Political repression in the Soviet Union#Collectivization

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Secret police had a long history in Tsarist Russia. Ivan the Terrible used the Oprichina, while more recently the Third Section and Okhrana existed.

Early on, the Leninist view of the class conflict and the resulting notion of the dictatorship of the proletariat provided the theoretical basis of the repressions. Its legal basis was formalized into the Article 58 in the code of the Russian SFSR and similar articles for other Soviet republics.{{Citation needed|date=January 2011}}

According to the Marxist historian Marcel Liebman, Lenin's wartime measures such as banning opposition parties was prompted by the fact that several political parties either took up arms against the new Soviet government, or participated in sabotage, collaborated with the deposed Tsarists, or made assassination attempts against Lenin and other Bolshevik leaders.{{cite book |last1=Liebman |first1=Marcel |title=Leninism Under Lenin |date=1985 |publisher=Merlin Press |isbn=978-0-85036-261-9 |pages=1–348 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OQjzAAAAMAAJ |language=en}} Liebman noted that opposition parties such as the Cadets who were democratically elected to the Soviets in some areas, then proceeded to use their mandate to welcome in Tsarist and foreign capitalist military forces. In one incident in Baku, the British military, once invited in, proceeded to execute members of the Bolshevik Party who had peacefully stood down from the Soviet when they failed to win the elections. As a result, the Bolsheviks banned each opposition party when it turned against the Soviet government. In some cases, bans were lifted. This banning of parties did not have the same repressive character as later bans enforced under the Stalinist regime. Trotsky also argued that he and Lenin had intended to lift the ban on the opposition parties such as the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries as soon as the economic and social conditions of Soviet Russia had improved.{{cite book |last1=Deutscher |first1=Isaac |title=The Prophet: The Life of Leon Trotsky |date=5 January 2015 |publisher=Verso Books |isbn=978-1-78168-721-5 |pages=528 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=YGznDwAAQBAJ&q=isaac+deutscher+trotsky+the+prophet |language=en}}

At times, the repressed were called the enemies of the people. Punishments by the state included summary executions, sending innocent people to Gulag, forced resettlement, and stripping of citizen's rights. Repression was conducted by the Cheka secret police and its successors, and other state organs. Periods of increased repression include the Red Terror, Collectivization, the Great Purges, the Doctors' Plot, and others. The secret police forces conducted massacres of prisoners on numerous occasions. Repression took place in the Soviet republics and in the territories occupied by the Soviet Army during and following World War II, including the Baltic states and Eastern Europe.Anton Antonov-Ovseenko Beria (Russian) Moscow, AST, 1999. [http://fictionbook.ru/author/antonov_ovseenko_anton/beriya/antonov_ovseenko_beriya.html Russian text online]{{Unreliable source?|date=January 2011}}

State repression led to incidents of popular resistance, such as the Tambov peasant rebellion (1920–1921), the Kronstadt rebellion (1921), and the Vorkuta Uprising (1953); the Soviet authorities suppressed such resistance with overwhelming military force and brutality. During the Tambov rebellion, Mikhail Tukhachevsky (chief Red Army commander in the area) authorized Bolshevik military forces to use chemical weapons against villages with civilian population and rebels.{{sfnm|1a1=Mayer|1y=2002|1p=395|2a1=Werth|2y=1999|2p=117}} Publications in local Communist newspapers openly glorified liquidations of "bandits" with the poison gas.{{sfnm|1a1=Figes|1y=1997|1p=768|2a1=Pipes|2y=2011|2pp=387–401}} The Internal Troops of the Cheka and the Red Army practiced the terror tactics of taking and executing numerous hostages, often in connection with desertions of forcefully mobilized peasants. According to Orlando Figes, more than 1 million people deserted from the Red Army in 1918, around 2 million people deserted in 1919, and almost 4 million deserters escaped from the Red Army in 1921.{{sfnp|Figes|1997|loc=Chapter 13}}Courtois et al, 1999: {{page needed|date=January 2011}}

In 1919, 612 "hardcore" deserters of the total 837,000 draft dodgers and deserters were executed following Trotsky's dracionan measures.{{cite book |last1=Reese |first1=Roger R. |title=Russia's Army: A History from the Napoleonic Wars to the War in Ukraine |date=3 October 2023 |publisher=University of Oklahoma Press |isbn=978-0-8061-9356-4 |page=109 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hWS2EAAAQBAJ&dq=trotsky+desertion+612&pg=PA109 |language=en}} According to Figes, "a majority of deserters (most registered as "weak-willed") were handed back to the military authorities, and formed into units for transfer to one of the rear armies or directly to the front". Even those registered as "malicious" deserters were returned to the ranks when the demand for reinforcements became desperate". Forges also noted that the Red Army instituted amnesty weeks to prohibit punitive measures against desertion which encouraged the voluntary return of 98,000-132,000 deserters to the army.{{cite journal |last1=Figes |first1=Orlando |title=The Red Army and Mass Mobilization during the Russian Civil War 1918-1920 |journal=Past & Present |date=1990 |issue=129 |pages=168–211 |doi=10.1093/past/129.1.168 |jstor=650938 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/650938 |issn=0031-2746|url-access=subscription }}

For a long time historians assumed that the destruction of the officer cadre of the Red Army happened during Stalin's Great Purge. However new data that emerged on the break of the 21st century radically changed this perception, [https://web.archive.org/web/20070927200818/http://www.znanie-sila.ru/online/issue2print_2471.html Операция «Весна»], Znanie — Sila magazine, no. 11, 2003 and the information was uncovered about the so-called Vesna Case, a massive series of Soviet repressions targeting former officers and generals of the Russian Imperial Army who had served in the Red Army and Soviet Navy, a major purge of the Red Army during 1930-1931.

{{Main|Red Terror}}

File:Red terror 001.jpg in 1918 in the basement of Tulpanov's house in Kherson, Ukrainian SSR, The Black Book of Communism]]

File:Red terror 002.jpg, Ukrainian SSR, The Black Book of Communism]]

In his book, Terrorism and Communism: A Reply to Karl Kautsky, Trotsky also argued that the reign of terror began with the White Terror under the White Guard forces and the Bolsheviks responded with the Red Terror.{{cite book |last1=Kline |first1=George L |title=In Defence of Terrorism in The Trotsky reappraisal. Brotherstone, Terence; Dukes, Paul,(eds) |date=1992 |publisher=Edinburgh University Press |isbn=978-0-7486-0317-6 |page=158}} There is no consensus among the Western historians on the number of deaths from the Red Terror in Soviet Russia. One source gives estimates of 28,000 executions per year from December 1917 to February 1922.{{sfnp|Ryan|2012|p=2}} Estimates for the number of people shot during the initial period of the Red Terror are at least 10,000.{{sfnp|Ryan|2012|p=114}} Estimates for the whole period go for a low of 50,000Stone, Bailey (2013). The Anatomy of Revolution Revisited: A Comparative Analysis of England, France, and Russia. Cambridge University Press. p. 335. to highs of 140,000Pipes, Richard (2011). The Russian Revolution. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. p. 838. and 200,000 executed.{{sfnp|Lowe|2002|p=151}} Most estimations for the number of executions in total put the number at about 100,000.{{cite book |last=Lincoln |first=W. Bruce |author-link=W. Bruce Lincoln |year=1989 |title=Red Victory: A History of the Russian Civil War |publisher=Simon & Schuster |page=384 |isbn=0-671-63166-7 |quote=... the best estimates set the probable number of executions at about a hundred thousand.}} However, social scientist Nikolay Zayats from the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus has argued that the figures have been greatly exaggerated due to White Army propaganda.{{cite web |title=On the scale of the Red Terror during the Civil War |url=https://scepsis.net/library/id_3807.html |website=scepsis.net}}

According to Vadim Erlikhman's investigation, the number of the Red Terror's victims is at least 1,200,000 people.Эрлихман В. В. Потери народонаселения в XX веке.: Справочник — М.: Издательский дом «Русская панорама», 2004. — ISBN 5-93165-107-1 According to Robert Conquest, a total of 140,000 people were shot in 1917–1922.{{Cite book|title=The Great Terror: A Reassessment, 40th Anniversary Edition|last=Conquest|first=Robert|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=2007|pages=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."}} Candidate of Historical Sciences Nikolay Zayats states that the number of people shot by the Cheka in 1918–1922 is about 37,300 people, shot in 1918–1921 by the verdicts of the tribunals—14,200, i.e. about 50,000–55,000 people in total, although executions and atrocities were not limited to the Cheka, having been organized by the Red Army as well.[https://scepsis.net/library/id_3807.html К вопросу о масштабах красного террора в годы Гражданской войны]

In 1924, anti-Bolshevik Popular Socialist Sergei Melgunov (1879–1956) published a detailed account on the Red Terror in Russia, where he cited Professor Charles Saroléa's estimates of 1,766,188 deaths from the Bolshevik policies. He questioned the accuracy of the figures, but endorsed Saroléa's "characterisation of terror in Russia", stating it matches reality.Часть IV. На гражданской войнe. // Sergei Melgunov [http://lib.ru/POLITOLOG/MELGUNOW/terror.txt «Красный террор» в России 1918–1923.] — 2-ое изд., доп. — Берлин, 1924{{cite book |language=de |last=Melgunov |first=Sergei Petrovich |author-link=Sergei Melgunov |date=2008 |orig-date=1924 |title=Der rote Terror in Russland 1918–1923 |type=reprint of the 1924 Olga Diakow edition |edition= |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=S3FGAQAAIAAJ |location=Berlin |publisher=OEZ |page=186, note 182 |quote= |isbn=978-3-940452-47-4}} An online English translation of the second edition of Melgunov's work is accessible at [https://archive.org/details/RedTerrorInRussia1918-1923 Internet Archive], whence the following translated text is drawn (p. 85, note n. 128): "Professor Sarolea, who published a series of articles about Russia in Edinburgh newspaper “The Scotsman” touched upon the death statistics in an essay on terror (No. 7, November 1923.). He summarized the outcome of the Bolshevik massacre as follows: 28 bishops, 1219 clergy, 6000 professors and teachers, 9000 doctors, 54,000 officers, 260,000 soldiers, 70,000 policemen, 12,950 landowners, 355,250 professionals, 193,290 workers, 815,000 peasants. The author did not provide the sources of that data. Needless to say that the precise counts seem [too] fictional, but the author's [characterisation] of terror in Russia in general matches reality."{{cite web|url=http://mosnarodsobor.ru/mainnews/istorik_sergeiy_volkov_geneticheskomu_fondu.htm|title=Генетическому фонду России был нанесен чудовищный, не восполненный до сего времени, урон|author=Перевощиков А.|date=August 2010|publisher=Официальный сайт Московского регионального отделения движения "Народный собор"|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100911021003/http://mosnarodsobor.ru/mainnews/istorik_sergeiy_volkov_geneticheskomu_fondu.htm |access-date=2020-01-02|archive-date=2010-09-11 }} Modern historian Sergei Volkov, assessing the Red Terror as the entire repressive policy of the Bolsheviks during the years of the Civil War (1917–1922), estimates the direct death toll of the Red Terror at 2 million people.{{cite web|url=https://www.rbth.com/history/329091-how-many-lives-claimed-red-terror |title=How many lives did the Red Terror claim?|last=Timofeychev|first=Alexey|date=7 September 2018 |website=Russia Beyond |access-date=21 April 2023}} Volkov's calculations, however, do not appear to have been confirmed by other major scholars.{{refn|In particular, they seem quite at odds with the demographic considerations elaborated by Italian historian and professor {{ill|Andrea Graziosi|it}} in the light of the good quality Tsarist and early Soviet statistics. According to him, the excess deaths between 1914 and 1922 were about 16 million, of which 4–5 were military, the rest civilian. The overwhelming majority of the latter resulted from "starvation, typhus, epidemics, the Spanish flu and the famine of 1921-22", the roughly number of "victims of the various kinds of terror, and red and white repressions" amounting to a few hundred thousand— albeit a dreadful number in itself.{{sfnp|Graziosi|2007|pp=171 & 570}}}}

{{main|Collectivization in the Soviet Union}}

File:RIAN archive 79113 Seizing grain from kulaks.jpgers seizing grain from kulaks which was hidden in the graveyard, Ukraine, 1930." At the height of collectivization anyone resisting it was declared a "kulak"]]

Collectivization in the Soviet Union was a policy, pursued between 1928 and 1933, to consolidate individual land and labour into collective farms ({{langx|ru|колхо́з}}, kolkhoz, plural kolkhozy). The Soviet leaders were confident that the replacement of individual peasant farms by kolkhozy would immediately increase food supplies for the urban population, the supply of raw materials for processing industry, and agricultural exports generally. Collectivization was thus regarded as the solution to the crisis in agricultural distribution (mainly in grain deliveries) that had developed since 1927 and was becoming more acute as the Soviet Union pressed ahead with its ambitious industrialization program.Davies, R.W., The Soviet Collective Farms, 1929–1930, Macmillan, London (1980), p. 1. As the peasantry, with the exception of the poorest part, resisted the collectivization policy, the Soviet government resorted to harsh measures to force the farmers to collectivize. In his conversation with Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin gave his estimate of the number of "kulaks" who were repressed for resisting Soviet collectivization as 10 million, including those forcibly deported.Valentin Berezhkov, "Kak ya stal perevodchikom Stalina", Moscow, DEM, 1993, {{ISBN|5-85207-044-0}}. p. 317Stanislav Kulchytsky, [http://www.zerkalo-nedeli.com/nn/show/420/36833/ "How many of us perished in Holodomor in 1933"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060721011333/http://www.zerkalo-nedeli.com/nn/show/420/36833/ |date=2006-07-21 }}, Zerkalo Nedeli, November 23–29, 2002. Recent historians have estimated the death toll in the range of six to 13 million.{{cite book|author1=Constantin Iordachi|author2=Arnd Bauerkamper|title=The Collectivization of Agriculture in Communist Eastern Europe: Comparison and Entanglements|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=84Z2BgAAQBAJ&pg=PA9|year=2014|publisher=Central European University Press|page=9|isbn=9786155225635}}

{{main|Great Purge|Executed Renaissance|1937 mass execution of Belarusians}}

Image:Vinnycia16.jpg searching through the exhumed victims of the Vinnytsia massacre, 1943]]

The Great Purge ({{langx|ru|Большой террор}}, transliterated Bolshoy terror, The Great Terror) was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin in 1937–1938.Figes, 2007: pp. 227–315Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe. By Robert Gellately. 2007. Knopf. 720 pages {{ISBN|1-4000-4005-1}} It involved the purge of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, repression of peasants, deportations of ethnic minorities, and the persecution of unaffiliated persons, characterized by widespread police surveillance, widespread suspicion of "saboteurs", imprisonment, and killings. Estimates of the number of deaths associated with the Great Purge run from the official figure of 681,692 to nearly 1,2 million.{{Citation |title=Introduction: the Great Purges as history |date=1985 |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511572616.002 |work=Origins of the Great Purges |pages=1–9 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |doi=10.1017/cbo9780511572616.002 |isbn=978-0521259217 |access-date=2021-12-02|url-access=subscription }}{{Cite journal|last=Homkes|first=Brett|date=2004|title=Certainty, Probability, and Stalin's Great Purge|url=https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1032&context=mcnair|journal=McNair Scholars Journal}}{{cite journal |last1=Ellman |first1=Michael |title=Soviet Repression Statistics: Some Comments |journal=Europe-Asia Studies |date=2002 |volume=54 |issue=7 |pages=1151–1172 |jstor=826310 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/826310 |issn=0966-8136}}{{cite book |last1=Shearer |first1=David R. |title=Stalin and War, 1918-1953: Patterns of Repression, Mobilization, and External Threat |date=11 September 2023 |publisher=Taylor & Francis |isbn=978-1-000-95544-6 |page=vii |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CCHMEAAAQBAJ&dq=great+purge+1.2+million&pg=PR7 |language=en}}{{cite book |last1=Nelson |first1=Todd H. |title=Bringing Stalin Back In: Memory Politics and the Creation of a Useable Past in Putin's Russia |date=16 October 2019 |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield |isbn=978-1-4985-9153-9 |page=7 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oJGyDwAAQBAJ&dq=stalin+great+purge+1.2+million&pg=PA7 |language=en}}

On September 15, 1933, the deputy head of the OGPU, Genrikh Yagoda reported to Joseph Stalin about the disclosure of the "conspiracy of the homosexual community" in Moscow, Leningrad and Kharkiv. As Yagoda pointed out in the explanatory note, "the conspirators were engaged in the creation of a network of salons and other organized formations, with the subsequent transformation of these associations into direct spy cells".[https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/ss/14214910 Игорь Кон. Лики и маски однополой любви: лунный свет на заре][https://babel.ua/ru/texts/69767-88-let-nazad-stalinu-dolozhili-o-shpionskom-zagovore-geev-i-on-obyavil-ih-vne-zakona-vspominaem-kak-v-sssr-gomoseksualov-lechili-v-psihbolnicah-a-za-muzhelozhstvo-sudili-dissidentov-i-chekistov Как в СССР преследовали гомосексуалов - история, фото]

Stalin ordered "to punish the scumbags" in a demonstrative way, and to introduce a corresponding directive into the legislation. At the first stage, about 130 people were arrested who gave the necessary confessions under torture, and on December 17, 1933, the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR decided to extend criminal liability to "unnatural relationship". The article was added to the Criminal Code of the RSFSR on April 1, 1934 in the section "sexual crimes" under number 154-a. "Voluntary" sexual intercourse between two men was sentenced to three to five years in the camps, and for "cohabitation" with the use of violence - from five to eight.Дэн Хили. Гомосексуальное влечение в революционной России: регулирование сексуально-гендерного диссидентства = Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia: The Regulation of Sexual and Gender Dissent / науч. ред. Л. В. Бессмертных, Ю. А. Михайлов, пер. с англ. Т .Ю. Логачева, В. И. Новиков. — Москва: НИЦ «Ладомир», 2008. — 624 с. — (Русская потаенная литература). — 1000 экз.

File:Nikolay Klyuev 2.jpg

Nikolai Klyuev was the first known homosexual to suffer from Soviet repressions. The poet was accused of writing love lyrics that "were written from a male person to a male person." In February 1934, Klyuyev was arrested in his apartment on charges of "composing and distributing counter-revolutionary literary works", and in 1937 he was shot.[https://xgayru.info/people/star/russian/xix/vozlyublennyy-kamen-gde.html "Возлюбленный - камень, где тысячи граней...". Николай Клюев]З. Дичаров. Николай Алексеевич Клюев // «Писатели Ленинграда»Русские писатели XX века. — М.: 2000. С. 346Николай Клюев. Сердце Единорога. Стихотворения и поэмы. — СПб.: РХГИ, 1999. — С. 9—67. — 1072 с.

In later times, the most famous victim of the Soviet repression against the LGBT community was a film director Sergei Parajanov.[https://zn.ua/ART/sledy-kgb-i-scherbickogo-v-dele-paradzhanova-_.html СЛЕДЫ КГБ И ЩЕРБИЦКОГО В ДЕЛЕ ПАРАДЖАНОВА]

{{main|Population transfer in the Soviet Union}}

Image:Karte Entkulakisierung.png across the Soviet Union in 1930–1931]]

Population transfer in the Soviet Union may be divided into the following broad categories: deportations of "anti-Soviet" categories within the population, who were often classified as "enemies of the workers"; deportations of nationalities; labor force transfer; and organised migrations in opposite directions in order to fill the ethnically cleansed territories. In most cases their destinations were underpopulated and remote areas (see Involuntary settlements in the Soviet Union).

File:Репресований зі Знам'янки.jpg

Entire nations and ethnic groups were collectively punished by the Soviet government for their alleged collaboration with the enemy during World War II. At least nine distinct ethnic-linguistic groups, including ethnic Germans, ethnic Greeks, ethnic Poles, Crimean Tatars (recognized as genocide), Balkars, Chechens, and Kalmyks, were deported to remote and unpopulated areas of Siberia (see sybirak) and Kazakhstan.Conquest, 1986: {{page needed|date=January 2011}} Koreans and Romanians were also deported. Mass operations of the NKVD were needed to deport millions of people, many of whom died. According to various sources, more than 6 million people were deported, with the death toll ranging from 800,000{{Sfn|Grieb|2014|p=930}} to 1,500,000{{Sfn|Werth|2004|p=73}} in the USSR only.

File:State Museum of Gulag History (2017-12-12) - 59.jpg

{{main|Gulag}}

The Gulag "was the branch of the State Security that operated the penal system of forced labour camps and associated detention and transit camps and prisons. While these camps housed criminals of all types, the Gulag system has become primarily known as a place for political prisoners and as a mechanism for repressing political opposition to the Soviet state."{{cite book| author=Anne Applebaum| title=Gulag: A History| publisher=Doubleday| date=2003| isbn=978-0767900560| title-link=Gulag: A History}}{{cite web| url=https://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/jun/07/featuresreviews.guardianreview19| author=Robert Service| title=The accountancy of pain| work=The Guardian| date=June 7, 2003}}

{{main|Soviet war crimes}}

During the early years of World War II, the Soviet Union annexed several territories in Eastern Europe as a consequence of the German–Soviet Pact and its Secret Additional Protocol.[http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-37317/Latvia The Soviet occupation and incorporation] at Encyclopædia Britannica

{{main|Occupation of the Baltic States#Soviet occupation and annexation}}

{{further|Soviet deportations from Estonia|Soviet occupation of Latvia in 1940|Soviet occupation of the Baltic states (1940)|Soviet re-occupation of the Baltic states (1944)|Operation Priboi}}

File:AntanasSniečkus7-11-1970Vlns.jpg, the leader of the Communist Party of Lithuania from 1940 to 1974, supervised the mass deportations of Lithuanians.{{cite book |last1=Roszkowski |first1=Wojciech |title=Biographical Dictionary of Central and Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century |date=2016 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1317475934 |page=2549 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=RnKlDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA2549}}]]

In the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, repressions and mass deportations were carried out by the Soviets. The Serov Instructions, "On the Procedure for carrying out the Deportation of Anti-Soviet Elements from Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia", contained detailed procedures and protocols to observe in the deportation of Baltic nationals. Public tribunals were also set up to punish "traitors to the people": those who had fallen short of the "political duty" of voting their countries into the USSR. In the first year of Soviet occupation, from June 1940 to June 1941, the number confirmed executed, conscripted, or deported is estimated at a minimum of 124,467: 59,732 in Estonia, 34,250 in Latvia, and 30,485 in Lithuania.Dunsdorfs, Edgars. The Baltic Dilemma. Speller & Sons, New York. 1975 This included 8 former heads of state and 38 ministers from Estonia, 3 former heads of state and 15 ministers from Latvia, and the then-president, 5 prime ministers and 24 other ministers from Lithuania.Küng, Andres. Communism and Crimes against Humanity in the Baltic States. 1999 {{cite web |url=http://www.rel.ee/eng/communism_crimes.htm |title=Communism and Crimes against Humanity in the Baltic states |access-date=2015-02-17 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20010301223347/http://www.rel.ee/eng/communism_crimes.htm |archive-date=2001-03-01 }}

{{main|Soviet repressions of Polish citizens (1939–1946)}}

{{main|Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina}}

{{Further|Soviet dissidents|Political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union|Cases of political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union}}

After Stalin's death, the suppression of dissent was dramatically reduced and it also took new forms. The internal critics of the system were convicted of anti-Soviet agitation, anti-Soviet slander, or they were accused of being "social parasites". Other critics were accused of being mentally ill, they were accused of having sluggish schizophrenia and incarcerated in "psikhushkas", i.e. mental hospitals which were used as prisons by the Soviet authorities.{{Cite web|url=https://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/china02/china0802-02.htm|title=Dangerous Minds|website=www.hrw.org}} A number of notable dissidents, including Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Vladimir Bukovsky, and Andrei Sakharov, were sent to internal or external exile.

{{See also|Mass killings under communist regimes|Crimes against humanity under communist regimes|Excess mortality in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin}}

File:GULag 2 Museum Moscow Russia.jpg was founded in 2001 by historian Anton Antonov-Ovseyenko]]

Estimates of the number of deaths attributable specifically to Joseph Stalin vary widely. Some scholars assert that record-keeping of the executions of political prisoners and ethnic minorities are neither reliable nor complete;{{Cite web|url=http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/|title=SOVIET STUDIES|website=sovietinfo.tripod.com|access-date=2019-05-28}} others contend archival materials contain irrefutable data far superior to sources utilized prior to 1991, such as statements from emigres and other informants.{{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.|year=1996|volume= 48|issue=8 |pages=1319–1353 |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 }} Those historians working after the Soviet Union's dissolution have estimated victim totals ranging from approximately 3 million{{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|page=1022|doi=10.2307/2166597|jstor=2166597|url=https://sovietinfo.tripod.com/GTY-Penal_System.pdf}} to nearly 9 million.{{Cite web|url=https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2011/01/27/hitler-vs-stalin-who-was-worse/|title=Hitler vs. Stalin: Who Was Worse?|last=Snyder|first=Timothy|date=2011-01-27|website=The New York Review of Books|language=en|access-date=2019-05-28}} Some scholars still assert that the death toll could be in the tens of millions.{{Cite book|title=Red Holocaust.|last=Rosefielde|first=Steven|publisher=Routledge|year=2008|isbn=978-0-415-77757-5|pages=17}}

American historian Richard Pipes noted: "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.{{Cite book|title=Communism: A History|last=Pipes|first=Richard|year=2001|location=USA|pages=67}} In his most recent edition of The Great Terror (2007), Robert Conquest states 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". Rudolph Rummel in 2006 said that the earlier higher victim total estimates are correct, although he includes those killed by the government of the Soviet Union in other Eastern European countries as well.{{Cite web|url=http://www.distributedrepublic.net/archives/2006/05/01/how-many-did-stalin-really-murder/|title=How Many Did Stalin Really Murder? {{!}} The Distributed Republic|website=www.distributedrepublic.net|access-date=2019-05-28|archive-date=2017-09-30|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170930113819/http://www.distributedrepublic.net/archives/2006/05/01/how-many-did-stalin-really-murder/|url-status=dead}} Conversely, J. Arch Getty and Stephen G. Wheatcroft insist that the opening of the Soviet archives has vindicated the lower estimates put forth by "revisionist" scholars.{{cite journal|author=Wheatcroft, S. 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|pages= 315–345|year=1999|url=http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/WCR-Secret_Police.pdf|doi=10.1080/09668139999056}} Simon Sebag Montefiore in 2003 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=2007-12-18|publisher=Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group|isbn=9780307427939|pages=643|language=en}}

Some of these estimates rely in part on demographic losses. Conquest explained how he arrived at his estimate: "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."{{Cite journal|url=https://newleftreview.org/issues/I219/articles/robert-conquest-excess-deaths-in-the-soviet-union|title=Robert Conquest, Excess Deaths in the Soviet Union, NLR I/219, September–October 1996|journal=New Left Review|date=October 1996 |issue=I/219 |pages=143 |language=en|access-date=2019-05-28 |last1=Conquest |first1=Robert }}

Australian historian Stephen G. Wheatcroft claims 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." Conversely, some historians believe that the official archival figures of the categories that were recorded by Soviet authorities are unreliable and incomplete. In addition to failures regarding comprehensive recordings, as one additional example, Canadian historian Robert Gellately and British historian Simon Sebag 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.

{{main|Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Political Repressions}}

File:GulagMemorial.jpg made of a boulder from the Solovki camp—the first prison camp in the Gulag system. People gather here every year on the Day of Remembrance of Victims of the Repression (October 30)]]

A Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Political Repression (День памяти жертв политических репрессий) has been officially held on 30 October in Russia since 1991. It is also marked in other former Soviet republics except Ukraine, which has its own annual Day of Remembrance for the victims of political repressions by the Soviet regime, held each year on the third Sunday of May.

Members of the Memorial society took an active part in such commemorative meetings.{{Citation needed|date=January 2011}} Since 2007, Memorial had also organised the day-long "Restoring the Names" ceremony at the Solovetsky Stone in Moscow every 29 October.[https://dmitrievaffair.wordpress.com/2017/10/30/restoring-the-names-29-october-2017/#more-1875 "Restoring the Names, Dmitriev Affair website, 30 October 2017]. The organization was banned by the Russian government in 2022.{{Cite web |title=Russia: Dissolution of Human Rights Center "Memorial" confirmed in… |url=https://www.omct.org/en/resources/statements/russia-dissolution-of-human-rights-center-memorial-confirmed-in-appeal |access-date=2023-01-06 |website=OMCT |language=en}}{{cite web |title=The Organization Has Been Liquidated by a Court Decision |url=https://www.memo.ru/en-us/ |website=Memorial Society |access-date=5 April 2022}}{{cite news |last1=Chernova |first1=Anna |title=Historic Russian Human Rights Center Closes, Warns of "Return to the Totalitarian Past" |url=https://edition.cnn.com/europe/live-news/ukraine-russia-putin-news-04-05-22#h_898a98f6feb1ec357775a6d70b434940 |access-date=5 April 2022 |work=CNN}} Some of Memorial's human rights activities have continued in Russia.{{cite web

|author=Старикова, М.

|language = ru

|url =https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/5295773

|title ="Мемориал" после ликвидации объявил о старте нового проекта

|trans-title =after the liquidation, "Memorial" announced the start of a new project

|publisher = Коммерсантъ

|date = 7 April 2022

|access-date = 11 April 2022

}}

The Wall of Grief in Moscow, inaugurated in October 2017, is Russia's first monument ordered by presidential decree for people killed during the Stalinist repressions in the Soviet Union.{{cite news|title=Путин открыл в Москве мемориал "Стена скорби"|trans-title=Putin Opened the Memorial "Wall of Grief" in Moscow|url=http://www.rbc.ru/society/30/10/2017/59f745af9a79472b6bbde1ef|website=РБК|date=30 October 2017|language=ru}}{{cite news|title=Wall of Grief: Putin opens first Soviet victims memorial |website=BBC News|url=https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-41809659|date=30 October 2017}}

• Active measures
• Crimes against humanity under communist regimes
• Criticism of communist party rule
• Goli Otok
• Hitler Youth conspiracy
• Human rights in the Soviet Union
• Mass killings under communist regimes
• Persecution of Christians in the Soviet Union
• Persecution of Christians in the Eastern Bloc
• Political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union
• Rehabilitation (Soviet)
• Law of the Soviet Union
• Politics of the Soviet Union
• Soviet repressions in Belarus
• The Black Book of Communism
• Anti-religious campaign during the Russian Civil War (1917–1921)
• RSFSR and USSR anti-religious campaign (1921–1928)
• USSR anti-religious campaign (1928–1941)
• USSR anti-religious campaign (1958–1964)
• USSR anti-religious campaign (1970s–1987)

{{Reflist|35em}}

• {{cite book|author=Conquest, Robert|title=The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=1986|isbn=978-0-19-505180-3|title-link=The Harvest of Sorrow}}
• {{cite book|editor=Courtois, Stephane |display-editors=etal |title=The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression|publisher=Harvard University Press|year=1999|isbn=978-0-674-07608-2}}
• {{cite book|author=Figes, Orlando|title=The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia|publisher=Macmillan|year=2007|isbn=978-0-8050-7461-1 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sge44FaZDREC}}
• {{Cite journal|last1=Getty|first1=J. Arch|author-link1=J. Arch Getty|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|page=1022|doi=10.2307/2166597|jstor=2166597|url=https://sovietinfo.tripod.com/GTY-Penal_System.pdf}}
• {{cite book |last=Grieb |first=Christiane |chapter=War Crimes, Soviet, World War II |year=2014 |title=Russia at War: From the Mongol Conquest to Afghanistan, Chechnya, and Beyond |editor-first=Timothy |editor-last=C. Dowling |lccn=2014017775 |publisher=ABC-CLIO |isbn=9781598849486|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KTq2BQAAQBAJ&pg=PA930 }}
• {{cite book|last1=Lindy |first1=Jacob D. |last2=Lifton |first2=Robert Jay|title=Beyond invisible walls: the psychological legacy of Soviet trauma, East European therapists, and their patients|publisher=Psychology Press|year=2001|isbn=978-1-58391-318-5|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JQRTev1AHjQC}}
• {{cite book |last=Lowe |first=Norman |year=2002 |title=Mastering Twentieth Century Russian History |publisher=Palgrave |isbn=9780333963074 }}
• [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00085006.2017.1384665?src=recsys&journalCode=rcsp20 "New directions in Gulag studies: a roundtable discussion,"] Canadian Slavonic Papers 59, no 3-4 (2017)
• {{cite book|author=Nove, Alec|chapter=Victims of Stalinism: How Many?|editor=Getty, J. Arch |editor2=Manning, Roberta T.|title=Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=1993|isbn=978-0-521-44670-9|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NWYvGYcxCjYC}}
• {{Cite book |last = Ryan | first = James | title = Lenin's Terror: The Ideological Origins of Early Soviet State Violence | publisher = Routledge | location = London | year = 2012 | isbn = 978-1138815681 | url= https://www.routledge.com/products/9781138815681 }}
• {{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= Stephen|author-link=Stephen G. Wheatcroft |year=1996|volume= 48|issue=8 |pages=1319–1353 |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 }}
• Lynne Viola, [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00085006.2018.1497393 "New sources on Soviet perpetrators of mass repression: a research note,"] Canadian Slavonic Papers 60, no 3-4 (2018)
• {{cite book |last=Figes |first=Orlando|title=A People's Tragedy|location=New York|publisher=Viking Press|year=1997|pages=753–769|isbn=0670859168}}
• {{cite book |last1=Mayer |first1=Arno J. |title=The Furies: Violence and Terror in the French and Russian Revolutions |date=2002 |publisher=Princeton University Press |isbn=978-0-691-09015-3 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gveBKGhmskAC |language=en}}
• {{cite book |last1=Pipes |first1=Richard |title=Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime |date=2011 |publisher=Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group |isbn=978-0-307-78861-0 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pfNEY931UzYC |language=en}}
• {{cite book |last=Werth |first=Nicolas|title=The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression|date=1999|publisher=Harvard University Press|isbn=978-0-674-07608-2|pages=33–268|language=en|chapter=A State against Its People: Violence, Repression, and Terror in the Soviet Union|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=H1jsgYCoRioC&pg=PG108}}
• {{cite book |last=Werth |first=Nicolas |author-link=Nicolas Werth |title=Stalinism and Nazism: History and Memory Compared|editor-first1=Henry| editor-last1=Rousso |editor-link=Henry Rousso |editor-first2= Richard Joseph |editor-last2=Golsan |publisher=University of Nebraska Press |year=2004 |lccn=2003026805 |isbn=9780803290006 |chapter=Strategies of Violence in the Stalinist USSR| chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CIt7fMp30sAC&pg=PA73 }}

{{See also|Bibliography of the Russian Revolution and Civil War|Bibliography of Stalinism and the Soviet Union|Bibliography of the Post Stalinist Soviet Union}}

• {{cite book|author=Brooks, Jeffrey|title=Thank you, comrade Stalin!: Soviet public culture from revolution to Cold War|publisher=Princeton University Press|year=2000|isbn=978-0-691-00411-2|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kUl3Od-xWn8C}}
• {{cite book|last1=Davies|first1=Robert|author-link1=Robert William Davies|last2=Wheatcroft|first2=Stephen|author-link2=Stephen G. Wheatcroft|title=The Industrialisation of Soviet Russia Volume 5: The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture 1931–1933|url=http://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9780333311073|year=2009|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan UK|isbn=978-0-230-27397-9}}
• {{cite journal|author=Ellman, Michael|title=Soviet repression statistics: some comments|journal=Europe-Asia Studies|date=November 2002|volume=54|issue=7|pages=1151–1172|doi=10.1080/0966813022000017177|s2cid=43510161}}
• {{cite book|author=Eremina, Larisa; Roginsky, Arseny [Лариса Еремина, Арсений Рогинский]|title=Расстрельные списки: Москва, 1937–1941: "Коммунарка", Бутово: книга памяти жертв политических репрессий|trans-title=Shot lists: Moscow, 1937–1941: "Kommunarka", Butovo: the book for commemoration of political repression victims|date=2002|publisher=Memorial|location=Moscow|isbn=978-5787000597|language=ru}}
• {{cite book|author=Eremina, Larisa; Roginsky, Arseny [Лариса Еремина, Арсений Рогинский]|title=Расстрельные списки: Москва, 1935–1953: Донское кладбище (Донской крематорий): книга памяти жертв политических репрессий|trans-title=Shot lists: Moscow, 1935–1953: the Donskoye cemetery (the Donskoy crematorium): the book for commemoration of political repression victims|date=2005|publisher=Memorial|location=Moscow|isbn=978-5787000818|language=ru}}
• {{cite book |last1= Haynes|first1=Michael|last2= Husan|first2=Rumy|date=2003 |title=A Century Of State Murder? Death and Policy in Twentieth Century Russia|publisher=Pluto Press|isbn=978-0745319308}}
• {{cite journal|author=Johns, Michael|title=Seventy years of evil: Soviet crimes from Lenin to Gorbachev|journal=Policy Review|date=Fall 1987|pages=10–23}}
• {{cite book|author=Leggett, George|title=The Cheka: Lenin's Political Police|publisher=Oxford: Clarendon Press|year=1981|isbn=978-0-19-822862-2|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NRUFAQAAIAAJ}}
• {{cite book|author=Medvedev, Roy Aleksandrovich|title=On Soviet Dissent|publisher=Columbia University Press|year=1985|isbn=978-0-231-04813-2|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=alue7o_Ygh0C}}
• {{cite book|author=Rosefielde, Steven|title=Red Holocaust|publisher=Taylor & Francis|year=2009|isbn=978-0-415-77757-5|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=D1QH38Cxn74C}}
• {{cite book|author=Samatan, Marie|title=Droits de l'homme et répression en URSS: l'appareil et les victimes|trans-title=Human rights and repression in the USSR: mechanism and victims|date=1980|publisher=Seuil|location=Paris|language=fr|isbn=978-2020057059}}
• {{cite book|author=Shearer, David R.|title=Policing Stalin's socialism: repression and social order in the Soviet Union, 1924–1953|publisher=Yale University Press|year=2009|isbn=978-0-300-14925-8|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=oC1ylmvtvn4C}}
• {{cite book|author=Solomon, Peter H.|title=Soviet criminal justice under Stalin|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=1996|isbn=978-0-521-56451-9|url=https://archive.org/details/sovietcriminalju0000solo|url-access=registration}}
• {{cite book|author=Wintrobe, Ronald|title=The Political Economy of Dictatorship|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=2000|isbn=978-0-521-79449-7|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=o4G8SlNUROoC}}
• {{cite journal|author=Александр Подрабинек|script-title=ru:Наша кампания за амнистию|trans-title=Our campaign for amnesty|journal=Zvezda|date=2015|issue=4|url=http://magazines.russ.ru/znamia/2015/4/60p-pr.html|access-date=2 September 2015|language=ru}}
• {{cite journal|author=Zhanbosinova, Albina [Альбина Жанбосинова]|title=Политические репрессии в СССР (1920–1950 гг.): историко-статистическое исследование|trans-title=Political repression in the USSR (1920–1950s): historical and statistical research|journal=European Researcher|date=2013|volume=45|issue=4–1|pages=811–822|url=http://www.erjournal.ru/journals_n/1367264619.pdf|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151115032118/http://www.erjournal.ru/journals_n/1367264619.pdf|archive-date=15 November 2015|url-status=live|language=ru}}
• {{cite web|title=Political repressions in the USSR|url=http://old.sakharov-center.ru/museum/expositions/english/repressions-ussr/|publisher=The Andrei Sakharov Museum and Public Center|access-date=2015-09-17|archive-date=2016-02-14|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160214215130/http://old.sakharov-center.ru/museum/expositions/english/repressions-ussr/|url-status=dead}}

• {{Commons category-inline}}

{{Soviet Union topics}}

Category:Political and cultural purges

Category:Persecution of dissidents in the Soviet Union

Category:Murder in the Soviet Union

Category:Political violence

Category:Persecution of intellectuals