----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, May 03, 2000 10:59
AM
Subject: Stalinist death toll
Hello Tom and Francisco,
Thank you for your request for sources. I think
by sending this to the wsn address the whole group gets to see it - I'm
something of an internet amateur.
My source for the numbers is a review article in
an Australian publication. The article was" A moral and statistical
reckoning'' by Paul Monk in Quadrant July August 1999 pp. 31 to 38. The review
was of the works of a scholar Stephen Wheatcroft who was conducted archival
research in the former USSR since 1990. SOme of hisworks cited were: "Victims
of Stalinism and the Soviet Secret police: The comparability and reliability
of archival data - not the last word" in Europe - Asia Studies vol. 51, No.2
1999; "Soviet statistics of Nutrition and mortality during times of famine
1917 - 1922 and 1931 - 1933" in Cahiers du monde russe vol. 38, no. 4 October
/ December 1997 and a further (untitled in my source) joint article by
Zemskov, Getty and Ritterspoon in American Historical Review June
1994.
The figures quoted in my article
are:
3.5 million deaths in the collectivisation and
dekulakisation famines of the early 1930s (compared to 19.5 mill estimated by
Robert Conquest in The Harvest of Sorrow;
37,843 death sentences from a total of 826,568
people sentneced for political reasons during the same period (1929
1933);
681,692 death sentences from 1,344,923 political
sentences during the great terror years (1937-1938) (Conquest's The Great
Terror estimated about 1 mill executions and 8 mill sentenced to
gulags);
1.5 million gulag prisoners at the peak in
1941with a death rate of around 7% per annum in the camps, for a total of 1.2
to 1.5 million deaths over about 20 years (1929 - 1953). Again estimates by
the established scholar of the stalinist terrors Robert Conquest were for 12
million deaths in the camps.
So all up about 700,000 shot, another 3.5
deaths as a consequence of famine and 1.2 million in the camps - a long way
from the usual figures of 20 million plus thrown around. Note that the late
1990s published Livre noir du communisme was claiming upwards of 85 million
deaths under communism (though I think they were lumping civil war casulaties,
Chinese figures and the appalling Pol Pot experience in as well).
Anyway, the figures while horrible enough, are a
whole order of magnitude different to the common myth. Certainly suffcicient
to reinforce the point made in Ismail's posting about where most atrocities
have occurred.
For your information, Quadrant is a right wing
magazine in Australia. The editor is a well known neo liberal publicist and
the journal was originally set up and published in 1950s by the Australian
branch of the Congress for Cultural Freedom which was in turn funded by the
CIA. I felt this background almost gave the figures added
credibility...
Regards to all,
Cedric Beidatsch
Perth, Western
Australia