Stalins 20,000,000 murders; true or false?

[Antlerfish]

I often here fellow leftists talk about how this is false info, but I've never actually been able to find a source saying this. Is this false? It was brought up in a conversation recently and I'm looking for an easy, distinct answer.

[Q]

No, this is nonsense. People who need to reside to such numbers to claim the awfulness of that regime stand on weak ground in any case.

[Tim Cornelis]

False. It's based on a 1970s estimate by Conquest. When the classified Soviet archives opened up with the collapse of the USSR a more precise casualty number was revealed after intensive study, including by demographic experts.
700,000 Great Purge.*
3,200,000 Holodomor
1,200,000 Gulag
plus other smaller campaigns
so it's 6-7 million.

*Ellman estiamtes 950,000 to 1.2 million (Wikipedia), but this also includes Gulag victims. So Great Purge then maybe 900,000-1.1 million (a guess). (EDIT: because Invader Zim)

[Prometeo liberado]

Stalin never had the time for any of this. Only the collective will of the people of that certain point in Soviet history could pull it off.

[Mass Grave Aesthetics]

The highest estimate is 60 million and according to wiki the estimates range from 3- 60 million, so yeah...:rolleyes:

I'd think the plausible minimum is around 7 million and maximum around 15. It depends on if you include those who died in the famine (which I would) and the estimation of their number.

It should also be stressed the Stalin regime was not a one- man show.


Stalin never had the time for any of this. Only the collective will of the people of that certain point in Soviet history could pull it off.

He indeed did not do any killing himself, he just signed the papers.
So the collective will of the Soviet people was represented by the NKVD and other apparatuses of state repression? Gives a whole new meaning to the history in question then.

[Invader Zim]

False. It's based on a 1970s estimate by Conquest. When the declassified Soviet archives opened up the more precise casualty number was revealed.
700,000 Great Purge.


This is based on an estimate from Getty, et al. from an initial archival survey conducted in the early 1990s and nobody pretends it is accurate other than tankies, and certainly not the authors of the study.

[RedWorker]

This is based on an estimate from Getty, et al. from an initial archival survey conducted in the early 1990s and nobody pretends it is accurate other than tankies, and certainly not the authors of the study.

Yeah, because Stalin probably killed 7 trillion. The notion that one man could kill millions of people without a scenario and pre-conditions set up is ridiculous. He certainly was no angel, but pray tell, how do you assign something to this 'one mighty man'? If he signs an execution, fine, he did it, but what about stupid policies which results in unintentional starvation, for instance? Despite what Ukrainian nationalists will tell you, there's no conclusion that the Ukrainian famine was genocide, and the possibility that Stalin wanted to mass murder Ukrainians is far fetched.

[Sewer Socialist]

I feel I should also point out that being the leader of a state where millions die of starvation, whether the the famine was from incompetence or unavoidable, is not the same as murdering them. "Murder" is a much more active and violent term.

[Invader Zim]

Yeah, because Stalin probably killed 7 trillion. The notion that one man could kill millions of people without a scenario and pre-conditions set up is ridiculous. He certainly was no angel, but pray tell, how do you assign something to this 'one mighty man'? If he signs an execution, fine, he did it, but what about stupid policies which results in unintentional starvation, for instance? Despite what Ukrainian nationalists will tell you, there's no conclusion that the Ukrainian famine was genocide, and the possibility that Stalin wanted to mass murder Ukrainians is far fetched.

What does this hyperbolic nonsense have to do with what I wrotr?