doubleday. {{ISBN|0767900561}}. p. 583: "... both archives and memoirs indicate that it was common practice in many camps to release prisoners who were on the point of dying, thereby lowering camp death statistics."

File:Frenkel2.jpg chiefs responsible for construction of the White Sea–Baltic Canal were Naftaly Frenkel (far right) and Matvei Berman (front, second from right), also head of the Gulag from 1932 to 1939]]

Golfo Alexopoulos, history professor at the University of South Florida, believes that at least six million people died as a result of their detention in the gulags.Alexopoulos, Golfo (2017). Illness and Inhumanity in Stalin's Gulag. Yale University Press. {{ISBN|978-0300179415}}. This estimate is disputed by other scholars, with critics such as J. Hardy stating that the evidence Alexopoulos used is indirect and misinterpreted.Hardy, J. (2018). "Review": Illness and Inhumanity in Stalin's Gulag. By Golfo Alexopoulos. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007. xi, 308 pp. Notes. Index. Maps. $65.00, hard bound. Slavic Review, 77(1), 269–270. {{doi|10.1017/slr.2018.57}} Historian Dan Healey argues that the estimate has obvious methodological difficulties.{{cite journal |last1= Healey|first1=Dan|author-link=Dan Healey|date=1 June 2018|title=Golfo Alexopoulos. Illness and Inhumanity in Stalin's Gulag|url=https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/ou_press/golfo-alexopoulos-illness-and-inhumanity-in-stalin-s-gulag-i363rKPYOp|journal=The American Historical Review|volume=123 |issue=3 |pages=1049–1051|doi=10.1093/ahr/123.3.1049|quote=New studies using declassified Gulag archives have provisionally established a consensus on mortality and 'inhumanity.' The tentative consensus says that once secret records of the Gulag administration in Moscow show a lower death toll than expected from memoir sources, generally between 1.5 and 1.7 million (out of 18 million who passed through) for the years from 1930 to 1953.|url-access=subscription}}{{failed verification|reason=Quote does not support the cite|date=August 2021}}

Citing materials pre-1991, author John G. Heidenrich estimates the number of deaths at 12 million.John G, Heidenrich, (2001). How to Prevent Genocide: A Guide for Policymakers, Scholars, and the Concerned Citizen. Hardcover: Praeger. p. 7. {{ISBN|978-0275969875}}. "Another 12 million Soviet citizens died in a network of forced labor camps collectively known by the Russian acronym Gulag, many of them from the physical toil of satisfying Stalin's relentless drive to rapidly industrialize the Soviet Union."{{undue weight inline|reason=It seems really questionable to use Heidenrich as a source on this material, as the numbers were not his primary focus, but he was summing up prior estimates|date=August 2021}} His book is not primarily about estimating deaths from repressive policies in the Soviet Union, and he appears to have relied on Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's political and literary work The Gulag Archipelago, which historian Stephen G. Wheatcroft explains was not intended as a historical fact but as a challenge to Soviet authorities after their years of secrecy.{{Cite journal|last=Wheatcroft|first=Stephen|author-link=Stephen G. Wheatcroft|year=1996|title=The Scale and Nature of German and Soviet Repression and Mass Killings, 1930–45|url=http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/WCR-German_Soviet.pdf|journal=Europe-Asia Studies|volume=48|issue=8|page=1330|doi=10.1080/09668139608412415|jstor=152781|quote=When Solzhenitsyn wrote and distributed his Gulag Archipelago it had enormous political significance and greatly increased popular understanding of part of the repression system. But this was a literary and political work; it never claimed to place the camps in a historical or social-scientific quantitative perspective, Solzhenitsyn cited a figure of 12–15 million in the camps. But this was a figure that he hurled at the authorities as a challenge for them to show that the scale of the camps was less than this.}}

According to estimates based on data from Soviet archives post-1991, there were around 1.6 million deaths during the whole period from 1929 to 1953.Steven Rosefielde. Red Holocaust. Routledge, 2009. {{ISBN|0415777577}}. p. 67. "... more complete archival data increases camp deaths by 19.4 percent to 1,258,537"; p. 77. "The best archivally based estimate of Gulag excess deaths at present is 1.6 million from 1929 to 1953." The tentative historical consensus is that of the 18 million people who passed through the gulag system from 1930 to 1953, between 1.5 and 1.7 million died as a result of their incarceration.

{{main|Holodomor genocide question|Blacklisting (Soviet policy)|Soviet famine of 1932–1933}}

File:Famine en URSS 1933.jpg, with areas where the effects of famine were most severe shaded]]

The deaths of 5.7{{cite book |author1=R. Davies |author2=S. Wheatcroft |title=The Industrialisation of Soviet Russia Volume 5: The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture 1931–1933 |date=2009 |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |isbn=978-0230238558 |page=415 }} This is the estimate of Wheatcroft and Davies. to perhaps 7.0 million peopleAndreev EM; Darsky LE; Kharkova TL, Population dynamics: consequences of regular and irregular changes. in Demographic Trends and Patterns in the Soviet Union Before 1991. Routledge. 1993; {{ISBN|0415101948}} p. 431. "This indicates general collectivization and repressions connected with it, as well as the 1933 famine, may be responsible for 7 million deaths."{{cite book |last1=Conquest |first1=Robert |title=Harvest of Sorrow |date=1886 |publisher=Oxford |isbn=0195051807 |page=[https://archive.org/details/harvestofsorrows00conq/page/304 304] |url=https://archive.org/details/harvestofsorrows00conq/page/304 |url-access=registration }} in the Soviet famine of 1932–1933 and Soviet collectivization of agriculture are included among the victims of repression during the period of Stalin by some historians.{{cite book |last1=Snyder |first1=Timothy |title=Bloodlands |url=https://archive.org/details/bloodlandseurope00snyd_814 |url-access=limited |date=2010 |publisher=Basic Books |isbn=978-0465002399 |page=[https://archive.org/details/bloodlandseurope00snyd_814/page/n41 21]–58}}Naimark, Norman M. Stalin's Genocides (Human Rights and Crimes against Humanity). Princeton University Press, 2010. pp. 51–79. {{ISBN|0691147841}} This categorization is controversial, as historians differ as to whether the famine in Ukraine was created as a deliberate part of the campaign of repression against kulaks and others,{{Cite journal|last=Ellman|first=Michael|year=2005|title=The Role of Leadership Perceptions and of Intent in the Soviet Famine of 1931–1934|url=http://www.paulbogdanor.com/left/soviet/famine/ellman.pdf|journal=Europe-Asia Studies|publisher=Routledge|volume=57|issue=6|pages=823–841|doi=10.1080/09668130500199392|s2cid=13880089|access-date=4 July 2008|archive-date=27 February 2009|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090227181110/http://www.paulbogdanor.com/left/soviet/famine/ellman.pdf|url-status=dead}}Naimark, Norman M. Stalin's Genocides (Human Rights and Crimes against Humanity). Princeton University Press, 2010. pp. 134–135. {{ISBN|0691147841}}Rosefielde, Steven. Red Holocaust. Routledge, 2009. {{ISBN|0415777577}} p. 259Snyder, Timothy. Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. Basic Books, 2010. {{ISBN|0465002390}} pp. vii, 413Rosefielde, Steven (1983). "Excess Mortality in the Soviet Union: A Reconsideration of the Demographic Consequences of Forced Industrialization, 1929–1949". Soviet Studies. 35 (3): 385–409. {{doi|10.1080/09668138308411488}}. {{JSTOR|151363}}. was an unintended consequence of the struggle over forced collectivization,{{cite book |year=2004|title=The Industrialisation of Soviet Russia|url=http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/faculty/harrison/reviews/davies-wheatcroft2004.pdf|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan|volume=5 – The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931–1933|access-date=28 December 2008}}Davies, R. W. and Wheatcroft, Stephen G. (2004) The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931–1933, {{ISBN|0333311078}}{{cite journal |last1= Davies|first1=R. W.|last2= Wheatcroft|first2=S. G.|date=2006|title=Stalin and the Soviet Famine of 1932–1933: A Reply to Ellman|url=http://www.uio.no/studier/emner/hf/iakh/HIS2319/h16/pensumliste/stalin-and-the-soviet-famine-of-1932-33_-a-reply-to-ellman.pdf|journal=Europe-Asia Studies|volume=58 |issue=4 |pages=625–33 |doi=10.1080/09668130600652217|s2cid=145729808}}Andreev, EM, et al. (1993) Naselenie Sovetskogo Soiuza, 1922–1991. Moscow, Nauka, {{ISBN|5020134791}}{{Cite journal|last1= Ghodsee|first1=Kristen R.|volume = 4| issue = 2| page = 124|title = A Tale of 'Two Totalitarianisms': The Crisis of Capitalism and the Historical Memory of Communism| journal = History of the Present| date = 2014|url=http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/kristenghodsee/files/history_of_the_present_galleys.pdf |doi=10.5406/historypresent.4.2.0115|author-link=Kristen R. Ghodsee}} or was primarily a result of natural factors.{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Qq7FAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA194|title=The Soviet Famine of 1946–47 in Global and Historical Perspective|last=Ganson|first=N.|publisher=Springer|year=2009|isbn=978-0230620964|page=194}}{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jpv0NICOEb8C&pg=PA167|title=Provincial Landscapes: Local Dimensions of Soviet Power, 1917–1953|last=Raleigh|first=Donald J.|date=2001|publisher=University of Pittsburgh Press|isbn=978-0822970613|page=167}}{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TA1zVKTTsXUC&pg=PA799|title=A History of Ukraine: The Land and Its Peoples|last=Magocsi|first=Paul R.|publisher=University of Toronto Press|year=2010|isbn=978-1442610217|page=799|author-link=Paul Robert Magocsi|access-date=6 August 2017}}{{cite journal |last=Tauger |first=Mark B. |url=https://carlbeckpapers.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/cbp/article/download/89/90 |title=Natural Disaster and Human Actions in the Soviet Famine of 1931–1933 |journal=The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies |issue=1506 |year=2001 |pages=1–65 |issn=2163-839X |doi=10.5195/CBP.2001.89 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170612213128/https://carlbeckpapers.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/cbp/article/download/89/90 |archive-date=12 June 2017 |doi-access=free }}

{{main|Great Purge| Case of the Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Military Organization| 1941 Red Army Purge|Leningrad case| Polish Operation of the NKVD|Katyn massacre|Case of the Union of Liberation of Belarus|Estonian Operation of the NKVD|Metro-Vickers Affair|Latvian Operation of the NKVD|Stalin's shooting lists|Battle of Kautla|Finnish Operation of the NKVD|1937 mass execution of Belarusians|Vinnytsia massacre|Lunca massacre|NKVD prisoner massacres|Fântâna Albă massacre}}

According to official figures there were 777,975 judicial executions for political charges from 1929 to 1953, including 681,692 in 1937–1938, the years of the Great Purge. Unofficial estimates estimate a total number of Stalinism repression deaths in 1937–38 at 700,000–1,200,000.{{cite journal |last1= Ellman|first1=Michael|date= 2002|title=Soviet Repression Statistics: Some Comments|url=http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/ELM-Repression_Statistics.pdf|journal=Europe-Asia Studies|volume=54 |issue=7 |pages=1151–1172|doi=10.1080/0966813022000017177|s2cid=43510161|quote=The best estimate that can currently be made of the number of repression deaths in 1937–38 is the range 950,000–1.2 million, i.e . about a million. This is the estimate which should be used by historians, teachers and journalists concerned with twentieth century Russian—and world—history}} There were also operations of mass ethnic cleansing against various minorities living in Stalin's USSR, known as the National operations of the NKVD, with the largest one being the Polish Operation of the NKVD during which 150,000 Poles were arrested, of whom over 111,000 were exterminated.{{cite journal| title=The 'Polish Operation' of the NKVD: The Climax of the Terror Against the Polish Minority in the Soviet Union |author=Bodan Musial |volume=48 |issue=1 |doi=10.1177/0022009412461818| year=2013|jstor=23488338| journal=Journal of Contemporary History|pages=98–124 }} Under Stalin, the death penalty was extended to adolescents as young as 12 years old in 1935.{{cite book |last1=Mccauley |first1=Martin |title=Stalin and Stalinism|edition=3rd rev. |date= 2013 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-317-86369-4 |page=49 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oQ7dAAAAQBAJ&dq=stalin+death+penalty+12+years+old&pg=PA49 |language=en}}{{cite book |last1=Wright |first1=Patrick |title=Iron Curtain: From Stage to Cold War |year= 2009 |publisher=OUP Oxford |isbn=978-0-19-162284-7 |page=342 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Ps5wZUFnE7IC&dq=stalin+death+penalty+12+years+old&pg=PA342 |language=en}}{{cite book |last1=Boobbyer |first1=Philip |title=The Stalin Era |date=2000 |publisher=Psychology Press |isbn=978-0-415-18298-0 |page=160 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lYMsIE5KjmMC&dq=stalin+death+penalty+12+years+old+boys&pg=PA160 |language=en}}

{{main|Soviet famine of 1946–1947}}

The last major famine to hit the Soviet Union began in July 1946, reached its peak in February–August 1947 and then quickly diminished in intensity, although there were still some famine deaths in 1948.[http://www1.fee.uva.nl/pp/mjellman/ Michael Ellman] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071014232729/http://www1.fee.uva.nl/pp/mjellman/ |date=14 October 2007 }}, [http://www.paulbogdanor.com/left/soviet/famine/ellman1947.pdf The 1947 Soviet Famine and the Entitlement Approach to Famines] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090325075851/http://www.paulbogdanor.com/left/soviet/famine/ellman1947.pdf |date=25 March 2009 }} Cambridge Journal of Economics 24 (2000): 603–630. Economist Michael Ellman states that the hands of the state could have fed all those who died of starvation. He argues that had the policies of the Soviet regime been different, there might have been no famine at all or a much smaller one. Ellman claims that the famine resulted in an estimated 1 to 1.5 million lives lost in addition to secondary population losses due to reduced fertility.

File:Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina 07.jpg]]

{{main|Dekulakization}}

Large numbers of kulaks regardless of their nationality were resettled to Siberia and Central Asia. According to data from Soviet archives, which were published in 1990, 1,803,392 people were sent to labor colonies and camps in 1930 and 1931, and 1,317,022 reached the destination. Deportations on a smaller scale continued after 1931. Data from the Soviet archives indicates 2.4 million kulaks were deported from 1930 to 1934.{{cite book |last1=Polian |first1=Polian |title=Against Their Will |date=2004 |publisher=Central European Press |location=Hungary |isbn=9639241687 |page=313}} The reported number of kulaks and their relatives who had died in labour colonies from 1932 to 1940 was 389,521.[https://web.archive.org/web/20090114220819/http://users.cyberone.com.au/myers/courtois.html Archived] 14 January 2009 at the Wayback Machine. Popular history author Simon Sebag Montefiore estimated that 15 million kulaks and their families were deported by 1937; during the deportation, many people died, but the full number is not known.Sebag Montefiore, Simon (2014). Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. W&N. p. 84. {{ISBN|978-1780228358}}. "By 1937, 18,5 million were collectivized but there were now only 19.9 million households: 5.7 million households, perhaps 15 million persons, had been deported, many of them dead"

{{main|Population transfer in the Soviet Union|Deportation of Koreans in the Soviet Union|Deportation of the Balkars|Deportation of the Chechens and Ingush|Deportation of the Meskhetian Turks|Deportation of the Crimean Tatars|Deportation of the Karachays|Deportation of the Kalmyks}}

File:The Funeral.jpg, late 1944]]

According to Russian historian Pavel Polian, 5.870 million persons were deported to forced settlements from 1920 to 1952, including 3.125 million from 1939 to 1952. Those ethnic minorities considered a threat to Soviet security in 1939–52 were forcibly deported to Special Settlements run by the NKVD. Poles, Ukrainians from western regions, Soviet Germans, Balts, and Estonians peoples from the Caucasus and Crimea were the primary victims of this policy. Data from the Soviet archives list 309,521 deaths in the Special Settlements from 1941 to 1948 and 73,454 in 1949–50.{{cite book |last1=Pohl |first1=J. Otto |title=The Stalinist Penal System |date=1997 |publisher=McFarland |isbn=0786403365 |page=148}} According to Polian these people were not allowed to return to their home regions until after the death of Stalin, the exception being Soviet Germans who were not allowed to return to the Volga region of the Soviet Union. According to Soviet archives, the heaviest mortality rate was documented in people from the Northern Caucasus (the Chechens, Ingush) with 144,704 deaths, or 24.7% of the entire deported population, as well as 44,125 deaths from Crimea, or a 19.3% mortality rate.{{cite web|last=Human Rights Watch| year=1991| url=https://www.hrw.org/reports/pdfs/u/ussr/ussr.919/usssr919full.pdf| title=Punished Peoples" of the Soviet Union: The Continuing Legacy of Stalin's Deportations|oclc=25705762|page=9}}

{{main|Katyn massacre}}

The massacre was prompted by NKVD chief Lavrentiy Beria's proposal to execute all captive members of the Polish officer corps, dated 5 March 1940, approved by the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, including its leader Joseph Stalin. The number of victims is estimated at 22,000.Kużniar-Plota, Małgorzata (30 November 2004). [http://www.ipn.gov.pl/portal/en/2/77/Decision_to_commence_investigation_into_Katyn_Massacre.html "Decision to commence investigation into Katyn Massacre"] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120930075626/http://www.ipn.gov.pl/portal/en/2/77/Decision_to_commence_investigation_into_Katyn_Massacre.html |date=30 September 2012 }}. Departmental Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation. Retrieved 4 August 2011.

File:01941 Opfer des NKWD im Hof des Geheimpolizeigefängnisses von Lemberg am 06.07.1941.jpg in Lviv]]

File:Butovo-DSC 0083.JPG outside Moscow]]

Writing in Slavic Review, demographers Barbara Anderson and Brian Silver maintained that limited census data make a precise death count impossible. Instead, they offer a probable range of 3.2 to 5.5 million excess deaths for the entire Soviet Union from 1926 to 1939, a period that covers collectivization, the civil war in the countryside, the purges of the late 1930s and major epidemics of typhus and malaria.{{cite journal|last1=Anderson|first1=Barbara|last2=Silver|first2=Brian|date=Autumn 1985|title=Demographic Analysis and Population Catastrophes in the USSR|journal=Slavic Review|volume=44|issue=3|pages=517–519|doi=10.2307/2498020|jstor=2498020|s2cid=163761404 }} In 2001, American historian Richard Pipes argued that the population had decreased by 9 to 10 million people from the 1932 to 1939 censuses.Richard Pipes, Communism: A History, US, 2001. p. 67 "Censuses revealed that between 1932 and 1939—that is, after collectivization but before World War II—the population decreased by 9 to 10 million people". The 17th Congress of the UCP estimated that the USSRs population was 168 million in 1933, and predicted that it would grow to 180 million by 1937, yet the 1937 census registered only 162 million people, a decrease in population. The mortality rate was double the average one than in Europe at that time.{{cite book| last=Hasanli|first=Jamil| publisher=Lexington Books |location=Lanham, Maryland |title=Khrushchev's Thaw and National Identity in Soviet Azerbaijan, 1954–1959 |year=2014|isbn=9781498508148|lccn=2014036925| edition=revised| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yY3pBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA246| page=246}}

Some historians claim that the death toll was around 20 million,{{refn|{{sfn|Montefiore|2003|p=649|ps=: "Perhaps 20 million had been killed; 28 million deported, of whom 18 million had slaved in the Gulags".}}{{Cite book|author=Volkogonov, Dmitri|author-link=Dmitri Volkogonov|title=Autopsy for an Empire: The Seven Leaders Who Built the Soviet Regime|page=[https://archive.org/details/autopsyforempire00volk/page/139 139]|quote=Between 1929 and 1953 the state created by Lenin and set in motion by Stalin deprived 21.5 million Soviet citizens of their lives.|isbn=0684834200|year=1998|publisher=Simon and Schuster |url=https://archive.org/details/autopsyforempire00volk/page/139}}{{Cite book|author-link=Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev|author1=Yakovlev, Alexander N. |author2=Austin, Anthony |author3=Hollander, Paul |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ChRk43tVxTwC&pg=PA234|title=A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia|publisher=Yale University Press|page=234|quote=My own many years and experience in the rehabilitation of victims of political terror allow me to assert that the number of people in the USSR who were killed for political motives or who died in prisons and camps during the entire period of Soviet power totaled 20 to 25 million. And unquestionably one must add those who died of famine—more than 5.5 million during the civil war and more than 5 million during the 1930s.|isbn=978-0300103229|year= 2004}}Gellately (2007) p. 584 "More recent estimations of the Soviet-on-Soviet killing have been more 'modest' and range between ten and twenty million." and Stéphane Courtois. The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror Repression. Harvard University Press, 1999. p. 4: "U.S.S.R.: 20 million deaths."Brent, Jonathan (2008) Inside the Stalin Archives: Discovering the New Russia. Atlas & Co., 2008, {{ISBN|0977743330}}{{cite web|url=http://atlasandco.com/images/uploads/samples/pdf/InsideStalinArchives-web.pdf |title=Introduction online |access-date=19 December 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090224230330/http://atlasandco.com/images/uploads/samples/pdf/InsideStalinArchives-web.pdf |archive-date=24 February 2009 }} (PDF file): Estimations on the number of Stalin's victims over his twenty-five-year reign, from 1928 to 1953, vary widely, but 20 million is now considered the minimum.Rosefielde, Steven (2009) Red Holocaust. Routledge, {{ISBN|0415777577}} p. 17: "We now know as well beyond a reasonable doubt that there were more than 13 million Red Holocaust victims 1929–53, and this figure could rise above 20 million."Naimark, Norman (2010) Stalin's Genocides (Human Rights and Crimes against Humanity). Princeton University Press, p. 11: "Yet Stalin's own responsibility for the killing of some fifteen to twenty million people carries its own horrific weight ... ."}} a figure based on Conquest's book The Great Terror (1968), with some estimates relying in part on demographic losses such as Conquest's.{{cite magazine|last=Conquest|first=Robert|date=September–October 1996|title=Excess Deaths in the Soviet Union|url=https://newleftreview.org/I/219/robert-conquest-excess-deaths-in-the-soviet-union|magazine=New Left Review|publisher=Newleftreview.org|volume=I|issue=219|access-date=22 June 2017|quote=I suggest about eleven million by the beginning of 1937, and about three million over the period 1937–38, making fourteen million. The eleven-odd million is readily deduced from the undisputed population deficit shown in the suppressed census of January 1937, of fifteen to sixteen million, by making reasonable assumptions about how this was divided between birth deficit and deaths.}} In 2003, British historian Simon Sebag Montefiore suggested that Stalin was ultimately responsible for the deaths of at least 20 million people.{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=f-HerzgvxssC&q=%E2%80%9CPerhaps+20+million+had+been+killed;+28+million+deported,+of+whom+18+million+had+slaved+in+the+Gulags.+Yet,+after+so+much+slaughter,+they+were+still+believers.%E2%80%9D&pg=PA643|title=Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar|last=Montefiore|first=Simon Sebag|date=2003|publisher=Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group|isbn=978-0307427939|page=643|language=en}} In 2006, political scientist Rudolph Rummel wrote that the earlier higher victim total estimates are correct, although he included those killed by the government of the Soviet Union in other Eastern European countries as well.[http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/MEGA.HTM Regimes murdering over 10 million people]. hawaii.eduRummel, R.J. (1 May 2006) [http://www.distributedrepublic.net/archives/2006/05/01/how-many-did-stalin-really-murder/ How Many Did Stalin Really Murder?] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170930113819/http://www.distributedrepublic.net/archives/2006/05/01/how-many-did-stalin-really-murder/ |date=30 September 2017 }} In his most recent edition of The Great Terror (2007), Conquest stated that while exact numbers may never be known with complete certainty, at least 15 million people were killed "by the whole range of Soviet regime's terrors."Conquest, Robert (2007) The Great Terror: A Reassessment, 40th Anniversary Edition, Oxford University Press, in Preface, p. xvi: "Exact numbers may never be known with complete certainty, but the total of deaths caused by the whole range of Soviet regime's terrors can hardly be lower than some fifteen million." According to Barbara Anderson and Brian Silver, historians such as Robert Conquest made the most primitive of errors. They asserted that these Cold Warriors overestimated fertility rates and underrated the impact of assimilation, through which many Ukrainians were redesignated as Russians in the 1939 census, confusing population deficits, which included unborn children, with excess deaths.

Historians such as J. Arch Getty, Stephen G. Wheatcroft, and others, insist that the opening of the Soviet archives has vindicated the lower estimates put forth by the revisionist school.{{cite journal|author=Wheatcroft, Stephen G. |title=Victims of Stalinism and the Soviet Secret Police: The Comparability and Reliability of the Archival Data. Not the Last Word|journal= Europe-Asia Studies|volume= 51|issue= 2 |year=1999|url=http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/WCR-Secret_Police.pdf|pages=340–342|doi=10.1080/09668139999056|quote=For decades, many historians counted Stalin' s victims in 'tens of millions', which was a figure supported by Solzhenitsyn. Since the collapse of the USSR, the lower estimates of the scale of the camps have been vindicated. The arguments about excess mortality are far more complex than normally believed. R. Conquest, The Great Terror: A Re-assessment (London, 1992) does not really get to grips with the new data and continues to present an exaggerated picture of the repression. The view of the 'revisionists' has been largely substantiated (J. Arch Getty & R. T. Manning (eds), Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives (Cambridge, 1993)). The popular press, even TLS and The Independent, have contained erroneous journalistic articles that should not be cited in respectable academic articles.}}{{Cite journal|last1=Getty|first1= J. Arch|last2=Rittersporn|first2=Gábor |last3=Zemskov |first3=Viktor |title=Victims of the Soviet penal system in the pre-war years: a first approach on the basis of archival evidence|journal=American Historical Review|date=1993 |volume=98 |issue=4 |pages=1017–1049 |doi=10.2307/2166597 |jstor=2166597|url=http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/GTY-Penal_System.pdf|quote=The long-awaited archival evidence on repression in the period of the Great Purges shows that levels of arrests, political prisoners, executions, and general camp populations tend to confirm the orders of magnitude indicated by those labeled as 'revisionists' and mocked by those proposing high estimates.}} In 2011, after assessing twenty years of historical research in Eastern European archives, American historian Timothy D. Snyder stated that Stalin deliberately killed about 6 million, which rise to 9 million if foreseeable deaths arising from policies are taken into account.{{cite book|title=Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin|url=https://archive.org/details/bloodlandseurope00snyd_814|url-access=limited|last=Snyder|first=Timothy|year=2010|location=New York|page=[https://archive.org/details/bloodlandseurope00snyd_814/page/n404 384]|isbn=9780465002399}}{{cite news|last=Snyder|first=Timothy|title=Hitler vs. Stalin: Who Was Worse?|website=The New York Review of Books|date=27 January 2011|url=http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2011/01/27/hitler-vs-stalin-who-was-worse/|access-date=13 October 2017|quote=The total number of noncombatants killed by the Germans—about 11 million—is roughly what we had thought. The total number of civilians killed by the Soviets, however, is considerably less than we had believed. We know now that the Germans killed more people than the Soviets did. ... All in all, the Germans deliberately killed about 11 million noncombatants, a figure that rises to more than 12 million if foreseeable deaths from deportation, hunger, and sentences in concentration camps are included. For the Soviets during the Stalin period, the analogous figures are approximately six million and nine million. These figures are of course subject to revision, but it is very unlikely that the consensus will change again as radically as it has since the opening of Eastern European archives in the 1990s.}} American historian William D. Rubinstein concluded that, even under most conservative estimates, Stalin was responsible for the deaths of at least 7 million people, or about 4.2% of USSRs total population.{{cite book|last=Rubinstein|first=William D.|year=2014|title=Genocide|isbn=9781317869962|publisher=Taylor & Francis| oclc=1087386696| page=211}}

Some historians believe that the official archival figures of the categories that were recorded by Soviet authorities are unreliable and incomplete.{{cite web|url=http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/|title=Soviet Studies}} See also: Gellately (2007) p. 584: "Anne Applebaum is right to insist that the statistics 'can never fully describe what happened.' They do suggest, however, the massive scope of the repression and killing." In addition to failures regarding comprehensive recordings, as one additional example, Canadian historian Robert Gellately and Montefiore argue that the many suspects beaten and tortured to death while in "investigative custody" were likely not to have been counted amongst the executed.{{sfn|Montefiore|2003|p=?}}{{cite book |last=Gellately |first=Robert |year=2007 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9lU4UrupYSMC |title=Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe |edition=hardcover |publisher=Alfred A. Knopf |isbn=9781400040056 |accessdate=2 September 2021 |page=256}} Conversely, Wheatcroft states that prior to the opening of the archives for historical research, "our understanding of the scale and the nature of Soviet repression has been extremely poor" and that some specialists who wish to maintain earlier high estimates of the Stalinist death toll are "finding it difficult to adapt to the new circumstances when the archives are open and when there are plenty of irrefutable data" and instead "hang on to their old Sovietological methods with round-about calculations based on odd statements from emigres and other informants who are supposed to have superior knowledge."{{cite journal|url=http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/WCR-German_Soviet.pdf|title=The Scale and Nature of German and Soviet Repression and Mass Killings, 1930–45|last=Wheatcroft|first=S. G.|author-link=Stephen G. Wheatcroft|year=1996|volume=48|issue=8|page=1330|journal=Europe-Asia Studies|jstor=152781|doi=10.1080/09668139608412415}}{{cite journal|author=Wheatcroft, S. G.|title=The Scale and Nature of Stalinist Repression and its Demographic Significance: On Comments by Keep and Conquest|journal=Europe-Asia Studies|volume=52|issue=6|pages=1143–1159|year=2000|url=http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/WCR-Comments_KEP_CNQ.pdf|doi=10.1080/09668130050143860|pmid=19326595|s2cid=205667754}} British historian Michael Ellman argues that mass deaths from famines should be placed in a different category than the repression victims, mentioning that throughout Russian history famines and droughts have been a common occurrence, including the Russian famine of 1921–1922, triggered by Stalin's predecessor Vladimir Lenin's war communism policies, which killed about five million people.{{cite encyclopedia|url=https://www.britannica.com/event/War-Communism|title=War Communism|encyclopedia=Encyclopaedia Britannica|author=((The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica))}}{{Cite book |last=Mawdsley |first=Evan |url=https://archive.org/details/russiancivilwar00evan |title=The Russian Civil War |year=2007 |publisher=Pegasus Books |isbn=978-1-933648-15-6 |page=[https://archive.org/details/russiancivilwar00evan/page/287 287] |author-link=Evan Mawdsley |url-access=registration}} He also states that famines were widespread throughout the world in the 19th and 20th centuries in countries such as China, India, Ireland, and Russia. Ellman compared the behaviour of the Stalinist regime vis-à-vis the Holodomor to that of the British government (towards Ireland and India) and the G8 in contemporary times. According to Ellman, the G8 "are guilty of mass manslaughter or mass deaths from criminal negligence because of their not taking obvious measures to reduce mass deaths" and Stalin's "behaviour was no worse than that of many rulers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries." Ben Kiernan, an American academic and historian, described Stalin's era as "by far the bloodiest of Soviet or even Russian history".{{cite book|last=Kiernan| first=Ben |author-link=Ben Kiernan| title=Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur| publisher=Yale University Press| year=2007| isbn= 9780300100983 |oclc=2007001525 |url=https://archive.org/details/bloodan_kie_2007_00_0326|url-access=registration|page=[https://archive.org/details/bloodan_kie_2007_00_0326/page/511 511]}}

{{Further|Holodomor genocide question}}

File:Holodomor recognition by country 2.png

Stalin has been accused of genocide in the cases of forced population transfer in the Soviet Union. Raphael Lemkin, a lawyer of Polish-Jewish descent who initiated the Genocide Convention and coined the term genocide himself, assumed that genocide was perpetrated in the context of the mass deportation of the Chechens, Ingush, Volga Germans, Crimean Tatars, Kalmyks and Karachay.Courtois, Stephane (2010). "Raphael Lemkin and the Question of Genocide under Communist Regimes". In Bieńczyk-Missala, Agnieszka; Dębski, Sławomir (eds.). Rafał Lemkin. PISM. pp. 121–122. {{ISBN|9788389607850}}. {{LCCN|2012380710}}. Some academics disagree with the classification of deportation as genocide. Professor Alexander Statiev argues that Stalin's administration did not have a conscious genocidal intent to exterminate the various deported peoples, but that Soviet "political culture, poor planning, haste, and wartime shortages were responsible for the genocidal death rate among them." He rather considers these deportations an example of Soviet assimilation of "unwanted nations."{{cite journal |last=Statiev |year=2010 |first=Alexandar |journal=Journal of Genocide Research |volume=11 |issue=2–3 |pages=243–264 |title=Soviet ethnic deportations: intent versus outcome |doi=10.1080/14623520903118961 |s2cid=71905569 }} According to Professor Amir Weiner, "...It was their territorial identity and not their physical existence or even their distinct ethnic identity that the regime sought to eradicate."{{cite journal |last=Weiner |first=Amir |year=2002 |title=Nothing but Certainty |journal=Slavic Review |volume=61 |issue=1 |jstor=2696980 |pages=44–53 |doi=10.2307/2696980 |s2cid=159548222 }} According to Professor Francine Hirsch, "although the Soviet regime practiced politics of discrimination and exclusion, it did not practice what contemporaries thought of as racial politics." To her, these mass deportations were based on the concept that nationalities were "sociohistorical groups with a shared consciousness and not racial-biological groups."{{cite journal |last=Hirsch |first=Francine |year=2002 |journal=Slavic Review |title=Race without the Practice of Racial Politics |volume=61 |issue=1 |pages=30–43 |jstor=2696979 |doi=10.2307/2696979 |s2cid=147121638 }} In contrast to this view, Jon K. Chang contends that the deportations had been in fact based on ethnicity and that "social historians" in the West have failed to champion the rights of marginalised ethnicities in the Soviet Union.{{cite journal |last1=K. Chang |first1=Jon |title=Ethnic Cleansing and Revisionist Russian and Soviet History |journal= Academic Questions|date=8 April 2019 |volume=32 |issue=2 |page=270 |doi=10.1007/s12129-019-09791-8 |doi-broken-date=1 November 2024 |s2cid=150711796 }}

Contemporary historians classify these deportations as a crime against humanity and ethnic persecution. Two of these cases of mass deportation with the highest mortality rates, the deportation of the Crimean Tatars and the deportation of the Chechens and Ingush, were recognized as genocides by Ukraine (plus 3 other countries) and the European Parliament respectively.{{Cite web|url=https://www.unpo.org/article/438|title=UNPO: Chechnya: European Parliament recognises the genocide of the Chechen People in 1944|website=www.unpo.org|date=2 November 2009 }}{{cite book |title= Red Holocaust |last= Rosefielde |first= Steven |author-link= Steven Rosefielde |year= 2009 |publisher= Routledge |isbn= 978-0-415-77757-5 |page=[https://archive.org/details/redholocaust00rose/page/n102 84] |title-link= Red Holocaust (2009 book) }} On 26 April 1991 the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic, under its chairman Boris Yeltsin, passed the law On the Rehabilitation of Repressed Peoples with Article 2 denouncing all mass deportations as "Stalin's policy of defamation and genocide."{{cite book |title=From Conquest to Deportation: The North Caucasus under Russian Rule |OCLC=1083957407 |page=320 |isbn=9780190934675 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=O19gDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA320|last1=Perovic |first1=Jeronim |date=2018 |publisher=Oxford University Press }}

Historians continue to debate whether or not the 1932–33 Ukrainian famine, known in Ukraine as the Holodomor, should be called a genocide.{{cite journal |last=Moore |first=Rebekah |title='A Crime Against Humanity Arguably Without Parallel in European History': Genocide and the "Politics" of Victimhood in Western Narratives of the Ukrainian Holodomor |journal=Australian Journal of Politics & History |volume=58 |number=3 |year=2012 |pages=367–379 |doi=10.1111/j.1467-8497.2012.01641.x}} Twenty six countries officially recognise it under the legal definition of genocide. In 2006, the Ukrainian Parliament declared it to be such,{{cite news|last=Lisova|first=Natasha|date=28 November 2006|url=http://www.ukemonde.com/holodomor/index.html|url-status=dead|title=Ukraine Recognize Famine As Genocide|agency=Associated Press|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070822015019/http://www.ukemonde.com/holodomor/index.html|archive-date=22 August 2007|access-date=4 August 2007|via=Ukemonde}} and in 2010 a Ukrainian court posthumously convicted Stalin, Lazar Kaganovich, Stanislav Kosior, and other Soviet leaders of genocide.{{cite magazine|last=Snyder|first=Timothy D.|date=26 May 2010|url=http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2010/may/26/springtime-for-stalin/|title=Springtime for Stalin|magazine=The New York Review of Books|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121024091842/http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2010/may/26/springtime-for-stalin/|archive-date=24 October 2012|access-date=4 January 2021}} Popular among some Ukrainian nationalists is the idea that Stalin consciously organised the famine to suppress national desires among the Ukrainian people. This interpretation has been disputed by more recent historical studies. These have articulated the view that while Stalin's policies contributed significantly to the high mortality rate, there is no evidence that Stalin or the Soviet government consciously engineered the famine.{{cite book |last1=Davies |first1=Robert |last2=Wheatcroft |first2=Stephen |title=The Industrialisation of Soviet Russia Volume 5: The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture 1931–1933 |year=2004 |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |location=Basingstoke and New York |isbn=978-0-230-23855-8|pages=xiv, 441}} The idea that this was a targeted attack on the Ukrainians is complicated by the widespread suffering that also affected other Soviet peoples in the famine, including the Russians.{{cite encyclopedia |first=Norman M. |last=Naimark |contribution=Stalin and the Question of Soviet Genocide |pages=39–48 |editor-first=Paul |editor-last=Hollander |title=Political Violence: Belief, Behavior, and Legitimation |year=2008 |location=London |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |isbn=978-0-230-60646-3}} Within Ukraine, ethnic Poles and Bulgarians died in similar proportions to ethnic Ukrainians.{{cite journal |last=Kuromiya |first=Hiroaki |year=2008 |title=The Soviet Famine of 1932–1933 Reconsidered |journal=Europe-Asia Studies |volume=60 |issue=4 |pages=663–675|jstor=20451530|doi=10.1080/09668130801999912 |s2cid=143876370}} Despite any lack of clear intent on Stalin's part, the historian Norman Naimark noted that although there may not be sufficient "evidence to convict him in an international court of justice as a genocidaire [...] that does not mean that the event itself cannot be judged as genocide."Naimark, Norman M. Stalin's Genocides (Human Rights and Crimes against Humanity). Princeton University Press, 2010. pp. 45. {{ISBN|0691147841}}

• Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repressions
• Mass killings under communist regimes
• Political repression in the Soviet Union
• World War II casualties of the Soviet Union
• Outline of the Great Purge (Soviet Union)
• Timeline of the Great Purge

{{reflist}}

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Category:Ethnic cleansing in Europe

Category:Great Purge

Category:20th-century mass murder in Russia

Category:Joseph Stalin

Category:Murder in the Soviet Union

Category:20th-century mass murder in Europe

Category:20th-century mass murder in Asia