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Excess mortality in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin

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File:Wall of sorrow at the first exhibition of the victims of Stalinism in Moscow.jpg
"Wall of sorrow" at the first exhibition of the victims of Stalinism in Moscow, 19 November 1988
Exhumed mass grave of the Vinnytsia massacre

Estimates of the number of deaths attributable to the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin vary widely. Some scholars assert that record-keeping of the executions of political prisoners and ethnic minorities are neither reliable nor complete,[1] while others contend that archival materials declassified in 1991 contain irrefutable data far superior to sources used prior to 1991 such as statements from emigres and other informants.[2][3]

Prior to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the archival revelations, some historians estimated that the numbers killed by Stalin's regime were 20 million or higher.[4][5][6] After the Soviet Union dissolved, evidence from the Soviet archives was declassified and researchers were allowed to study it. This contained official records of 799,455 executions (1921–1953),[7] around 1.7 million deaths in the Gulag,[8][9] some 390,000[10] deaths during the dekulakization forced resettlement, and up to 400,000 deaths of persons deported during the 1940s,[11] with a total of about 3.3 million officially recorded victims in these categories.[12] The deaths of at least 5.5 to 6.5 million[13] persons in the Soviet famine of 1932–1933 are sometimes, though not always, included with the victims of the Stalin era.[2][14]

Events

Passers-by and the corpse of a starved man on a street in Kharkiv, 1932

Gulag

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Main article: Gulag

According to official Soviet estimates, more than 14 million people passed through the Gulag from 1929 to 1953, with a further 7 to 8 million being deported and exiled to remote areas of the Soviet Union, including entire nationalities in several cases.[15]

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).[16]:1024 More recent archival figures for the deaths in the Gulag, labor colonies and prisons combined for 1931–1953 were 1.713 million.[14] 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.[17] According to author Anne Applebaum, it was common practice to release prisoners who were either suffering from incurable diseases or near death.[18]

OGPU 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 1932–1939

Golfo Alexopoulos, history professor at the University of South Florida, believes that at least 6 million people died as a result of their detention in the gulags.[19] This estimate is disputed by other scholars, with critics such as J. Hardy stating that the evidence Alexopoulos used is indirect and misinterpreted.[20] Historian Dan Healey argues that the estimate has obvious methodological difficulties.[21][not in citation given]

Citing materials pre-1991, author John G. Heidenrich estimates the number of deaths at 12 million.[22][undue weight? – discuss] 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.[23]

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.[24] 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.[21]

Soviet famine of 1932–1933

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Main articles: Holodomor genocide question and Soviet famine of 1932–1933
Soviet famine of 1932–1933, with areas where the effects of famine were most severe shaded

The deaths of 5.7[25] to perhaps 7.0 million people[26][27] 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.[28][29] 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[30][31][32][33][34] was an unintended consequence of the struggle over forced collectivization,[35][36][37][38][39] or was primarily a result of natural factors.[40][41][42][43]

Judicial executions

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Main article: Great Purge

According to official figures there were 777,975 judicial executions for political charges from 1929–53, including 681,692 in 1937–1938, the years of the Great Purge.[8] Unofficial estimates estimate a total number of Stalinism repression deaths in 1937–38 at 950,000–1,200,000.[44]

Soviet famine of 1946–1947

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Main article: Soviet famine of 1946–47

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.[45] 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.[45]

Population transfer by the Soviet Union

File:Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina 07.jpg
Romanian refugees after the 1940 Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina

Deportation of kulaks

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Main article: 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 1930–1934.[46] The reported number of kulaks and their relatives who had died in labour colonies from 1932 to 1940 was 389,521.[10][47] 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.[48]

Forced settlements in the Soviet Union of 1939–1953

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Main article: Population transfer in the Soviet Union
File:The Funeral.jpg
Funeral of the deported Crimean Tatars in Krasnovishersk, late 1944

According to Russian historian Pavel Polian, 5.870 million persons were deported to forced settlements from 1920–1952, including 3.125 million from 1939–1952.[46] 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 1941–48 and 73,454 in 1949–50.[49] 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.[50]

Katyn massacre

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Main article: 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 about 22,000.[51]

Total number of victims

Victims of NKVD prisoner massacres in Lviv
File:Butovo-DSC 0083.JPG
The memorial wall with the names of Stalin's victims, at the Butovo firing range 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. According to Anderson and Silver, historians such as Robert Conquest made the most primitive of errors. 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.[52]

Some historians claim that the death toll was around 20 million,[60] a figure based on Conquest's book The Great Terror (1968), with some estimates relying in part on demographic losses such as Conquest's.[61] In 2001, American historian Richard Pipes argued that the population had decreased by 9 to 10 million people from the 1932 to 1939 censuses.[62] In 2003, British popular historian Simon Sebag Montefiore suggested that Stalin was ultimately responsible for the deaths of at least 20 million people.[63] 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.[64][65] 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."[66] Conversely, 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.[67][68] 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.[69][70]

Some historians believe that the official archival figures of the categories that were recorded by Soviet authorities are unreliable and incomplete.[1] 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.[71][72] 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."[73][3] British historian Michael Ellman argues that "the very category 'victims of Stalinism' is a matter of political judgement." Ellman states that mass deaths from famines are not a "uniquely Stalinist evil", mentiioning that throughout Russian history famines and droughts have been a common occurrence, including the Russian famine of 1921–22, which occurred before Stalin came to power. 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.[14] 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."[14]

Number of deaths of people by Stalinism, 1924–1953 (*excluding killings outside of Soviet borders)
Event Est. number of deaths References
Dekulakization 530,000–600,000 [74]
Great Purge 779,000–1,200,000 [8][44]
Gulag 1,500,000–1,713,000 [14][21]
Soviet deportations 450,000–566,000 [75][76]
Katyn massacre 22,000 [77]
Holodomor 2,500,000–4,000,000 [78]
Kazakh famine of 1932–33 1,450,000 [79]
Total ~7,231,000–9,551,000

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. 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."
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  4. ↑ Robert Conquest. The Great Terror. NY Macmillan, 1968 p. 533 (20 million)
  5. ↑ Anton Antonov-Ovseyenko, The Time of Stalin, NY Harper & Row 1981. p. 126 (30–40 million)
  6. ↑ Elliot, Gill. Twentieth Century Book of the Dead. Penguin Press 1972. pp. 223–24 (20 million)
  7. ↑ Seumas Milne: "The battle for history", The Guardian. (12 September 2002). Retrieved 14 July 2013.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  9. ↑ Applebaum, Anne (2003) Gulag: A History. Doubleday. ISBN 0767900561 pp. 582–583.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  11. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. Pohl cites Russian archival sources for the death toll in the special settlements from 1941–49
  12. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  13. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 14.3 14.4 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  15. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  16. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  17. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  18. ↑ 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."
  19. ↑ Alexopoulos, Golfo (2017). Illness and Inhumanity in Stalin's Gulag. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0300179415.
  20. ↑ 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), 269–70. doi:10.1017/slr.2018.57
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 21.2 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  22. ↑ 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 Stalins’s relentless drive to rapidly industrialize the Soviet Union."
  23. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  24. ↑ 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."
  25. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. This is the estimate of Wheatcroft and Davies.
  26. ↑ Andreev 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."
  27. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  28. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  29. ↑ Naimark, Norman M. Stalin's Genocides (Human Rights and Crimes against Humanity). Princeton University Press, 2010. pp. 51–79. ISBN 0691147841
  30. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  31. ↑ Naimark, Norman M. Stalin's Genocides (Human Rights and Crimes against Humanity). Princeton University Press, 2010. pp. 134–35. ISBN 0691147841
  32. ↑ Rosefielde, Steven. Red Holocaust. Routledge, 2009. ISBN 0415777577 p. 259
  33. ↑ Snyder, Timothy. Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. Basic Books, 2010. ISBN 0465002390 pp. vii, 413
  34. ↑ Rosefielde, 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.
  35. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  36. ↑ Davies, R. W. and Wheatcroft, Stephen G. (2004) The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931–1933, ISBN 0333311078
  37. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  38. ↑ Andreev, EM, et al. (1993) Naselenie Sovetskogo Soiuza, 1922–1991. Moscow, Nauka, ISBN 5020134791
  39. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  40. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  41. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  42. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  43. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  44. ↑ 44.0 44.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  45. ↑ 45.0 45.1 Michael Ellman Archived 14 October 2007 at the Wayback Machine, The 1947 Soviet Famine and the Entitlement Approach to Famines Cambridge Journal of Economics 24 (2000): 603–30.
  46. ↑ 46.0 46.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  47. ↑ Archived 14 January 2009 at the Wayback Machine.
  48. ↑ Sebag Montefiore, Simon (2014). Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar. W&N. p. 84. ISBN 978-1780228358. "By 1937, 18,5 million were collevtivized but there were now only 19.9 million households: 5.7 million households, perhaps 15 million persons, had been deported, many of them dead"
  49. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  50. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  51. ↑ Kużniar-Plota, Małgorzata (30 November 2004). "Decision to commence investigation into Katyn Massacre". Departmental Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation. Retrieved 4 August 2011.
  52. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  53. ↑ Montefiore 2004, p. 649: "Perhaps 20 million had been killed; 28 million deported, of whom 18 million had slaved in the Gulags".
  54. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  55. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  56. ↑ 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."
  57. ↑ Brent, Jonathan (2008) Inside the Stalin Archives: Discovering the New Russia. Atlas & Co., 2008, ISBN 0977743330Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. (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.
  58. ↑ 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."
  59. ↑ 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 ... ."
  60. ↑ [53][54][55][56][57][58][59]
  61. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  62. ↑ 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".
  63. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  64. ↑ Regimes murdering over 10 million people. hawaii.edu
  65. ↑ Rummel, R.J. (1 May 2006) How Many Did Stalin Really Murder?
  66. ↑ 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."
  67. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  68. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  69. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  70. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  71. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  72. ↑ Gellately 2007, p. 256.
  73. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  74. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  75. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  76. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  77. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  78. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  79. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
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