Stalins and Maos death counts seem ridiculous.

[Forrest]

I fail understand how they could have killed so many (about stalin 20m mao 50m) when Hitler killed around 6 million, far less than what the other two are accused of. Hitler systematically killed and tortured the Jews. How did Stalin and Mao kill so many?

And why do I keep hearing about polls saying a large minority of russians dont think unfavorably of Stalin? I'm not a proponent of either of them but I am curious about it.

[Forrest]

I mean what methods did they use to kill so many?

[Ismail]

Two good statistics rundowns:

http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat1.htm#Stalin
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat1.htm#Mao

[khad]

Two good statistics rundowns:

http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat1.htm#Stalin
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat1.htm#Mao
These are crap.

[Ismail]

These are crap.Care to point out sources of your own, then?

Not that the website is flawless in its statistics-collecting, but yeah.

[khad]

Care to point out sources of your own, then?

Not that the website is flawless in its statistics-collecting, but yeah.
Ellman's archival starting point has already been pointed out on this site for Stalin.

About 12 million total repressed, with about 3 million dead (not all intentional) and 1.4 million "justifiably repressed."

Conclusions
(1) The surprisingly high figures for those freed from the Gulag are partly explained
by several decisions to increase the ‘efficiency’ of the Gulag by releasing invalids
and the incurably ill. This was a cost-cutting measure which saved food and
guards and other personnel, and improved the financial results, but was not a sign
of the humanity of the system, and artificially reduced the recorded number of
deaths in the Gulag.

(2) 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. Naturally it may, or may
not, have to be revised in the future as more evidence becomes available. Most
of these repression deaths were deliberate NKVD killings (‘executions’) but a
significant number were deaths in detention (some of which were also deliberate).
An unknown number of them were people who died shortly after their release
from the Gulag as a result of their treatment in it. The higher estimates given by
Conquest use a � awed method, can only be reconciled with the demographic data
by making implausible assumptions, and rely on unimpressive sources. Conquest’s
method is, however, useful in generating a healthy scepticism about the
meaning of the categories in the NKVD archival documents and the completeness
of the figures in these documents. The main uncertainties remaining concern
NKVD killings excluded from the Pavlov report and the mortality experience of
the 644,000 people recorded as being released from the Gulag in 1937–38. On
these two topics further research is needed.

(3) This estimate of roughly a million is, of course, an underestimate of repression
victims in 1937–38. It excludes those arrested in 1937–38 and who were still
under investigation on 31 December 1938 or who were sent to places of detention
(prison, colony or camp) and survived beyond 31 December 1938. It also
excludes those deported (mainly almost 200,000 Soviet Koreans). It also excludes
those who suffered but were not ‘repressed’. These include those dismissed from
their jobs but not arrested, and close relatives of those arrested who themselves
were not arrested but did suffer family grief and often material losses and also
were frequently discriminated against.

(4) The March 1947 report by the Minister of Internal Affairs does not demonstrate
that the recorded Gulag mortality data were falsified. This misinterpretation rests
on a misunderstanding of the meaning of ubyl’ in Soviet statistics of that period.

(5) It is true that the newly available data show that some earlier estimates of the
stock of prisoners at various dates were grossly exaggerated. They also show,
however, that the � ow of victims through the repressive system (both deportees
and prison, camp and colony inmates) was enormous.

(6) Estimates of the total number of Soviet repression victims depend both on
accurate estimates of the numbers in particular sub-categories and on judgement
of which sub-categories should be included in the category ‘repression victims’.
The former is a matter of statistics on which we are better informed today than
previously but on which the figures are still surrounded by a significant margin
of uncertainty. The latter is a matter of theoretical, political and historical
judgement. The number of deportees (first peasant victims of collectivisation and
then mainly the victims of ethnic cleansing) seems to have been about 6 million.
Currently available information suggests that the number of those sentenced on
political charges was also about 6 million. If these two categories are defined as
the ‘victims of repression’ then the number of the latter was about 12 million. (Of
these, from 1921 onwards about 3–3.5 million seem to have died from shooting,
while in detention, or while being deported or in deportation. In addition, a
currently unknown number died shortly after being released from the Gulag as a
result of their treatment in it. Furthermore, a currently unknown number were
killed by the Bolsheviks in 1918–20.) This total of about 12 million (of whom at
least 3–3.5 million were fatal) can be reduced by, say, 1.4 million by subtracting
the number of those ‘justifiably punished for political offences’. It can also be
increased substantially by including those peasants who were deported ‘only’
within their own region and by the about 1 million Kazakhs who � ed from
Kazakhstan in 1931–33. It can also be increased by including the large number
who ‘suffered’ but were not themselves arrested. It can also be increased by
including the non-Soviet victims, e.g. the German civilians interned in Soviet
death camps at the end of World War II. It can in addition be very substantially
increased by including also the victims of war, famine and disease, but whether
and to what extent this is appropriate is a matter of judgement. It seems that in
the 27 years of the Gulag’s existence (1930–56) the number of people who were
sentenced to detention in prisons, colonies and camps was 17–18 million. This
figure excludes the deportees, prisoners of war and internees, those in the
post-war filtration camps, and those who performed forced labour at their normal
place of work, and counts people sentenced more than once just once. The
number of prisoners in the Gulag (camps and colonies) in 1934–53 was 18.75
million (a figure which exaggerates the number of people involved since some
people were detained more than once). These huge figures are not a measure of
political repression. A large number of inmates of the Gulag were criminals.
However, the distinction between criminals and politicals was blurred under
Soviet conditions, the statistics on the classification of the prisoners are misleading,
and the concepts themselves are problematic under the conditions of the
1930s. Some (e.g. the homeless) are difficult to classify either as criminals or
politicals. The large number of Gulag inmates is mainly an indication of the large
number of people dealt with by the criminal justice system in this period and the
harshness of that system.

(7) During the Soviet period the main causes of excess deaths (which were mainly
in 1918–23, 1931–34 and 1941–45) were not repression but war, famine and
disease.83 The decline in mortality rates during the Soviet period led to a large
number of excess lives.

(8) There is a substantial difference between the demographic reality of Soviet power
and the popular image of it. This is mainly because released intellectual victims
of repression wrote books, the organs were bureaucratic organisations which
produced reports and kept records, and Ukrainians have a large diaspora, whereas
Central Asian nomad or Russian peasant victims of disease, starvation or
deportation, criminal or marginal victims of incarceration in the Gulag, the
victims of ethnic cleansing, the long-term improvement in Russian/Soviet anthropometric
indicators (height and weight)84 and the extra lives resulting from falling
mortality rates generally interest only a few specialists.85 Repression was enormously
important politically and was a series of ghastly crimes. It was both mass
murder and mass manslaughter. Under current international law it constituted a
series of crimes against humanity. It also affected a large part of the population.
In absolute numbers of victims, it was one of the worst episodes in the long and
cruel history of political persecution. However, repression mortality (excluding
famine, war and disease mortality, and repression survivors) was only a modest
part of the demographic history of the USSR.

(9) We now know much more about the number of victims of political persecution
in the USSR than we did before the archives were opened to historians. We do
not yet have, however, precise and complete figures for the total number of
victims or for some sub-totals. Further archival research—and discussion of the
meaning and significance of its findings—is still needed.

[RedAnarchist]

I fail understand how they could have killed so many (about stalin 20m mao 50m) when Hitler killed around 6 million, far less than what the other two are accused of. Hitler systematically killed and tortured the Jews. How did Stalin and Mao kill so many?

And why do I keep hearing about polls saying a large minority of russians dont think unfavorably of Stalin? I'm not a proponent of either of them but I am curious about it.

Hitler killed far more then 6 million - that's just the number of Jewish people murdered in the camps. It's likely that he was responsible for up to 40m+ deaths.

[Drace]

If you consider Hitler responsible for WW2, thats over 50 million deaths

As of defending Stalin...
read this
http://www.plp.org/books/Stalin/book.html

also this (Much shorter)
http://www.stalinsociety.org.uk/lies.html

Btw, from the article:


Yhe research on the Soviet penal system is set out in a report nearly 9,000 pages long. The authors of this report are many, but the best-known of them are the Russian historians V N Zemskov, A N Dougin and O V Xlevjnik. Their work began to be published in 1990 and by 1993 had nearly been finished and published almost in its entirety. The reports came to the knowledge of the West as a result of collaboration between researchers of different Western countries. The two works with which the present author is familiar are: the one which appeared in the French journal l'Histoire in September 1993, written by Nicholas Werth, the chief researcher of the French scientific research centre, CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique), and the work published in the US journal American Historical Review by J Arch Getty, a professor of history at the University of California, Riverside, in collaboration with G T Rettersporn, a CRNS researcher, and the Russian researcher, V AN Zemskov, from the Institute of Russian History (part of the Russian Academy of Science). Today books have appeared on the matter written by the above-named researchers or by others from the same research team.

Where can I read from the authors given here directly?

[Axle]

One big reason why Stalin and Mao's numbers are so inflated are that historians generally like to count the famines in the USSR and PRC that happened under the leaderships of Stalin and Mao in their death tolls.

[Kwisatz Haderach]

Like Axle said, Stalin and Mao's death counts are so high because they include pretty much everyone who died under their rule of any causes other than old age.

Guess how high the death counts for capitalist leaders would be if we used the same standards!

And the 6 million number of Hitler refers to Jews alone. If you count all the non-Jews killed in concentration camps and all the victims of Nazi death squads in the occupied USSR and all the war dead, the number easily jumps to 50 million.

But when someone hugely inflates the number of victims for Stalin and Mao and greatly reduces the number for Hitler, using double standards, you can easily tell where their sympathies lie.

[Drace]

It is rather surprising how Hitler is not being blamed for 50 million + deaths but instead Stalin is.
It really shows the extent at which bourgeoisie propaganda exists.

The way they try to count to 50 million killed by Stalin is like this.

Ukrainian famine - 5 million
1937-1938 Purges - 5 million
Gulags - 10 million
Treatment of soldiers - 0.5 million?
Total: 20.5 million

Wait LOL...I just gave ridiculous estimates for the deaths in each category and it still goes no where to 50 million. 50 million deaths would be 1/3 of the Soviet population. Added 20 million dead from WW2, thats 70m/170m dead. Ridiculous eh? What a blow it would be to the Soviet economy, and yet it was booming so much at the time that US economists believed it would surpass the US. Also, considering the sizes of families in that time, that would be like 2 people from each family deliberately killed by Stalin. Go ask Russians if this was the case.

And of course these numbers can be debunked. Read the Stalin Society article.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I imagine that Stalin did not 'murder' 20 million people.

However, he did still murder a huge number of people. I am not one to argue over the exact figures for two reasons. It is clear that, having observed both sides of the historical debate, there is not enough evidence to come down on an exact figure. However, it is clear that, although it is unprobably that Stalin killed 5 million, let alone 20 million people, it is certain that at least several hundred thousand people were executed during his rule (I am not a believer that any execution is fair, except in the case of war crimes/crimes against humanity etc.).

So, whilst the number of people that were murdered by agents of Stalinism is most likely exaggerated for spectacular effect by the Capitalists, it is almost certain that he killed an inordinate amount of people for disagreeing with his views on which direction the USSR should go.

[Drace]

However, he did still murder a huge number of people. I am not one to argue over the exact figures for two reasons. It is clear that, having observed both sides of the historical debate, there is not enough evidence to come down on an exact figure. However, it is clear that, although it is unprobably that Stalin killed 5 million, let alone 20 million people, it is certain that at least several hundred thousand people were executed during his rule (I am not a believer that any execution is fair, except in the case of war crimes/crimes against humanity etc.).Since the Soviet archives opened up, that really isn't the case.

Few hundred thousand executed is a probable number. The deaths were of course no for no reason. Though, as propaganda tries to claim, they were not innocent victims. Majority were criminals who committed acts of rape, murder, thievery, etc.

There were about 2 million prisoners in 1939 (2.4% of the population, compared to 2.8% of the US!) The political prisoners numbered 450,000.

The majority of prisoners did not die either. The highest percentage would be 17% which was during war time and this was understandable as the German armies were devastating Russian land. 20 million free Russians themselves died during this time!
By 1953, the death rate in camps was only 0.3%, mainly attributed by the use of antibiotics.

As of the Ukrainian famine, it was nothing deliberate. It is even quite false to say 5 million died as a cause.
You have to understand most of these sources come from Nazis, fascists, and retards like Robert Conquest who get their sources from Nazis and fascists as well as make stuff up.

There were 4 causes of the famine.
1) Kulaks opposition to collectivization. They had ruled the land for hundreds of years and made their wealth off the exploitation of the poorer peasants. It was no surprise that they were against it.
Their criminal acts included killing the livestock, burning crops, and killing local officials. The number of livestock more then halved. This dealt a major blow to the agriculture.
As a result about 1.8 million kulaks were exiled. About 70,000 of them were executed. A few hundred thousand died during the process of deportation because of disease and such.

2) There was a typhoid epidermic.

3) Natural conditions such as drought

4) Poor organization due to the new introduction of collective farms.


it is almost certain that he killed an inordinate amount of people for disagreeing with his views on which direction the USSR should go.

There was a vote done among 725,000 party officials. The opposition to Stalin views only got 6,000 votes.
Even Trotsky, who was the major opponent of Stalin, was only exiled from the Party and even later let back in.

[More Fire for the People]

What? Are questioning the fact Stalin single-handedly killed 14 billion people and Mao did twice that number?

[Drace]

What I'm wondering is where the statement about the USSR jailing people for being against the government came about.

Is there any truth to it?

[Uncle Hank]

What? Are questioning the fact Stalin single-handedly killed 14 billion people and Mao did twice that number?
Yeah but don't forget the 32.649 billion people they secretly killed in collaboration. They were a vicious 1-2 punch.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Drace:
I accept your prisoner number fact. However, the war was breaking out in 1939 and it is likely that many able prisoners were let out to fight on the front line. If you want to talk statistics, let's. Between 1924-53, one-third of all working age (16-60) Soviet citizens had been arrested.

As much as I disagree strongly with the conclusions that the likes of Conquest draw, to call a learned historian a retard is simply ignorant. The man clearly aggravates the issue by coming at it from a clearly anti-communist perspective; however, the man is not influenced by Nazism and fascism and it is likely that his figures are somewhere in the ball park, even if exaggerated to support the anti-communist sentiment in his conclusions.

Lastly, the vote of party officials. It is a credit to party officials that they adhered to the values of democratic centralism which the party held dear. However, to say that out of 725,000 party officials, just 6,000 officials were truly, to some extent, against Stalin goes against the evidence. If this were true, he would not be executing 1,100 out of 1,900 Congress Deputies from the 1936 Congress. The only explanation being that opposition to Stalin was greater than the poll suggests, or that many of the 1,100 deputies were wrongly executed. Which is it?

Also, yes, Trotsky was let back into the party, before being exiled and having an ice pick put through his skull. Welcoming lot, Stalin's Communist Party.

[Kwisatz Haderach]

Drace:
I accept your prisoner number fact. However, the war was breaking out in 1939 and it is likely that many able prisoners were let out to fight on the front line. If you want to talk statistics, let's. Between 1924-53, one-third of all working age (16-60) Soviet citizens had been arrested.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. That claim is absolutely unbelievable - because it would imply that every Russian living today had at least one grandparent arrested by Stalin! Go ask the Russians if that's the case. So, I'd like to see your evidence, and I'd like to see how it explains the current popularity of Stalin in Russia. How can Stalin be so popular if every family had members arrested by his secret police?

Second, 1924-53 is a very long time. When you say "all working-age Soviet citizens", do you mean all working-age citizens who lived at least through part of that period (including, for example, people who turned 60 in 1925 and people who turned 16 in 1952)? Or are you using the population of the USSR at a given point in time? This is important, because the total number of people who lived in the USSR at some point between 1924 and 1953 is far greater than the number of people who lived there in any specific year.

Third, what do you mean by "arrested"? Do you mean people who were actually sent to the Gulag, or people who were only held in a police station for a few hours?

Fourth, are you double-counting people who were arrested multiple times?

[Drace]

Between 1924-53, one-third of all working age (16-60) Soviet citizens had been arrested. I have no idea how you would efficiently estimate such numbers.
But..
even so


In 2004, the UCR Program estimated the number of arrests in the United States for all criminal offenses (except traffic violations) at approximately 14 million. Thats just in one year. In a 29 year period, as you have gave, there are, at the same rate, about 406 million arrests made in the US, which isn't a backward country, which hasn't had multiple revolutions and civil wars...As well as having its land devastated by Nazis. There are all factors of poverty and thus rise in crime.

So 406 million. Thats 4/3 of every citizen in America!



I accept your prisoner number fact. However, the war was breaking out in 1939 and it is likely that many able prisoners were let out to fight on the front line. If you want to talk statistics, let's. Between 1924-53, one-third of all working age (16-60) Soviet citizens had been arrested.

As much as I disagree strongly with the conclusions that the likes of Conquest draw, to call a learned historian a retard is simply ignorant. The man clearly aggravates the issue by coming at it from a clearly anti-communist perspective; however, the man is not influenced by Nazism and fascism and it is likely that his figures are somewhere in the ball park, even if exaggerated to support the anti-communist sentiment in his conclusions.Conquest, a professional historian?
For one, he worked for the IRD, known for their disinformation services.

His book, the Harvest of Sorrow, has 237 references.


Conquest cites 18 times the book The Ninth Circle by Olexa Woropay, published in 1953 by the youth movement of Stepan Bandera's fascist organization.
Beal, who wrote for Hearst's pro-Nazi 1930's press, and later collaborated with the Cold War McCarthyite House Committee on Un-American Activities, was cited five times.
Kravchenko, the anti-Communist émigré, is a source ten times; Lev Kopelev, another Russian émigré, five times.
Among the included `scientific' references is Vasily Grossman's novel, referenced by Conquest fifteen times!

The Ukrainian fascist book Black Deeds of the Kremlin is cited 55 times!
He took up his biography again in 1948, in Muenster, where many Ukrainian fascists took refuge. It is there that he interviewed Ukrainians about the famine-genocide of 1932--1933. None of the `witnesses' is identified, which makes the book worthless from a scientific point of view. Given that he said nothing about what he did during the war, it is probable that those who `revealed the truth about Stalin' were Ukrainian Nazi collaborators who had fled.
Many of Conquest's heroes were known to have been war criminals who led and participated in the genocide of the Ukraine's Jewish population in 1942. One of these people was Mykola Lebed, convicted as a war criminal after the Second World War. Lebed had been security chief in Lvov during the Nazi occupation and presided over the terrible persecutions of the Jews which took place in 1942. In 1949 the CIA took Lebed off to the United States where he worked as a source of disinformation.



Conquest also refers five times to Eugene Lyons and to William Chamberlin, two men who, following World War II, were on the Board of Trustees of Radio Liberty, the CIA Central European radio network. On page 244, Conquest wrote: `One American, in a village twenty miles south of Kiev, found ... they were cooking a mess that defied analysis'. The reference given is the New York Evening Journal, February 28, 1933. In fact, it is a Thomas Walker article in Hearst's press, published in 1935! Conquest deliberately ante-dated the newspaper to make it correspond to the 1933 famine. Conquest did not name the American
In January 1978, David Leigh published an article in the London Guardian, in which he revealed that Robert Conquest had worked for the disinformation services, officially called the Information Research Department (IRD), of the British secret service. In British embassies, the IRD head is responsible for providing `doctored' information to journalists and public figures. The two most important targets were the Third World and the Soviet Union.Cmon, he even wrote a book called What To Do When the Russians Come: A Survivalist's Handbook

Also, if you are going to say the Soviet archives are a reliable source, how can you still defend Conquest?

Conquest's estimate of the number of prisoners in 1939 was 9 million political prisoners alone. He reasons that the number of common prisoners were a lot more than the political ones. The archives tell us there was 2 million, not over 18m.
He also believed 3 million of the political prisoners died, when there were 50,000 total.


He completely erased from his history the bestial terror that the Ukrainian fascists undertook during the German occupation, since they are the best sources for the `famine-genocide'.
Also, yes, Trotsky was let back into the party, before being exiled and having an ice pick put through his skull. Welcoming lot, Stalin's Communist Party. Trotsky actually asked to be back :) I think he was assassinated after his second exile.

As of the Party officials opposition to Stalin, Im going to back off. I admit I don't know enough to argue about that yet.

[Ismail]

Trotsky actually asked to be backCorrect.

From "Trotsky in Exile: The Founding of the Fourth International (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=1521611&postcount=7)":

Aside from the bloc, Trotsky was pursuing another strategy in these months. During the autumn of 1932 he had written to his son Sedov that it would be strategically important to offer to 'cooperate with the regime in power' in order not to alienate potential supporters within the Stalin apparatus.25 In March 1933 Trotsky made a final attempt to 'cooperate' with Moscow by magnanimously offering to return to the Moscow leadership.

Three days after his 'G. Gurov' article breaking with the KPD, Trotsky made his formal offer to return to the Politbureau leadership under certain conditions. He made his proposition in a remarkable secret letter sent to the Politbureau on 15 March.26 Trotsky's letter was based on his perception that economic catastrophe was overwhelming the party leadership which now needed the support and participation of all factions in order to rebuild the party and maintain power.


'I consider it my duty to make one more attempt to appeal to the sense of responsibility of those who presently lead the Soviet state. You know conditions better than I. If the internal development [of the country] proceeds further on its present course, catastrophe is inevitable'.Trotsky referred to the Politbureau to his recent articles in his Byulleten' oppozitsii for his analysis. He cited Hitler's recent victory in Germany as evidence of the bankruptcy of Comintern policy and asserted that disasters like that had led to a 'loss of confidence in the leadership'. 'Chto nado sdelat'?' What was needed was a 'rebirth of the party organisation' in order to reestablish confidence, and the Left Opposition was willing to cooperate. Some of you will say, Trotsky mused, that the Left Opposition merely wants a path to power and is offering to cooperate only to get back inside the leadership. However, the question, Trotsky replied, is not power [!] for this or that faction but rather the survival of the workers' state and international revolution for many years.


'Only open and honest cooperation between the historically produced fractions, fully transforming them into tendencies in the party and eventually dissolving into it, can in concrete conditions restore confidence in the leadership and resurrect the party'.Trotsky then promised that a returning Left Opposition would not persecute any party members who had opposed it in the past.

After describing the conditions which demanded the return of the opposition, Trotsky made the remarkable offer. Alluding to the platform of the Left Opposition, he insisted,


'Renunciation of this programme is of course out of the question . . . But concerning the manner of presenting and defending this programme before the Central Committee and the party, not to mention the manner of putting it into effect, there can and must be achieved a preliminary agreement with the goal of preventing shocks or splitting'.Trotsky thus proposed that the Left Opposition be allowed to return to the leadership as a 'tendency' within the party, and insisted that his group would not publicly renounce its critique and programme. He was, however, leaving the door open for a deal under which agitation for this programme could be held in abeyance for an indefinite period. Trotsky was willing to re-enter the leadership without the usual recantation but with the suggestion that for the sake of party unity he would refrain from criticism. This was a new proposal. Previously, he had demanded unlimited freedom of criticism for the opposition within the party, but now he was making oppositional criticism conditional on an 'agreement' to be worked out. The contradiction with Trotsky's previous conditions and demands explains the secrecy of the letter.28 Unlike his previous open letters to the Soviet leadership, this epistle was never released or published by Trotsky.29 He concluded the letter by informing the Politbureau that they were receiving the only copy of the document. This would leave the Politbureau 'free to choose the means' to begin discussions.

The 12 March article 'KPD or New Party?' and the 15 March secret letter were interrelated. First, Trotsky may have thought that his call for a new party in Germany would put pressure on the Moscow leadership, which would conceivably opt to take Trotsky back rather than face a split in the Comintern. Second, the secret letter to the Politbureau also helps to explain why he wrote the 12 March article under a pseudonym. Pending a reply to his 15 March offer, Trotsky was not yet committed to the Fourth International and the pseudonym would allow him later to deny that he had broken with the Comintern parties. Such 'deniability' would have been important to him if Moscow had responded favourably to his offer to return. In such a case, Trotsky's restored position in the Moscow leadership would have been inconsistent with a call to break with the KPD and it would have been necessary to disavow 'G. Gurov'.

Trotsky's delay in breaking with the other parties of the Comintern (including the Bolsheviks) can thus be partially explained. After March, he was waiting for Moscow to answer his secret letter before committing himself publicly to a Fourth International. As much as waiting for the Comintern to admit its mistakes and reform itself, Trotsky delayed his break with Moscow in order to keep his personal options open.

A month and a half later, Trotsky despaired of receiving a reply from the Politbureau. On 10 May 1933 he set the Politbureau an angry coda to the March letter, which he entitled 'Explanation'.30 This short statement began by noting that the Politbureau had only replied to him with silence. He stressed again the danger facing the Bolshevik regime and pointedly warned that the regime could fall because of the mistakes committed by the Stalin faction. He then ominously served notice on the Politbureau that he now felt free to agitate among the lower ranks of the Stalinist bureaucracy. 'We are sending this document [the March letter plus the May explanation] to responsible workers in the belief that among the blind, the careerists, and the cowards, there are honest revolutionaries from whose eyes one cannot hide the real state of things . . . We call upon these honest revolutionaries to make contact with us. Seek and ye shall find'.

The 10 May Explanation marked the end of Trotsky's attempts to return 'legally' to the Moscow leadership. The disaster in Germany, the clumsy economic policy of the apparatus, and finally Stalin's refusal to negotiate with him convinced Trotsky that any kind of cooperation with the Stalinist faction was impossible.

25 Trotsky Papers, 10248 and T-3485. Quoted by permission of the Houghton Library.

26 Trotsky Papers, T-3522. Quoted by permission of the Houghton Library. See also WLT [1932-33] p. 141-3.

27 Hard-liners in the Moscow leadership must have noted and argued that Trotsky's proposal that his "fraction" retain is distinctive programme after readmission to the party ran counter to Lenin's famous 1921 ban on factions and factional platforms. ('On Party Unity', adopted at the X Congress in 1921).

28 Without revealing his offer to Moscow, Trotsky wrote that 'mutual criticism . . . may have a different character depending on the extent to which it is consciously prepared by both sides and in what organisational framework it takes place'. ('Nuzhno chestnoe vnutripartiinoe soglashenie', BO, No. 34, p. 31, dated 30 March 1933). These crpytic remarks may have been published in order to prepare his followers for Moscow's possible acceptance of Trotsky's proposal to make criticism by the opposition conditional and restricted.

29 For an example of the more common 'Open Letter', see Trotsky Papers, T-3423.

30 Trotsky Papers, T-3522. Quoted by permission by the Houghton Library. On the last page of the July issue of Byullenten' oppozitsii, Trotsky referred vaguely to the 15 March letter to the Politbureau. While mentioning neither his offer to defer the opposition programme nor his May 'Explanation', Trotsky claimed somewhat inaccurately that the March letter simply repeated his long-standing offer to return to the Bolshevik party 'under conditions guaranteeing us the right to defend our views', see 'Pochtovyi yashchik', BO, No. 35, p. 22.

[Leo]

I fail understand how they could have killed so many (about stalin 20m mao 50m) when Hitler killed around 6 million, far less than what the other two are accused of. Hitler systematically killed and tortured the Jews. How did Stalin and Mao kill so many?

I think this is because famines are included in the numbers of Stalin and Mao.