Robert Conquest 1917 - 2015

[The Idler]

Robert Conquest has died
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-33788518
http://howiescorner.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/the-conquest-of-history.html?m=1
https://shirazsocialist.wordpress.com/2015/08/05/stalinist-seumass-failed-attempt-to-take-on-conquest/

[Invader Zim]

It's what happens to the very elderly.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

The only fitting tribute would be for some rabid rightist, of the sort Conquest was, to blame his death on the Soviet government.

[Comrade Jacob]

Prick with a horrible name.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Wow he lived for almost a century. That's quite a run.

[Brandon's Impotent Rage]

His work set a terrible precedent for Soviet studies, attempting to psycho-analyze various soviet figures...if not just yanking shit out of his ass.

His work on Lenin in particular just barely skirts the definition of scholarly to be considered 'credible'.

[The Idler]

Here's Socialist Standard reviewing his book The Great Terror in 1969


Robert Conquest is no friend of Russia and that fact alone will probably be enough for most supporters of the Russian regime to discredit his account of Stalin's purges.
The one unfortunate fact, for the tireless Russophiles, is that Conquest's stuff is carefully documented, with even its trivia with testimony. And what is perhaps the most terrifying part of the book — "casualty figures" of the purges computed in part from Russian government population statistics.
It is arguable, whether most of the book was needed. There is little to be gained from yet another account of the Kirov murder,the trial of Kamenev and Zinoviev, the pitiless system of arrest, interrogation, execution or slow, living death in the labour camps. Most of it has been done, somewhere or other, before.

[RedKobra]

You don't have to be a defender of the old Eastern Bloc regimes to point out that Conquest was a detestible reactionary with a terrible habit of making shit up. Scholarly criticisms are fine, hatchet jobs in the service of the Capitalist West are not.

[The Idler]

You don't have to be a defender of the old Eastern Bloc regimes to point out that Conquest was a detestible reactionary with a terrible habit of making shit up. Scholarly criticisms are fine, hatchet jobs in the service of the Capitalist West are not.
Was his work the Great Terror made up? If so, which parts?

[Tim Cornelis]

When the Soviet Union collapsed and the Soviet archives were opened up in part, previously classified documents refuted many of the numbers that Conquest, and others, had estimated. The Holodomor did not kill 7 or ten million people, but 3.2 million people; the gulags killed 1.2 million people, not millions. And the purge did not kill millions, but 600,000 according to the archives. Although some historians still argue the true number is closer to 1.2 million if I remembered correctly, I really can't comment whether this is accurate. But there seems to be no real dispute about the first two based on the Soviet archive data. Considering that these contributed by far the greatest bulk of the victims of Stalin's rule, the number of victims would be somewhere around 6 million, and not 20 million as Conquest had estimated. I don't know what or if he made anything up, all I know is based on the Soviet archive's data, the number of victims of Stalinism is far lower than his books claim.

[Armchair Partisan]

I have heard that these Black Book statistics and other numbers ass-pulled by the likes of Conquest, Solzhenitsyn and the likes include missed births, which is why they are so much higher than any realistic number, and why people invent bigger numbers every year for the "victims of communism" count. I'm not sure if I heard it on this forum or elsewhere, but it's ludicrous either way.

[Cliff Paul]

Considering that these contributed by far the greatest bulk of the victims of Stalin's rule, the number of victims would be somewhere around 6 million, and not 20 million as Conquest had estimated. I don't know what or if he made anything up, all I know is based on the Soviet archive's data, the number of victims of Stalinism is far lower than his books claim.

That's because his 20 million figure is mostly made up of victims of what he describes as 'man made famines'.

[Invader Zim]

No, the number was based, among other things, on emigre reports. In 1969, at the height of the cold war, that was the evidence. Thankfully, since glasnost, we have a clearer picture. That said, Tim's figures are a bit old school too, Tim the figures you cite are from initiial archive surveys.

[Tim Cornelis]

I'm not familiar with the latest numbers, or developments or whatever. I just pulled these numbers from wikipdia looking at its sources.

[John Nada]

No, the number was based, among other things, on emigre reports. In 1969, at the height of the cold war, that was the evidence. Thankfully, since glasnost, we have a clearer picture. That said, Tim's figures are a bit old school too, Tim the figures you cite are from initiial archive surveys.Do you know a source for the latest figures? I've heard of Tim's figures but didn't know about the new ones.

Interesting thing, that bullshit law in Ukraine basically banning anything leftist, also will open up the Soviet Ukrainian archives. It's supposed to be even more comprehensive than the older opening of the Soviet Russian archives. Hopefully the new government won't destroy/alter things, or not like the results that conflict with the rest of the law and restrict publishing the results. But Ukraine was the second most important Republic in the Soviet Union, and this may provide a rich source of new material. Particularly about the horrific famine, but also on the USSR's policies on nations within it, Free Ukrainian Territory, the nationalist insurgency, WWII, ect.

[Asero]

Prick with a horrible name.

It doesn't matter if you like Conquest or not, but you're wanker if you don't think 'Robert Conquest' is a cool name.

[The Epitome of Justice]

Should there be some kind of celebration event or a party held?

[Tim Cornelis]

Or you know, you can just ignore it. It's just a, it turned out, bad academic. But I guess as Stalinist you think bad academia is worse than mass murder.

[Asero]

Should there be some kind of celebration event or a party held?

No.

This whole thread is stupid. There once was an anti-communist academic who made a book about the Soviet Union, and now he is dead. When I first discovered that the old man died, I thought maybe I should make a thread about it. Then I realized something. What's there to discuss? All that would be achieved would be the typical complaints about his use of statistics, some politically motivated insults, or posts like Tim's that at best will lead to unnecessarily long and drawn out argument over Stalin, at worst lead to a back-and-forth of empty "Aha! got you" one liners that Revleft is infamous for.

[Asero]

The Following 7 Users Say Thank You to Tim Cornelis For This Useful Post:
Rafiq atsumari, Rafiq Hammer Sickle, Rafiq Irishlad, Rafiq Joanatani Watan, Rafiq Prolet, Rafiq Revleft Forums, Rafiq u

What the fuck is with all these Rafiqs?

[Cliff Paul]

What the fuck is with all these Rafiqs?

Someone keeps trolling Rafiq and creating fake accounts. It was kinda amusing at first but they need to do something to switch it up because its not really funny anymore.

[Tim Cornelis]

What the fuck is with all these Rafiqs?

Just somebody that wastes nobody's time except their own.

[Cliff Paul]

guess what, only like 3 million people were executed instead of 5 million. so take that conquest!

[Invader Zim]

Do you know a source for the latest figures? I've heard of Tim's figures but didn't know about the new ones.

Interesting thing, that bullshit law in Ukraine basically banning anything leftist, also will open up the Soviet Ukrainian archives. It's supposed to be even more comprehensive than the older opening of the Soviet Russian archives. Hopefully the new government won't destroy/alter things, or not like the results that conflict with the rest of the law and restrict publishing the results. But Ukraine was the second most important Republic in the Soviet Union, and this may provide a rich source of new material. Particularly about the horrific famine, but also on the USSR's policies on nations within it, Free Ukrainian Territory, the nationalist insurgency, WWII, ect.

Well, I don't pretend to be an expert in Soviet Studies or anything like that. However, The Getty et al. numbers from their seminal 1993 article were, as they say on the tin, provisional. They were looking at what the NKVD archives actually said, they were not attempting to do any deaper analysis than merely report, factually, what the NKVD reported. As they noted, what they were attempting to do was a first step and in no way the end of the discussion.

So, what did they actually say? They looked at the NKVD records, which showed that the NKVD oversaw the shooting of approximately 682,000 people during the great purge. The NKVD also noted that around 150,000 prisoners in the Soviet penal system. This gives us a bottom base-line of around 830,000 deaths. This -- the Stalinists would have us believe -- is it. The sum total of deaths during the Great Purge.

However, the (more) recent scholarship I alluded to earlier, by the likes of Ellman, Wheatcroft and Davies, among others, show that taking an uncritical examination of the statistics (taking them at their word) will result in misleading underestimates. It is worth noting that Getty and co. also made this precise same point.

So, how do the NKVD stats under-estimate mortality? First, they only record those deaths the officials bothered to note, and we know for a fact that they did not record all the deaths. For instance, the infamous massacre of 22,000 Polish officers, enlisted men, intellectuals, and others, in the Katyn forest region does not appear on NKVD statistics. We also know about other discrepancies, which tell us that the number of shootings must be higher than the 682,000 on NKVD records.

Second, perhaps the single most surpising revelation from the NKVD archives was the number of prisoners released from the Gulag system. However, detailed research on those releases and camp policy suggests that this was often not a humane action on the part of the camp officials. Releasing prisoners was, in fact, often a bureaucratic trick to make the camp more economically efficient. This was because the camps had two main purposes 1. to punish inmates 2. to provide a source of slave labour. After working many inmates nearly to death, as well as the rife malnutrition and disease in the camps, it was economically sensible for the officials to release prisoners early. Prisoners who were so ill that they could not work were a drain on camp resources and reduced efficiency. These individuals were described as 'unfit for work ballast', and they were ejected from the camps -- often to perish. Thus, they do not appear on the NKVDs death statistics.



The result is that we know that the NKVDs statistics must be taken with a pinch of salt. In 2001 Michael Ellman wrote a good summative article on the work which had been conducted since glasnos, which is well worth reading and is in fact cited on the wikipedia page Tim noted, where he places the range of deaths between 950,000 and 1.2 million deaths. Others have produced estimates at similar levels -- Rosefield 1.075, Isupov 1 million, and Wheatcroft and Davies 1 million to 1.5 million.


Like I say, the Ellman article is well worth a read:



http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/ELM-Repression_Statistics.pdf


As for more recent scholarship, I'm not sure. As I said, I'm no expert in this and haven't kept up with the literature beyond a few of the major seminal pieces from quite a few years ago now.

[Invader Zim]

Do you know a source for the latest figures? I've heard of Tim's figures but didn't know about the new ones.

Interesting thing, that bullshit law in Ukraine basically banning anything leftist, also will open up the Soviet Ukrainian archives. It's supposed to be even more comprehensive than the older opening of the Soviet Russian archives. Hopefully the new government won't destroy/alter things, or not like the results that conflict with the rest of the law and restrict publishing the results. But Ukraine was the second most important Republic in the Soviet Union, and this may provide a rich source of new material. Particularly about the horrific famine, but also on the USSR's policies on nations within it, Free Ukrainian Territory, the nationalist insurgency, WWII, ect.

Well, I don't pretend to be an expert in Soviet Studies or anything like that. However, The Getty et al. numbers from their seminal 1993 article were, as they say on the tin, provisional. They were looking at what the NKVD archives actually said, they were not attempting to do any deaper analysis than merely report, factually, what the NKVD reported. As they noted, what they were attempting to do was a first step and in no way the end of the discussion.

So, what did they actually say? They looked at the NKVD records, which showed that the NKVD oversaw the shooting of approximately 682,000 people during the great purge. The NKVD also noted that around 150,000 prisoners in the Soviet penal system. This gives us a bottom base-line of around 830,000 deaths. This -- the Stalinists would have us believe -- is it. The sum total of deaths during the Great Purge.

However, the (more) recent scholarship I alluded to earlier, by the likes of Ellman, Wheatcroft and Davies, among others, show that taking an uncritical examination of the statistics (taking them at their word) will result in misleading underestimates. It is worth noting that Getty and co. also made this precise same point.

So, how do the NKVD stats under-estimate mortality? First, they only record those deaths the officials bothered to note, and we know for a fact that they did not record all the deaths. For instance, the infamous massacre of 22,000 Polish officers, enlisted men, intellectuals, and others, in the Katyn forest region does not appear on NKVD statistics. We also know about other discrepancies, which tell us that the number of shootings must be higher than the 682,000 on NKVD records.

Second, perhaps the single most surpising revelation from the NKVD archives was the number of prisoners released from the Gulag system. However, detailed research on those releases and camp policy suggests that this was often not a humane action on the part of the camp officials. Releasing prisoners was, in fact, often a bureaucratic trick to make the camp more economically efficient. This was because the camps had two main purposes 1. to punish inmates 2. to provide a source of slave labour. After working many inmates nearly to death, as well as the rife malnutrition and disease in the camps, it was economically sensible for the officials to release prisoners early. Prisoners who were so ill that they could not work were a drain on camp resources and reduced efficiency. These individuals were described as 'unfit for work ballast', and they were ejected from the camps -- often to perish. Thus, they do not appear on the NKVDs death statistics.



The result is that we know that the NKVDs statistics must be taken with a pinch of salt. In 2001 Michael Ellman wrote a good summative article on the work which had been conducted since glasnos, which is well worth reading and is in fact cited on the wikipedia page Tim noted, where he places the range of deaths between 950,000 and 1.2 million deaths. Others have produced estimates at similar levels -- Rosefield 1.075, Isupov 1 million, and Wheatcroft and Davies 1 million to 1.5 million.


Like I say, the Ellman article is well worth a read:



http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/ELM-Repression_Statistics.pdf


As for more recent scholarship, I'm not sure. As I said, I'm no expert in this and haven't kept up with the literature beyond a few of the major seminal pieces from quite a few years ago now.



Should there be some kind of celebration event or a party held?


Why would there be a celebration because an historian, whom you disagree with from a position of what is (no doubt) utter ignorance, has died?

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

Conquest was not simply a historian, he was a political figure, a member of the Labour anti-communist IRD. It still doesn't make sense to celebrate his death much, as his work has already been done. If he had keeled over in the forties - well, then there would be a much stronger case for feeling satisfied. As it is, the news is - someone in their nineties has died. It happens.

[Comrade Jacob]

Or you know, you can just ignore it. It's just a, it turned out, bad academic. But I guess as Stalinist you think bad academia is worse than mass murder.

lol! Hurr durr hurr, 2menySTALINistss!!!!!!!!111!1!

I don't even take 'Stalinist' as an insult, just funny how you think it upsets us.