Soviet Repression Statistics Some Comments
Document Sample
EUROPE-ASIA STUDIES,
Vol. 54, No. 7, 2002, 1151–1172
Soviet Repression Statistics: Some
Comments
MICHAEL ELLMAN
… a debate is taking place between a historian who in his research bases himself on real
documents of the MVD, and those whose estimates are based on the evidence of witnesses
and scattered (often unreliable) data. This situation turns the question of the necessity for
academic criticism of the data which entered the of cial departmental statistics of the MVD,
Ministry of Justice and Procuracy, into a practical one.
V.P. Popov, ‘Gosudarstvennyi terror v sovetskoi Rossii,
1923–1953 gg. (istochniki i ikh interpretatsiya)’,
Otechestvennye arkhivy, 1992, 2, pp. 20–21.
… the of cial data are clearly better than earlier outside estimates, but are they complete?
They need critical scrutiny. We do not yet know the answers to many important questions,
because the accounting system was chaotic and the gures lent themselves to manipulation.
Bureaucratic as well as political motives led to the separate registration of various categories
of prisoner … One has to … avoid leaping to conclusions. Scholars in this sensitive eld
need to be humble about the extent of current knowledge but ambitious in setting future
goals.
J. Keep, ‘Recent writing on Stalin’s Gulag: an overview’,
Crime, Histoire & Societes, 1997, 2, p. 110.
´´
Judging by the example of Turkmenistan, a task requiring time and labour, undertaken by
groups of historians, will be necessary to verify the data [on 1937–38 repression victims] and
ll in the gaps. Besides the accounts of the central NKVD apparatus, it is essential to take
account of documents from provincial archives which contain the data on the place and
concrete activities [which comprised the] repressive operations.
´
O. Hlevnjuk [Khlevnyuk], ‘Les mecanismes de la “Grande Terreur”
´ ´
des annees 1937–38 au Turkmenistan’,
Cahiers du Monde russe, 39, January–June 1998, p. 205.
Recently a debate took place in this journal about the accuracy and meaning of Soviet
repression statistics.1 The present article discusses ve aspects of these statistics:
releases from the Gulag, repression deaths in 1937–38, ubyl’, the relationship between
stocks and ows, and the total number of repression victims.
ISSN 0966-8136 print; ISSN 1465-342 7 online/02/071151-2 2 Ó 2002 University of Glasgow
DOI: 10.1080/096681302200001717 7
1152 MICHAEL ELLMAN
Releases from the Gulag
In their well known 1993 paper giving a preliminary presentation of archival
repression data,2 Getty, Rittersporn & Zemskov surprised many readers by their
unexpectedly high gures for releases.3 According to this paper, in 1934–52, 5.4
million people were freed from the Gulag. The largest annual gures (about 620,000
in 1941 and 510,000 in 1942) are obviously mainly explained by releases to the armed
forces. Getty, Rittersporn & Zemskov state that during the war about 975,000 Gulag
inmates were released to military service (in particular to punitive or ‘storm’ units,
which suffered the heaviest casualties).4 Similarly, the large number (approximately
340,000) of prisoners released in 1945 was a consequence of the July 1945 amnesty.
Nevertheless, their data show 370,000 released in 1936, 317,000 in 1940 and about
330,000 in 1952.
Since these large gures for releases are for many people counter-intuitive, it is not
surprising that Conquest writes that, ‘as to the numbers “freed”: there is no reason to
accept this category simply because the MVD so listed them’.5 In this connection it
is important to note the following: prisoners can be freed because they complete their
sentences, because the sentences are remitted, because of an amnesty or because they
are too ill to work and hence are a burden on the camps’ food supply and number of
guards and other personnel, and on their report gures for output, productivity,
mortality and nancial results. Whereas an amnesty (as in 1953) is a sign of
humanity, release to die indicates a callous attitude of camp bosses to their prisoners.
In 1930 the OGPU issued order no. 361/164 of 23 October ‘On the unloading from
the OGPU camps of the elderly, complete invalids and the very ill’. This provided a
procedure for the release of this ‘un t for work ballast’.6 In January 1934 this order
was cancelled by OGPU order no. 501.7 In November 1934 NKVD order no. 00141
once again provided a procedure for the release of ‘the ill, the elderly and invalids’.
Amongst other things it instructed the relevant bodies to draw up a list of illnesses
which would qualify the person concerned for release. In June 1939 a decree of the
Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet banned the practice of early release of
prisoners. 8 On 29 April 1942 Beriya and the USSR Procurator Bochkov signed a joint
directive banning ‘until the end of the war’ all releases from the camps (e.g. of people
who had completed their sentences) with the exception of ‘complete invalids, the un t
for work, the elderly and women with children’, who could be released ‘in the case
of complete impossibility of using them in the camps’.9
In accordance with a decree of the USSR Supreme Court of 1 August 1942 and the
joint directive of the NKVD, Narkomyust and the Procuracy of 23 October 1942
resulting from it, prisoners suffering from incurable diseases were to be released from
their places of detention. In accordance with a list of incurable conditions, approved
by the head of the Gulag, people were to be freed if they suffered from ‘emaciation
as a result of avitaminosis’ (this was a bureaucratic expression for starvation),
‘alimentary distrophy’ (this was another bureaucratic expression for starvation),
leukaemia, malignant anaemia, decompressed tuberculosis of the lungs, open bacil-
liary tuberculosis of the lungs, acute amphysemna of the lungs etc. As Isupov sensibly
notes, ‘In other words, the prisoners were released to die’.10 Conquest quotes two
cases of people being released when they were on the point of death and correctly
SOVIET REPRESSION STATISTICS 1153
points out that this shows that the categories used in Gulag statistics may be
misleading. 11 He seems to be unaware, however, that the release of prisoners on the
point of death was of cial policy and practised on a currently unknown scale over
many years.
The Gulag had two functions, punitive and economic. To implement the latter, its
inmates had to provide large amounts of hard physical labour. Prisoners who could
not do that and could not do any other kind of work were for many of its of cials
just an unwanted burden which worsened its economic success indicators.12 The
policy of releasing ‘un t for work ballast’ was a cost-cutting measure which was
intended to save on food consumption and on guards and other personnel, and hence
reduce the de cit and improve productivity in the Gulag. It increased ‘ef ciency’ (i.e.
the ratio of output to inputs) while simultaneously improving the nancial results and
the mortality statistics. (Similarly, after the war, German POWs who were invalids or
very ill were released before the able-bodied. From an economic point of view this
was entirely rational and optimised the results of utilising the POWs.) Wheatcroft
correctly drew attention to the fact that senior of cials were concerned about high
mortality and that ‘incidents of high mortality were often investigated’.13 This,
however, did not necessarily lead to an improvement in conditions, since camp bosses
could improve their mortality statistics by releasing those about to die. In fact, the
bosses of the Gulag as a whole were keen to improve the mortality statistics this way.
An instruction of 2 April 1943 by the head of the Gulag forbade including deaths of
released former prisoners in Gulag mortality statistics.14 (This is not the only example
of the use of mortality data as success indicators leading to misleading mortality
statistics. The postwar ltration statistics, which purport to show that as of 1 March
1946, out of the 4.2 million people checked, 58% had been sent home, include those
who died in the ltration camps among those ‘sent home’.15)
The release of ‘un t for work ballast’ continued after the war. According to
Volkogonov , quoting archival sources, ‘In July 1946 Beriya reported to Stalin that the
MVD’s corrective labour camps during the war had “accumulated” more than
100,000 prisoners who were completely un t for work and whose upkeep required
substantial resources. The MVD recommended that the incurably ill, including the
mentally disturbed, be released. Stalin agreed …’.16
At the present time there do not appear to be any data available on the number of
those who died within, say, 6 months of being freed from the Gulag.17 Nevertheless,
two things are already clear. First, the large number of people recorded as being
‘freed’ are not necessarily a sign of the humaneness of the system but may simply
re ect—at least in part—its callous attitude to its prisoners. Second, the of cial Gulag
statistics on mortality in the camps understate mortality caused by the camps, since
they exclude deaths taking place shortly after release but which resulted from
conditions in the Gulag.18
Repression deaths in 1937–38
There are two types of contemporary of cial documents from which one can derive
gures on repression deaths in 1937–38. They are the NKVD records and the
demographic statistics (the censuses of 1926, 1937 and 1939 and the population
1154 MICHAEL ELLMAN
registration data). The former have been presented and discussed by Wheatcroft in
this journal,19 the latter were discussed by Wheatcroft & Davies.20 In addition there
are a wide variety of estimates not based on contemporary of cial documents but
based on personal, rst-hand, unof cial, so-called literary sources.
Isupov, relying on the NKVD data, came to the conclusion that repression deaths
in 1937–38 were ‘about a million’.21 This gure was based on the NKVD of cial
gures of 682,000 shot in 1937–38 following sentence on NKVD cases (po delam
organov NKVD)22 1 116,000 who died in the Gulag23 1 non-article 58 arrestees who
were shot 24 1 an allowance for possible underestimation.25 If one relies entirely on the
NKVD data, then about a million seems to be a reasonable estimate, and possibly
even an overestimate. For example, simply adding all those who died in detention to
those of cially recorded as being shot may result in some double counting, since it
seems that in some cases people who died during interrogation were registered as
having been condemned by a troika.26 However, although the NKVD data are very
useful, they suffer from three limitations. First, the categories used may be mislead-
ing, as in the case of those recorded as ‘freed’, which was discussed above.27 Second,
the NKVD data on killings are known to exclude some categories of victims.
Wheatcroft has explained that the NKVD data for 1939–41 exclude the Katyn
massacre, other killings of the population of the newly annexed areas, especially the
Poles, and the mass shooting of soldiers (deserters and so-called deserters) in 1941.28
Third, there are apparent or real contradictions in the NKVD data. For example,
Ivanova has drawn attention to apparent signi cant discrepancies in the data on the
number of people sentenced by the Osoboe soveshchanie in 1940–52.29 The data
given for this category in the much cited 1953 Pavlov report (‘Kruglov gures’)30
appear to be contradicted by other data. In such cases it is necessary to examine the
data carefully to see whether the discrepancies are merely apparent (e.g. resulting
from de nitional differences) or real. If they are real, it is necessary to assess the
relative value of the different sources. These three limitations are common ground
amongst all the participants in the debate. They suggest that an estimate which takes
literally the currently available NKVD data may be too low.
In view of these limitations, it seems inappropriate to treat the NKVD statistics as
a point estimate and more appropriate to treat them as a range. The lower bound of
this range would be formed by taking the NKVD data and categories literally. In that
case the number of excess deaths would be 682,000 (the number of those reported as
shot on NKVD cases) 1 150,000 registered deaths in detention (the SANO/URO
average—see note 23) 1 2,000 excess non-article 58 shootings, which equals 834,000.
Since there is reason to think that the Pavlov report excludes some NKVD killings
(‘executions’), that the data for registered deaths in detention understate actual deaths
in detention, and that some of those released in 1937–38 died in 1937–38 as a result
of their treatment in the Gulag (see above), then a reasonable minimum estimate is
950,000. The upper bound of the range would be formed by estimating the actual
number of NKVD killings at, say, 850,000, the actual number of deaths in detention
in 1937–38 at, say, 200,000, the actual number of excess non-article 58 deaths at, say,
5,000 and treating all those recorded as released from the Gulag in 1937–38 (644,000)
as having died by 31 December 1938 as a result of their treatment in the Gulag. This
produces an upper bound of 1,699,000.31 This gure, however, is much too high,
SOVIET REPRESSION STATISTICS 1155
since the assumption that all those released in 1937–38 were dead by 31 December
1938 is most implausible. In April 1937 Ezhov told Molotov that more than 60,000
prisoners a month were being released from camps and other places of detention and
requested the organisation of a programme to reintegrate released prisoners into the
labour force.32 This implies that in the rst half of 1937 large numbers of able-bodied
prisoners were being released. Similarly, of the 54,000 prisoners recorded as having
been released from the Gulag in the rst quarter of 1940, 66.5% were released
because their sentence had expired and only 0.006% (three persons) on the grounds
of illness.33 If one assumes that three-quarters of those recorded as released in
1937–38 were still alive on 31 December 1938, then that would reduce the upper
bound to 1,216,000 or, rounded to the nearest 50,000, 1.2 million.
The above means that in view of the uncertainties about their accuracy and the
meaning of the categories they use, it is too early to argue for a precise gure for
repression deaths in 1937–38 on the basis of the currently available NKVD account-
ing data. Rather, they can be used to support a range. It was argued above that the
most convincing estimate of this range, given current knowledge, is 950,000–1.2
million. This range includes the Isupov estimate. It also includes the Rose elde
estimate (1.075 million).34 The two main areas of uncertainty are NKVD killings
(‘executions’), excluded from the Pavlov report, and the mortality experience of the
644,000 people recorded as being released from the Gulag in 1937–38. Further
research on these two topics would be most valuable.
In 1994 Wheatcroft & Davies, using both the demographic and NKVD data,
1
suggested that repression deaths in 1937–38 were ‘about 1–12 million’.35 The range
was wide because of uncertainty about the accuracy of the NKVD statistics and the
dif culty of allocating victims among the various demographic disasters of the 1930s.
These include the famine of 1931–34, excess deaths among repressed peasants and
deportees, and the repression of 1937–38. The Wheatcroft–Davies estimate overlaps
with that suggested above on the basis of a consideration of the NKVD data alone,
but its upper bound is above that which a consideration of the NKVD data
alone would suggest. Since 1994 we have learned more about the NKVD data, their
meaning and limitations. It now seems more sensible to rely on the corrected NKVD
data. This reduces the upper bound of the Wheatcroft–Davies estimate by 300,000.
Conquest, on the other hand, suggests that repression deaths in 1937–38 were 2–3
million, i.e. more than double the above estimate based on NKVD records and double
the Wheatcroft–Davies estimate.36 Conquest’s estimate raises three issues: the method
used in deriving it, its compatibility with the demographic data and the sources on
which it is based.
Method
Conquest’s method is the utilisation of a wide variety of personal, rst-hand,
unof cial, so-called literary sources. Before glasnost’ this was the only source
available. As Wheatcroft has repeatedly acknowledged, its use enabled Conquest to
generate estimates of NKVD killings (‘executions’) in 1937–38 much more accurately
than the sceptics thought. They were also more accurate than the estimates of some
Western academics. However, as a result rst of glasnost’ and then of the collapse of
1156 MICHAEL ELLMAN
the USSR, we now have much better sources, the new demographic and NKVD data.
The unof cial sources are now just one of three possible sources for studying
repression, alongside the demographic and NKVD data. The unof cial sources can be
of great value for providing a qualitative picture of what happened and for conveying
the subjective impressions of those involved. However, when comparing the value of
these three sources, it is important to realise that the use of the unof cial sources for
generating numerical estimates suffers from a major weakness. It is well known that
the unof cial sources are frequently very unreliable as sources of quantitative data.
An example of this is Antonov-Ovseenko ’s underestimate of the USSR’s 1937
population. 37 Antonov-Ovseenk o fell into the trap of using a (downward) approxi-
mation of the normally enumerated population as an estimate of the total population
(which also included those enumerated by the NKVD and NKO and those not
enumerated at all). Furthermore, the use of unof cial sources introduces an important
bias into our study of Soviet repression and penal policy, in favour of politicals and
against criminals. Although only a minority of the inhabitants of the Gulag were
of cially classi ed as ‘counterrevolutionaries’ (although, as is agreed by all the
participants in this debate, the division between criminals and politicals was blurred
under Soviet conditions38), the unof cial or literary sources mainly derive directly or
indirectly from the politicals and hence give a one-sided picture. In these sources
criminals gure mainly as a hostile and dangerous element, rather than as, say,
themselves victims of rapid and violent social change. A former NKVD of cial has
observed of Solzhenitsyn’s writings that they give ‘the impression that the prisoners
of the Gulag were mainly political prisoners. This is not so. The overwhelming
majority of prisoners were criminals. Otherwise the Gulag would not have been able
to ful l its tasks. With the hands of intellectuals, which is what the political prisoners
were, it would have been impossible to carry out the immense works, in the course
of which a mass of heavy manual labour was undertaken’.39 In only 2 years, 1946 and
1947, did the ‘counterrevolutionaries’ form a majority of Gulag inmates.40 If more use
had been made of the experience of the criminals (e.g. by means of oral history) our
image of the Gulag would be substantially different.
However, it is important to note that the categories used in the Gulag statistics to
classify the inmates by type of offence were ‘highly misleading’.41 Hence the
statistical division between ‘politicals’ and ‘criminals’ is somewhat arbitrary. For
example, according to the Gulag statistics for 1 January 1939, the proportion of
prisoners for ‘counterrevolutionary’ offences was only 34.4%. However, the same
statistics also classify 21.7% of the prisoners as ‘socially harmful elements and
socially dangerous elements’.42 It seems likely that this group consisted mainly of
criminals and marginals (vagabonds, homeless, street children, unemployed, beggars
etc.). Their classi cation is problematic. Was someone who killed an OGPU of cer
or urban Communist come to deport his family a ‘murderer’ or a person acting in
‘self-defence’ against barbarians? Was a homeless person who lived by theft a
‘criminal’ or a ‘victim of political persecution’ by inhumane authorities who had
deported his parents or taxed out of existence the shop from which his family had
earned their livelihood? Similarly, was someone shot as a ‘counterrevolutionary’
because some malicious person coveted their living space really a victim of political
persecution? These dif culties in classi cation re ect the fact that the categories
SOVIET REPRESSION STATISTICS 1157
‘criminal’ and ‘political’ are much more appropriate in a settled society than in the
violent and revolutionary upheaval which took place in the USSR in the 1930s.
It should be pointed out, however, that Conquest’s method has one important
advantage. It instils a healthy scepticism as to the meaning of the categories in the
documents from the NKVD archives and the completeness of the gures in these
documents. The relevance of the rst type of scepticism was shown above. The
relevance of the second is shown in the section on stocks and ows below.
Compatibility with the demographic data
On the basis of the demographic data for the 1930s it seems that there were about 10
million excess deaths in 1926–39.43 The total number of excess deaths suggested by
Conquest is higher. He suggests a total of perhaps 16–18 million.44 This is above what
seems likely on the basis of the demographic data. It can only be made compatible
with the demographic data by assuming high birth rates between the 1926 and 1937
censuses of babies who soon died and by reducing the 1939 census totals. The birth
rate in the early 1930s is uncertain and controversial.45 By assuming a suf ciently
high birth rate in the early 1930s and adjusting down the 1939 census totals, one can
reconcile the Conquest gures with the demographic data.46 Some adjustment to the
contemporary population registration data for births and to the originally published
totals for the 1939 census are generally agreed to be necessary. However, the
adjustments required to reconcile Conquest’s totals with the censuses are regarded as
too large and implausible by most specialists. It should be noted, however, that
Conquest reduced some of his numerical estimates in the light of the new data.
Sources
Furthermore, the sources Conquest gives for his estimate are not very impressive. For
example, he cites an estimate of 20 million arrests and 7 million deaths in 1935–41
given by Sergo Mikoyan, the son of A.I. Mikoyan, in a Soviet newspaper article.47
However, the published version of A.I. Mikoyan’s memoirs, edited by Sergo
Mikoyan, presents a somewhat different picture.48 Neither in the USSR nor elsewhere
are newspapers reliable statistical sources.
It is important to note that criticism of Conquest’s numerical estimates is not a
criticism of the qualitative picture painted by Conquest. As Conquest correctly noted,
‘… historical work that uses gures that may have to be corrected in the light of later
evidence may be sound in every other respect, as is true of the work of historians
from Herodotus and Tacitus (impossible gures on Xerxes’s and Calgacus’s forces,
reliable and conscientious as to fact)’.49 Conquest is not a specialist in demography
or penology whose main aim was to generate accurate statistics. He is a writer on
Soviet affairs for the general public. His main aim was to give a qualitative picture
of enormous horrors to the general public, and in this he succeeded admirably.
In the present state of knowledge the range derived from the NKVD data of
950,000–1,200,000 seems to be the range which takes maximum account of the
available data. It is a range rather than a point estimate precisely because of the
limitations of the currently available data. Naturally, as Wheatcroft has repeatedly
1158 MICHAEL ELLMAN
stressed, and is in principle the same for all historical data, it is a provisional estimate
which may have to be revised as new data come to light.
The number of excess deaths in 1937–38 is, of course, considerably less than the
number of repression victims in 1937–38. It excludes those arrested and still alive in
places of detention on 31 December 1938. It also excludes those deported in 1937–38.
These were mainly the Soviet Koreans, usually estimated as 172,000 persons,
deported in September–October 1937—the rst Soviet people to be deported as a
whole.50 It also excludes army of cers, party of cials and state of cials who were
dismissed from their posts in 1937–38 but not arrested. It also excludes the emotional
and material suffering of those close relatives of the repressed who themselves were
not arrested or deported (but frequently discriminated against—often for many
years). In Russia in the 1990s there existed a legal category of postradavshii which
consisted of people such as children of repression victims, who were not themselves
incarcerated but ‘suffered’ as a result of the repression of their close relatives such as
parent/s.51
Ubyl’
In March 1947 USSR Minister of Internal Affairs Kruglov sent a report to Beriya in
which he explained his labour requirements for the second quarter. Amongst other
things he stated that he would need 100,000 people ‘to cover losses’ (‘na pokrytie
ubyli’). This passage was quoted by Volkogonov in his Trotsky biography, published
in 1992. 52 In a footnote Volkogonov explained that ‘ “Pokrytie ubyli” … means the
delivery of fresh workers to replace those who had died in the camps of the
innumerable Dal’strois, Spetsstrois etc”. Conquest concluded from this that in the rst
quarter of 1947 100,000 prisoners had died in the camps. He used this to illustrate the
inadequacies of the MVD data and to criticise their use by Wheatcroft. According to
Conquest, Volkogonov had shown that the MVD data on releases were a
falsi cation.53
Was the Volkogonov interpretation in fact correct? Volkogonov enjoyed substantial
access both to archives and to persons involved in Stalinist repression and his writings
contain a mass of valuable information, much of it previously unknown. His work
added substantially to knowledge. Furthermore, he presented his new data to a wide
public. This was important both from an educational and from a political point of
view. However, he was very sensitive to the changing political climate. When he
published his Trotsky biography, the political demand was for high gures for
Stalinist repression. Furthermore, study of Soviet demographic statistics for the
post-war period shows that ubyl’, which literally means ‘diminution’ or ‘decrease’
and is frequently used for military losses, was not a synonym for deaths (just as for
an army ‘losses’—which include injured and those taken prisoner by the enemy—are
not a synonym for deaths). In Soviet demographic statistics of the post-war period
ubyl’ includes not just deaths but also other facts leading to a population decline,
such as the call-up of conscripts, moving elsewhere for work or education, or
reclassi cation of rural areas as urban. This can be clearly seen, for example, in the
February 1948 report of the deputy representative of the USSR Gosplan to the
Secretary of the Moldovan CC reporting the results of his calculation of the size of
SOVIET REPRESSION STATISTICS 1159
the rural population of Moldova after the famine of 1946–47 and explaining the
reasons for its decline in 1947.54
As far as the Gulag is concerned, by now numerous works have been published
presenting contemporary Gulag statistics.55 These all show that ubyl’, although it
includes deaths, is not used as a synonym for deaths and includes other categories
leading to a decline in the number of prisoners. For example, a top secret (sover-
shenno sekretno) 1956 report on the numbers imprisoned in the Gulag and colonies
in 1953–55 stated that in 1953 ubyl’ was 1.6 million, of whom 1.2 million were
amnestied and released under the amnesty of 27 march 1953.56
Hence it is obvious that Volkogonov ’s explanation of ubyl’ was mistaken. This
means that one of Conquest’s arguments for criticising the NKVD–MVD statistics,
and the use made of them by Wheatcroft, is erroneous.
Stocks and ows
In a series of articles Wheatcroft has criticised Conquest’s estimates of the number of
detainees in various years. He has used the recently available NKVD data to argue
that they are both incompatible with Conquest’s earlier estimates and more reliable
than them. Both of these arguments are correct.57 The same points were made in
Getty, Rittersporn & Zemskov’s 1993 American Historical Review article. It seems to
be widely thought that this shows that earlier ‘high’ estimates of the scale of the terror
were exaggerated.58 This is true if one looks only at data on the stock of prisoners at
any one time. However, the new data also provide information about the ow of
victims through the repression system. The unexpected nding about the high rate of
releases automatically means that the total number of people in the system at one time
or another was much higher, relative to the stock of prisoners at any one time, than
previously thought. The newly available numbers on the ow are truly enormous.
Moreover, as Conquest sensibly noted, they are of a similar order of magnitude to
older ‘high’ estimates of the total number sentenced in the Stalinist era.59
According to Zemskov the number of people deported in 1930–53 ( rst peasant
victims of collectivisation and then victims of ethnic cleansing) was ‘not less than six
million’.60 Of this total, 1.8 million ‘kulaks’ were deported in 1930–31, 1.0 million
peasants and ethnic minorities were deported in 1932–39, 61 and about 3.5 million
people (mainly ethnic minorities) in 1940–52. 62 This makes a total of 6.3 million in
1930–52. Rounded to the nearest million this makes six million, of whom the majority
were victims of ethnic cleansing. According to the Pavlov report, the number of
people sentenced for political offences in 1921–53—more precisely on cases of the
Cheka-OGPU-(GUGB)NKV D in 1921–38 and for ‘counterrevolutionary’ offences for
1939–53—was approximately 4,000,000. The number arrested in these same cate-
gories in 1921–53 according to the Pavlov report was about 6,000,000. Luneev for his
1997 book examined the data on repression in the Central Archive of the FSB and
came to the conclusion that the number charged with political crimes in 1918–58 was
about 7,000,000 and the number sentenced about 5,000,000.63 According to A.N.
Yakovlev, speaking in November 1999 and placing his remarks in an openly political
context, a recently unearthed document stated that the number arrested for political
crimes in 1921–53 was actually approximately 8,000,000.64 Kudryavtsev & Trusov
1160 MICHAEL ELLMAN
re-examined the Luneev gures and suggested that it was appropriate to include
groups excluded from the Luneev gures, e.g. those repressed by SMERSH in
1941–45. Hence they reached a gure for those sentenced for political offences in
1918–58 of 6.1 million.65 These additions to the Pavlov/Kruglov gures by Luneev,
Yakovlev and Kudryavtsev & Trusov suggest that Conquest and Keep were right to
be sceptical about their completeness. However, it is unlikely that the substantial
deduction which Kudryavstsev & Trusov make for ‘justi ably condemned’ (see the
next section) will nd favour with Conquest.
Of those deported or arrested for political reasons from 1921 onwards, the number
of deaths about which we have more or less reliable information seems to have been
about 3–3.5 million, of which about 1 million were shootings,66 1–1.5 million deaths
of deportees (see note 60) and perhaps 1 million deaths of prisoners.67 In addition
there is the currently unknown number of those who died shortly after being released
from the Gulag.68 (Moreover, there is also the currently unknown number killed by
the Bolsheviks in 1918–20.) As absolute gures for the number of citizens of a
country killed or caused to die by its own government, these gures are very large.
They greatly exceed, for example, the number of German citizens killed by the Nazis
(if one excludes German soldiers killed in wars started by the Nazis and German
civilians killed by enemy action in wars started by the Nazis).69 On the other hand,
relative to the total number of Soviet deaths in 1930–53 they were more modest. If
the total number of deaths in the above mentioned categories was, say, 4 million,70
that would be only about 3.7% of total USSR deaths in 1930–53.71 Writing about the
role of Gulag deaths in total Soviet mortality, Kokurin & Morukov correctly say that,
‘Contrary to widespread opinion, the share of deaths in detention rarely exceeded
2–3% of total deaths in the country and did not have a major in uence on the
demographic situation as a whole’.72
This latter conclusion may strike some as strange and counter-intuitive. This
re ects a general problem in historical interpretation—attention to extreme cases may
distort understanding. As Gregory has noted, with special reference to the impact of
the famine of 1891–92 on the image of Russian agricultural development before 1905,
‘single observations do not permit the evaluation of long-term tendencies. Remarkable
or catastrophic events (for example a famine) create a stronger impression than
everyday phenomena. The in uence of catastrophic events is so strong that it eclipses
the long-run trends, which are an average of periodic catastrophes and normal years.
In the same way that people after the coldest winter of the century think that there
is a general tendency to cooler winters, so historians are inclined to generalise on the
basis of unique or catastrophic events’.73
The number of people in the Gulag (camps and colonies) for shorter or longer
periods just in 1941–53 was about 16 million.74 The number in the Gulag for shorter
or lesser periods in 1934–40 was about 4,250,000.75 Allowing for the 1.5 million
stock of prisoners at the end of 1940, this might seem to mean that 18.75 million
prisoners owed through the Gulag in 1934–53. Actually, the situation is more
complex. Since some people were sentenced more than once, this gure contains an
upward bias (it actually measures sentences rather than individuals). On the other
hand, as a measure of total Gulag inmates, it also contains downward biases. It takes
no account of the numbers in the Gulag prior to 1934 or after 1953.76 It also excludes
SOVIET REPRESSION STATISTICS 1161
some groups classi ed separately from the other prisoners but who were in the Gulag
(or administratively subordinate to it) at certain periods. These included for example
the so-called ‘special contingent’, ‘labour army’ and ‘special settlers’. (The ‘labour
army’ of Soviet Germans in 1942–45 comprised more than 400,000 people.) It also
excludes those sentenced to forced labour at their normal place of work (for example
under the notorious decree on labour discipline of the Presidium of the Supreme
Soviet of 26 June 1940) even though they were under the direction of the Bureau of
corrective labour (Byuro ispravitel’nykh rabot or BIR) which was administratively
subordinate to the Gulag. It also takes no account of those repatriated after the war
to ltration camps (unless they were subsequently sent to the Gulag). These extra-
ordinary numbers show the enormous scale of political repression and forced labour
by criminals in the Stalin period. They are also higher than the (rightly criticised) old
high estimates of the stock of prisoners at various periods.
‘Victims of Stalinism’/‘Soviet power’
Many writers want to give a single gure for the ‘victims of Stalinism’ or ‘victims
of Soviet power’77 and are surprised to nd such confusion in the literature. Apart
from inaccurate estimates of particular categories, an important part of the explanation
is simply disagreement about which categories of deaths in the Stalin period should
be labelled as ‘victims of Stalinism’. Most of the excess deaths in the Stalin period
were victims of the three Stalin-era famines or of World War II (these two categories
overlap since the second Stalin-era famine was during World War II). Whether these
last two categories should be considered to be as much ‘victims of Stalinism’ as
repression victims is a matter of judgement and heavily coloured by political opinion.
Wheatcroft has argued that when thinking about excess deaths in the Stalin era one
should make a distinction between murder and manslaughter.78 Those who were shot
by the NKVD were killed by a deliberate decision of the state. Those who died during
or after deportation died because the state failed to make adequate provision for them.
Both groups, in the opinion of the present author, belong to the category of
‘repression victims’. This also seems to be the opinion of Wheatcroft, who groups
‘about a million’ purposive killings with ‘about two million’ victims among the
repressed whose death resulted from ‘criminal neglect and irresponsibility’.79 In view
of the scale of the deaths and the development of international law, one can nowadays
classify these excess deaths as crimes against humanity (Rome Statute of the
International Criminal Court, article 7), although this concept was only introduced
into international law after World War II and the permanent court to try charges of
them was only established decades after the acts concerned came to an end.
More dif cult to classify are famine victims. They are considered in the appendix.
It should be noted that the categories ‘war victims’ and ‘repression victims’ also
overlap since approximately 1 million prisoners died during the war and there
were also political arrests and shootings during it. As for the wider category of
‘victims of Soviet power’, that also includes the victims of the demographic
catastrophe of 1918–23.80 Who—if anyone—is to blame for that catastrophe is also
a matter of political and historical judgement. In addition, whether or not it is
appropriate to reduce the total of those unjusti ably sentenced for political offences
1162 MICHAEL ELLMAN
on the grounds that some of the sentences were ‘justi able’ is also a matter of
judgement. Kudryavtsev & Trusov, for example, consider that many people sentenced
in and after 1941–45 for collaboration and treason really were guilty of those
offences. Similarly, they argue that many of the armed opponents of Soviet power in
the western Ukraine and the Baltic republics were also justi ably condemned. (Armed
resistance to the state by separatists is regarded as an offence–often known as
‘terrorism’—which should be punished, throughout the world, not just in the USSR
under Stalin.) Accordingly, they reduce their estimate of 6.1 million condemned for
political reasons by 1.4 million ‘justi ably condemned’ (this gure also includes
of cers of the organs who themselves became victims of persecution under Ezhov,
Beriya and Khrushchev) to arrive at a gure of 4.7 million ‘unjustly condemned’ for
political reasons.81 Similarly, to what extent it is appropriate to offset ‘excess lives’
(resulting from falling mortality rates) against ‘excess deaths’ is also a matter of
judgement.
As Wheatcroft has repeatedly—quite rightly—stressed, our current quantitative
knowledge of repression is provisional and imperfect. A Russian book on political
justice in the USSR published in 2000, whose authors were able to use the already
existing literature and also had extensive archival access, including to the Central
Archive of the FSB, concluded, with special reference to the numbers sentenced to
death, ‘we do not yet have precise gures for the number of citizens killed in 1917–53
by order of a court or by extra-judicial organs for “political crimes” or for belonging
to a particular social or national group’.82
Since ‘victims of Stalinism’ or ‘victims of Soviet power’ are poorly de ned and
controversial categories, differing estimates would be inevitable even if we had
perfect statistics. Since the currently available statistics are imperfect, the wide range
of estimates for these categories is unavoidable. In this situation the best that
academic analysis can do is to try to generate the most accurate data possible on the
various sub-totals and explain the nature of the different categories and the differing
ways in which they can be evaluated. It is to be hoped that via textbooks the best
available data will in due course enter general consciousness and that the inaccurate
and misleading gures frequently presented will gradually fade away.
Conclusions
(1) The surprisingly high gures for those freed from the Gulag are partly explained
by several decisions to increase the ‘ef ciency’ 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 nancial results, but was not a sign
of the humanity of the system, and arti cially 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
SOVIET REPRESSION STATISTICS 1163
signi cant 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. Con-
quest’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 gures 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 falsi ed. 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 gures are still surrounde d by a signi cant margin
of uncertainty. The latter is a matter of theoretical, political and historical
judgement. The number of deportees ( rst 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 de ned 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 ‘justi ably punished for political offences’. It can also be
increased substantially by including those peasants who were deported ‘only’
1164 MICHAEL ELLMAN
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
gure excludes the deportees, prisoners of war and internees, those in the
post-war ltration 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 gure which exaggerates the number of people involved since some
people were detained more than once). These huge gures 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 classi cation of the prisoners are mis-
leading, and the concepts themselves are problematic under the conditions of the
1930s. Some (e.g. the homeless) are dif cult 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 anthro-
pometric indicators (height and weight)84 and the extra lives resulting from falling
mortality rates generally interest only a few specialists.85 Repression was enor-
mously 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 gures for the total number of
SOVIET REPRESSION STATISTICS 1165
victims or for some sub-totals. Further archival research—and discussion of the
meaning and signi cance of its ndings—is still needed.
University of Amsterdam
I am grateful to N. Adler, R. Binner, R. Conquest, R.W. Davies, M. Haynes, J. Keep, G. Oly,
E. van Ree and G. Rittersporn for helpful comments. I am also grateful to R.W. Davies, L. Viola, S.
Wheatcroft and G. Rittersporn for their helpful answers to queries. None of them is responsibl e for
anything written in this article. The author alone is responsibl e for the interpretatio n offered and for
the remaining errors.
1
S. Wheatcroft , ‘The Scale and Nature of German and Soviet Repression and Mass Killings,
1930–45’, Europe-Asia Studies, 48, 8, December 1996; R. Conquest, ‘Victims of Stalin: A Com-
ment’, Europe-Asia Studies, 49, 7, November 1997; S. Wheatcroft , ‘Victims of Stalinism and the
Soviet Secret Police: The Comparability and Reliability of the Archival Data—Not the Last Word’,
Europe-Asia Studies, 51, 2, March 1999; J. Keep, ‘Wheatcroft and Stalin’s Victims: Comments’,
Europe-Asia Studies, 51, 6, September 1999; R. Conquest, ‘Comment on Wheatcroft’, Europe-Asia
Studies, 51, 8, December 1999; S. Wheatcroft, ‘The Scale and Nature of Stalinist Repression and its
Demographic Signi cance: On Comments by Keep and Conquest’, Europe-Asia Studies, 52, 6,
September 2000.
2
J.A. Getty, G.T. Rittersporn & V.N. Zemskov, ‘Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the
Pre-war Years: A First Approach on the Basis of Archival Evidence’, American Historical Review,
98, 4, October 1993.
3
One reason for this surprise is the widespread image of Gulag prisoners as being mainly
intellectual s sentence d on political grounds. It is indeed true that article 58ers were frequentl y not
released during Stalin’s lifetime, even if their original sentence had expired. However, a large
proportio n of the Gulag’s prisoner s were ordinary Soviet citizens sentenced for non-politica l crimes
(as de ned by Soviet law) and often released on expiry of their sentence s or in an amnesty (as
in 1953) or for other reasons. The fact that the Gulag prisoners were not mainly intellectual s can
easily be seen from the data on their cultural and educationa l level. On 1 January 1940 8.4% of
them were illiterate and 30.3% were semi-literat e (malogramotnye), 49.6% had only a primary
educatio n and only 1.8% had a higher education . See V.N. Zemskov, ‘Zaklyuchenny e v 1930-e gody:
sotsial’no-demogra cheskie problemy’, Otechestvennay a istoriya, 1997, 4, p. 68.
4
For more detailed and somewhat different gures on wartime releases to the armed forces see
A.I. Kokurin & N.V. Petrov (eds), GULAG: Glavnoe upravleni e lagerei. 1918–1960 (Moscow,
2000), p. 428.
5
Conquest, ‘Victims of Stalin …’, p. 1317.
6
This phrase comes from OGPU order no. 143 of 17 September 1933. See A. Kokurin & N.
Petrov, ‘GULAG: struktura i kadry’, Svobodnay a mysl’—XXI, 1999, 8, p. 122.
7
Ibid., p. 127. The text of the 1930 order has not been available .
8
A. Kokurin & N. Petrov, ‘GULAG: struktura i kadry’, Svobodnay a mysl’—XXI, 2000, 3, pp.
119–120. This decree is also printed in Kokurin & Petrov (eds), GULAG: Glavnoe …, p. 116. It
seems to have been mainly aimed at the practice of early release for good work.
9
A. Kokurin & N. Petrov, ‘GULAG: struktura i kadry’, Svobodnay a mysl’—XXI, 2000, 6,
p. 123.
10
V.A. Isupov, Demogra cheskie katastrof y i krizisy v Rossii v pervoi polovine XX veka
(Novosibirsk , 2000) p. 164. The present author has checked the archival referenc e given by Isupov
and can con rm that Isupov’s statements are supporte d by the archival document cited. A.S.
Narinsky, Vospominaniy a glavnogo bukhgalter a (St. Petersburg, 1997), p. 241, relates the following
story. In 1942 a woman received a message from a Siberian camp that her father had been released
and that she should come and collect him. Long-distanc e travellin g in wartime was complicate d and
time-consuming . When, after 2 months, she nally reached the camp, her ‘released ’ father was dead.
11
Conquest, ‘Comment …’, p. 1482.
12
For example, in March 1940, in a report on the activities of the Gulag, its deputy director
stated that 73,000 of its inmates were sick and un t for work and that ‘the expenses associate d with
their maintenance (more than 100 million rubles p.a.) are a heavy burden on the Gulag’s budget’. See
Ekonomika GULAGa i ee rol’ v razvitii strany v 1930-e gody (Moscow, 1998), p. 128. (In 1940 100
million rubles was only 1.3% of the Gulag’s planned expenditure , but was 20% of its planned de cit.
See ibid., pp. 153–154.)
13
Wheatcroft , ‘The Scale and Nature …’, p. 1151.
1166 MICHAEL ELLMAN
14
Isupov, Demogra cheskie katastrof y …, p. 164.
15
Naselenie Rossii v XX veke, tom 2 1940–1959 gg (Moscow, 2001), pp. 154–155.
16
D. Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediy a, 2nd ed (Moscow, 1990), vol. 1, p. 410.
17
Even some of those who died more than 6 months after release basically died as a result of
their treatment in the Gulag. For example the engineer Zheleznyak was released as a result of
illness/frailty in the summer of 1943 but did not actually die for almost 2 years. See S. Zhuravlev,
‘Malen’kie lyudi’ i ‘bol’shaya istoriya’. Inostrants y moskovskog o Elektrozavod a v sovetskom
obshchestv e 1920-kh–1930-kh gg (Moscow, 2000), p. 334.
18
Conquest, ‘Comment …’, p. 1481, observed that ‘even when a Gulag document is right as to
totals, its categorie s may be wrong or misleading ’. The phenomenon discusse d in the text (‘freeing’
people to die) is an example of the categorie s used in Gulag documents being ‘misleading’.
19
Wheatcroft, ‘The Scale and Nature …’; and Wheatcroft, ‘Victims of Stalinism …’.
20
S. Wheatcroft & R. Davies, ‘Population’, in R.W. Davies, M. Harrison & S. Wheatcroft (eds),
The Economic Transformation of the Soviet Union, 1913–1945 (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 67–77.
21
Isupov, Demogra cheskie katastrof y …, p. 118.
22
Strictly speaking , in 1937–38 the ordinary police (militsiya) were part of the NKVD so that
po delam NKVD if taken literally should include ‘ordinary ’ arrests. However, since we know that in
1937–38 a total of 3.1 million people were arrested (Naselenie Rossiyi … tom 1, p.318) it seems that
the gures in the Pavlov report only refer to cases of the GUGB (Glavnoe Upravlenie Gosudarstven -
noi Bezopasnosti ) of the NKVD and its local administrations . (See P. Hagenloh, ‘ “Chekist in
Essence, Chekist in Spirit”; Regular and Political Police in the 1930s’, Cahiers du Monde russe, 42,
2–4, April–December 2001.)
23
In 1937–38 there were 140,000–160,000 registere d deaths in the Gulag (camps, colonies and
prisons). The reason why there are two different mortality gures is that there were two different
agencies that compiled these gures, the medical department (SANO) and the accounting and
allocatio n department (URO). The former gure is the SANO gure, the latter the URO one; see A.
Kokurin & Yu. Morukov, ‘GULAG: struktura i kadry’, Svobodnay a mysl’—XXI, 2000, 10, p. 114.
Isupov’s 116,000 gure is the URO gure for the camps alone (excluding the colonies and Gulag
prisons where URO recorded another 44,000 deaths in 1937–38). Wheatcroft , ‘The Scale and Nature
…’, suggests that the number of registered deaths in detention should be treated as a minimum
estimate of the number of actual deaths in detention. For a maximum estimate of the number of actual
deaths in detention he suggests adding to the gures for registere d deaths also the gures for
disappearanc e in transit plus all uncapture d runaways. This produces a maximum estimate of deaths
in detention in the Gulag (excludin g the colonies and prisons) in 1937–38 of 165,000. (This latter
gures is not given explicitly but can be derived by applying his maximum death rates per thousand
to the gures he gives for the numbers present on 1 January 1937 and 1938.)
24
Whereas most writers are intereste d in the total number of victims of political excess deaths,
Isupov is interested in total excess deaths. The difference is accounte d for by excess deaths among
criminals. Naturally, one could argue, as is done by Conquest, ‘Comment …’, p. 1481, that many of
those classi ed as criminals in the USSR were ‘really’ victims of political repression. The same point
was made by Wheatcroft, ‘The Scale and Nature …’, p. 1335. Wheatcroft (‘The Scale and Nature …’,
note 35) also quotes a literary source (Solzhenitsyn ) which states that in 1937–38, in addition to the
shooting of politicals , 480,000 criminals were shot. In his later ‘Victims …’, p. 327, quoting archival
sources, he gives the gure for of cially recorded criminal execution s in 1937–38 of 5,000. If the
number of recorded criminal executions in 1939–40 (3,000—see ibid., p. 337) is taken as the ‘normal’
level, then the number of recorded excess criminal execution s in 1937–38 was only 2,000. It seems,
however, that a considerabl e number of those shot po delam organov NKVD were not political s but
were ‘really’ criminals. For example, V.N. Khaustov, ‘Deyatel’nost’ organov gosudarstvenno i
bezopasnost i NKVD SSSR (1934–1941 gg)’, dissertation , Moscow, 1997, pp. 482–483, states on the
basis of archival documents that in 1937 157,694 people were arrested by the NKVD (he probably
means by the GUGB NKVD) for ‘non-political ’ offences and in 1938 45,183.
25
As far as unrecorded execution s are concerned , the only hard evidence currently available
seems to be Khlevnyuk’s analysis of Turkmenistan , commented on by Wheatcroft , ‘Victims of
Stalinism …’, p. 329. This suggests that the actual number of executions there was about 25% more
than that authorised by the centre and hence that the of cial NKVD gures for the USSR as a whole
´
could be ‘lower than reality’ (O. Hlevnjuk, ‘Les mecanismes de la “Grande Terreur” des annees
´
1937–1938 au Turkmenistan’, Cahiers du Monde russe, 39, January–June 1998, p. 205).
26
M. Jansen & N. Petrov, Stalin’s Loyal Executioner: People’s Commissar Nikolai Ezhov,
1895–1940 (Stanford, California, 2002), pp. 104, 135.
27
According to the NKVD data presented by Getty, Rittersporn & Zemskov, ‘Victims of the
Soviet Penal System …’, p. 1048, in 1937–38 the Gulag freed 644,000 prisoners .
SOVIET REPRESSION STATISTICS 1167
28
Wheatcroft , ‘The Scale and Nature …’, pp. 1344–1345; Wheatcroft , ‘Victims of Stalinism …’,
p. 328. R.W. Davies, Soviet History in the Yeltsin Era (Basingstoke, 1997), pp. 169–170, also drew
attention to the fact that it is not known whether or not the mass shooting s of ‘several tens of
thousand s of deserters ’ in the early stages of the Soviet–German war, for which Beriya claimed the
credit in his letter of 1 July 1953 to Malenkov, are included in the Pavlov gures.
29
G.M. Ivanova, ‘GULAG yazykom dokumentov’, Novaya i noveishay a istoriya, 2001, 4,
p.153. See also G.M. Ivanova, Gulag v sisteme totalitarnog o gosudarstv a (Moscow, 1997), p.34.
Ivanova notes (Ibid., pp. 34–35) that one possible reason for this discrepanc y is that after the split into
two narkomaty in 1943 there was an Osoboe soveshchani e attached to the NKGB and another one
attached to the NKVD. There is another possible explanatio n (personal communicatio n from G.
Rittersporn) . The gures given in the Pavlov report for 1939–52 refer only to article 58ers. Those
sentence d to death under other articles (for example West Ukrainian or Baltic guerillas sentenced for
‘banditry’—article 59–3) are excluded . Hence a discrepanc y between the gures in the Pavlov report
for those shot by order of the Osoboe soveshchani e and the total number of people actually shot by
order of the Osoboe soveshchani e is to be expected . This suggests that what we have here is a merely
apparent discrepancy . Ivanova’s discussion of it may just re ect her inadequat e knowledge of the
meaning of the sources.
30
The Pavlov report was published in Kokurin & Petrov (eds), GULAG: Glavnoe …,
pp. 431–434.
31
There are also two other categories of repression deaths in 1937–38; excess deaths among the
‘special settlers’ (mainly deported peasants) and excess suicides. The former does not seem to be
demographicall y signi cant. In 1937–38 recorded actual deaths among the ‘special settlers’ were only
33,000 (Naselenie Rossii … tom 1, p.280) and recorded excess deaths (compared to deaths among
age/gender comparable cohorts among the general population ) were still fewer. Excess suicides
certainly existed, but seem unlikely to have been demographicall y signi cant.
32
P. Hagenloh, ‘ “Socially Harmful Elements” and the Great Terror’, in S. Fitzpatrick (ed.),
Stalinism : New Directions (London, 2000), p.300; Zemskov, ‘Zaklyuchenny e v 1930-e gody …’,
p.66.
33
Zemskov, ‘Zaklyuchenny e v 1930-e gody …’, p. 66.
34
S. Rose elde, ‘Stalinism in Post-Communist Perspective : New Evidence on Killings, Forced
Labour and Economic Growth in the 1930s’, Europe-Asia Studies, 48, 6, 1996, pp. 974–975.
35
Wheatcroft & Davies, ‘Population’, p. 77.
36
R. Conquest, The Great Terror: A Reassessment (New York, 1990), pp. 485–486; R.
Conquest, ‘Excess Deaths and Camp Numbers: Some Comments’, Soviet Studies, 43, 5, 1991, p. 951.
37
M. Ellman, ‘On Sources: A Note’, Soviet Studies, 44, 5, 1992. For another mistake in
quantitative estimation by Antonov-Ovseenko , this time resulting from a misinterpretatio n of archival
data (confusin g monthly average with annual gures and hence producing estimates 12 times too
high), see Ivanova, ‘GULAG yazykom …’, p. 152.
38
See for example J. Keep, ‘Recent Writing on Stalin’s Gulag: An Overview’, Crime, Histoire
& Societes, 1997, 2, pp. 100–101. The example which Keep gives, however, is problematic . He writes
´ ´
that ‘Some of those not indicted under Article 58 committed offences that were indirectl y the result
of the regime’s repressive policies and would not normally be considere d criminal, as when peasant
women stole stalks of grain from the collectiv e elds to feed their starving children’ (italics added
and one footnote omitted). Keep is of course right that many ‘criminal’ offences were an indirect
result of the regime’s policies. But theft is normally considere d a crime, regardless of the economic
position of the thief’s family. The victims of the ferociou s anti-poachin g laws and anti-poachin g
devices (e.g. mantraps) in early nineteent h century England were at the time of cially considered to
be criminals even if their children were hungry. Later writers and penal reformers normally
considere d them to be victims of an unfair system of criminal justice rather than of political
repression. (Only under the Old Testament ‘law of the corner’ would the peasant women in the above
example not be considered criminals.)
39
Narinsky, Vospominaniy a glavnogo …, p. 217.
40
See the appendix to Getty, Rittersporn & Zemskov, ‘Victims …’, or the table in V.
Kudryavtse v & A. Trusov, Politicheskay a yustitsiya v SSSR (Moscow, 2000), p. 305. The main text
of the former does not draw the reader’s attention to this exceptiona l 2-year period, although it does
very sensibly stress the blurred line under Soviet condition s between ‘political’ and ‘criminal’
offences.
41
¨ ¨ ¨
G. Rittersporn, ‘Zynismus, Selbsttauschung und unmogliches Kalkul: Strafpolitik und
¨
Lagerbevolkerung in der UdSSR’, in D. Dahlmann & G. Hirschfeld (eds), Lager, Zwangsarbeit ,
Vertreibung und Deportatio n (Essen, 1999), p.305.
42
Ibid., p. 306; Kokurin & Petrov (eds), GULAG: Glavnoe …, pp. 416–418. The latter source
1168 MICHAEL ELLMAN
refers to this group as ‘IVE i SOE’. It has been suggeste d to the present author that the rst ‘I’ is a
misprint for ‘S’ (personal communication from G. Rittersporn) . In that case the category in full is
‘Sotsial’no-vredny i element i sotsial’no-opasnyi element’. Most of these people seem to have been
rowdies, thieves, people with a criminal record or the homeless. Someone who is arrested for being
homeless would normally be considere d neither a ‘criminal’ nor a ‘political’.
43
Wheatcroft & Davies, ‘Population’, p. 77. Wheatcroft & Davies point out that if ADK are
right about the number of births in 1933 then the number of excess deaths in 1926–39 would be
signi cantly above 10 million. For criticism by Wheatcroft of ADK’s 1933 mortality estimates see
V. Danilov et al. (eds), Tragediya sovetsko i derevni, vol.3 (Moscow, 2001), pp. 883–886.
44
Conquest, ‘Excess Deaths …’, p. 951.
45
M. Ellman, ‘A Note on the Number of 1933 Famine Victims’, Soviet Studies, 43, 2, 1991;
Ellman, ‘On Sources …’.
46
Rose elde, ‘Stalinism in Post-Communist …’, pp. 974–975.
47
The source cited is Literaturnay a gazeta, 9 August 1989; see Conquest, The Great Terror: A
Reassesment, p. 544. The present writer has checked this reference , and was unable to nd in it an
article by, or interview with, Sergo Mikoyan, or any other con rmation of Conquest’s assertion .
48
A.I. Mikoyan, TAK BYLO Razmyshleniya o minuvshem (Moscow, 1999). In a footnote on p.
592 the gures of ‘about a million’ (not seven million) shot in 1934–41 and of an additiona l ‘more
than 18.5 million’ repressed are cited. The former of these gures is accurate . The accuracy of the
latter mainly depends on which period it refers to. ‘More than 18.5 million’ is in fact an accurate
estimate of the number of prisoners—more precisely sentences to detention—in the Gulag in
1934–53. (It should be noted that these gures are not rst-hand accounts by Mikoyan of what he had
seen in documents he himself had read, but statements about what he had heard from O.
Shatunovskaya , who may have misunderstoo d the information she received from the KGB or said
something that was not a correct descriptio n of the data she had been given.)
49
Conquest, ‘Comment …’, p.1481.
50
P. Polyan, Ne po svoei vole … (Moscow, 2001), pp. 90–93; T. Kulbaev & A. Khegai,
Deportatsiya (Almaty, 2000), pp. 49–75. Also about 2,000 Kurds and about 9,000 Chinese and
‘Harbiners’ were deported in 1937 and 6,000 Iranian Jews and an unknown number of other Iranians
in 1938.
51
N. Adler, The Gulag Survivor (New Brunswick and London, 2002), p. 33.
52
D. Volkogonov, Trotskii, vol. 2 (Moscow, 1992), p. 371.
53
Conquest, ‘Victims …’, p.1317. The same point was made in his letter in the American
Historical Review, 99, 3, June 1994, p.1039.
54
Golod v Moldove (1946–1947), Sbornik dokumento v (Kishinev, 1993), p. 729. Naturally this
report uses weasel words to describe the famine. Instead of deaths from ‘famine’ or ‘starvation’ it
uses the of cial euphemism of ‘alimentary distrophy ’. However, this does not affect the way it uses
the term ubyl’.
55
A.N. Dugin, Neizvestnyi GULAG: Dokumenty i fakty (Moscow, 1999); Kokurin & Petrov
(eds), GULAG: Glavnoe …; V.N. Zemskov, ‘Smertnost’ zaklyuchennyk h v 1941–1945gg’ , in
Lyudskie poteri SSSR v Velikoi Otechestvenno i voine (St. Petersburg, 1995), pp. 174–177; V.N.
Zemskov, chapters XIII and XIV in Naselenie Rossii … tom 1.
56
Kokurin & Petrov (eds), GULAG: Glavnoe …, p. 435.
57
Popov has argued that the archival data on Gulag numbers cited by Zemskov and others refer
not to the number of prisoners but to the capacity of the Gulag, and that there could be signi cant
discrepancie s between the two since the Gulag could be run at under capacity , at capacity, or over
capacity . For example, he cites a statement by the head of the Gulag that at the beginning of 1946
the capacity of the Gulag was 1.3 million, but the actual number of inmates 1.5 million (V.P. Popov,
‘Gosudarstvenny i terror v sovetskoi Rossii, 1923–1953 gg. (istochnik i i ikh interpretatsii) ’,
Otechestvenny e arkhivy, 1992, 2, p. 22). This argument has been cited by Conquest, ‘Victims …’, p.
1317 (the year of the citation should be 1992 not 1993). However, Popov’s argument does not seem
to be relevant to the data presente d by Getty, Rittersporn & Zemskov. They give the population of
the Gulag (camps and colonies ) at 1 January 1946 as 1,557,121 . This is in fact slightly larger than
the above-mentione d gure for the number of prisoners at the beginnin g of 1946 ascribed to the head
of the Gulag.
58
For example, writing in a CPRF publication , L. Pykhalov conclude d from the new stock data
that talk about ‘tens of millions of Gulag prisoners ’ was completely wrong. See I. Pykhalov, ‘O
masshtabakh “Stalinskikh repressii ” ’, Dialog, 2001, 10, p. 58.
59
American Historical Review, 99, 3, June 1994, p.1039 (letter to the editor from R. Conquest).
60
V.N. Zemskov, ‘Deportatsii naseleniya . Spetsposelents y i ssyl’nye. Zaklyuchennye ’, chapter
IX in Naselenie Rossii … tom 2 (Moscow, 2001), p. 179. Zemskov’s gures are somewhat higher than
SOVIET REPRESSION STATISTICS 1169
those of Polyan, Ne po …, pp. 245–249, according to whom the number deported in 1930–52
(excludin g the third category of ‘kulaks’ who were deported ‘only’ within their own region and the
Kazakhs who ed to other republics or abroad in 1931–33) was ‘only’ 5.545 million. (For the division
of ‘kulaks’ into three categorie s see the Politburo’s decree of 30 January 1930 in V. Danilov et al.
(eds), Tragediya sovetsko i derevni, vol. 2 (Moscow, 2000), pp.126–134.) Zemskov’s estimate of ‘not
less than six million’ also excludes the third category of ‘kulaks’; see V.N. Zemskov, ‘ “Kulatskaya
ssylka” v 1930-e gody: chislennost ’, rasselenie, sostav’, chapter XIII in Naselenie Rossii … tom 1
(Moscow, 2000), p. 277. According to Wheatcroft & Davies, ‘Population …’, p. 68, the number of
people in this group was 2–2.5 million. However, according to Polyan, Ne po …, p. 245, in 1930 it
was ‘only’ a quarter of a million and in 1932 there was a further relocatio n of ‘kulaks’ within their
region of uncertain dimensions . In R. W. Davies & S. Wheatcroft , Years of Hunger (forthcoming),
it is argued that ‘a clear understandin g of the fate and size of Category III must await regional studies
based on local archives ’. As for the Kazakhs, Polyan estimates that about 1,000,000 ed Kazakhstan
in 1931–33. Of this number he estimates that 400,000 ed permanentl y to other Soviet republics ,
400,000 eventuall y returned to Kazakhstan , and 200,000 ed abroad. Of the deportees , 490,000 had
escaped or died (mainly escaped) by 1 January 1932. In 1932–40, 390,000 were of cially recorded
as dying as deportees . In addition, there were substantial numbers of deaths during transportatio n in
1932–33 which are excluded from the Zemskov data for those years since these record what happene d
to the deportee s after they had arrived and been registered, not before. In 1940–52 a further half a
million deportee s died (Zemskov, ‘Deportatsii naseleniy a …’, p.182). This suggests that among the
‘not less than six million’ deportees , deaths were in the range of 1–1.5 million. The data cited by
Zemskov and Polyan also appear to exclude the rst category of ‘kulaks’. Of these, 284,000 were
arrested in January–September 1930. See L. Viola, The Role of the OGPU in Dekulakization , Mass
Deportation s and Special Resettlement in 1930, The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European
Studies, no.1406 (University of Pittsburgh, 2000). The data in the Pavlov report suggest that ‘only’
about 7% of them were shot and that most of them were sent to camps and prisons. How complete
was the accounting for rst category ‘kulaks’ in the Pavlov report is uncertain.
61
Polyan, Ne po …, pp. 245–246.
62
Zemskov, ‘Deportatsii naseleniya …’, p. 173.
63
V.V. Luneev, Prestupnost ’ XX veka (Moscow, 1997), p. 180. Unfortunately Luneev does not
give precise archival references , which makes it impossible to check his assertions . Furthermore, the
very high estimates for repression in the Stalin era which he quotes from a number of unreliabl e
authors undermine his own credibilit y as a serious researcher .
64
A.N. Yakovlev, ‘Noveishaya istoriya Rossii XX veka v dokumentakh : opyt istorio-
gra cheskogo issledovaniya ’, Vestnik Rossiiskoi akademii nauk, 2000, 6, p. 505.
65
V. Kudryavtsev & A. Trusov, Politicheskay a yustitsiya v SSSR (Moscow, 2000), pp. 315–316.
66
According to a December 1955 report by the USSR Ministry of Justice, in addition to those
shot prior to 1940, in 1940–June 1955 approximatel y 256,000 people were sentence d by courts to be
shot (168,000 of them in 1941–42). How many of them were condemned for political offences is not
clear, but it seems likely that the overwhelming majority of these victims were condemned for
political or military offences . In addition, in 1940–June 1955 there were shooting s by order of the
Military Collegium of the Supreme Court and by order of the Osoboe soveshchani e of the
MGB-MVD which are not included in these gures. See A. Kokurin & Yu. Morukov, ‘GULAG:
struktura i kadry’, Svobodnay a Mysl’-XXI, 2001, 12, pp. 98–99.
67
Estimating accuratel y the number of those detained for political offences who died in
detention is dif cult. The number of registere d Gulag deaths (camps and colonies ) in 1930–56 was
1.6–1.7 million (see note 75) but a substantia l proportion of those who died in the Gulag will have
been criminals. One can obtain a very crude estimate of the number of politicals among the group
of cially recorded as dying in the Gulag in the following way. According to one estimate, about a
fth of those sent to the Gulag were ‘counterrevolutionaries ’ (see note 76). If their mortality
experienc e was the same as other Gulag prisoners , then the number of ‘counterrevolutionaries ’ who
died in the Gulag would have been 1/5 of 1.6–1.7 million which is about a third of a million. It seems
quite possible, however, that the mortality experienc e of the political s was worse than that of the
criminals. If one makes the rather arbitrary assumption that it was twice as bad, that would suggest
that about two-thirds of a million ‘counterrevolutionaries ’ died in the Gulag. It is necessar y also to
take into account unrecorde d Gulag deaths, deaths among those who were not recorded as ‘counter-
revolutionaries ’ but can reasonabl y be considere d political prisoners, and deaths in prisons (the
Kokurin–Morukov mortality data exclude all non-Gulag prison deaths and also Gulag prison deaths
for all years except 1935–1938). An example of the former is that, just in 1934–40, about 500,000
prisoners are recorded as escaping from camps and colonies , but less than 300,000 are recorded as
recaptured. Part of this more than 200,000 discrepanc y were probably deaths (cf. footnote 23). See
1170 MICHAEL ELLMAN
also Zemskov, ‘Zaklyuchenny e v 1930-e gody …’, p. 65. Taking account of these factors and
rounding upwards produces the crude estimate of ‘perhaps one million’.
68
It might be possible to estimate these by examining the statistics of the numbers of ‘un t for
work ballast’ released from the camps. Records for this category were probably made at the time, and
probably still exist somewhere in the archives .
69
On the other hand, the number murdered by Stalin (about a million) was certainly less than
the number murdered by the Nazis. Hence it is untrue to write (J. Glover, HUMANITY. A Moral
History of the Twentieth Century (London, 1999), p. 317) that ‘The numbers of people murdered by
Stalin’s tyranny far surpass those killed in the Nazi camps’. The only way to save this assertion is
to include Stalin’s manslaughter/criminal negligence victims and the Stalin era famine victims with
the murder victims. For the reasons given in the text the present author considers this misleading .
70
Wheatcroft, ‘The Scale and Nature …’, p. 1334, suggests a gure of about three million. The
differenc e is explaine d by two factors. First, Wheatcroft suggests the number of deaths among
prisoner s and deportees was ‘about two million’ whereas the present author suggests ‘about two to
two and a half million’. Second, Wheatcroft takes no account of Gulag deaths after ‘release’.
71
In 1930–53 there were about 107 million deaths in the USSR. See E.M. Andreev, L.E. Darskii
& T.L. Kharkova, Naselenie Sovetskogo Soyuza 1922–91 (Moscow, 1993), p. 118; M. Ellman & S.
Maksudov, ‘Soviet Deaths in the Great Patriotic War: A Note’, Europe-Asia Studies, 46, 4, 1994.
72
Kokurin & Morukov, ‘Gulag: struktura i kadry’, Svobodnay a mysl’ – XXI, 2000, 10, p. 119.
73
P. Gregori [P. Gregory], ‘Ekonomicheskay a istoriya Rossii: chto my o nei znaem i chego
ne znaem. Otsenka ekonomista ’, Ekonomicheskay a istoriya. Ezhegodnik . 2000 (Moscow, 2001), pp.
10–11.
74
This number excludes about six million who are recorded as arriving ‘from NKVD/MVD
camps’. This category may have included some new prisoners . On the other hand, there may be some
double counting as a result of repeated arrest/recidivism.
75
This gure is arrived at by summing the number of detainees in Gulag camps on 1 January
1934 and the arrivals in 1934–40 from ‘other places of detention ’. The data used are published in
English in Getty, Rittersporn & Zemskov, ‘Victims of the Soviet Penal System …’, pp. 1048–1049,
and in Russian in Zemskov, ‘Massovye repressii …’, p. 314. The number of cially recorded as dying
in the camps and colonies in 1930–1956 was 1.61–1.74 million (Kokurin & Morukov, ‘GULAG:
struktura i kadry’, Svobodnay a mysl’ – XXI, 2000, 10, pp. 114–115). The former gure is the SANO
one, the latter the URO one (see note 23). According to Ivanova, Gulag v sisteme …, p. 110, just in
the war more than two million people died in the camps and colonies of the Gulag, but she does not
present any evidence for this high estimate.
76
Kokurin & Morukov estimate that in the 27 years of the existence of the Gulag (1930–1956)
the total number of prisoners who owed through the camps, colonies and prisons was ‘about 20
million’. In 1930–56 20.2 million people were condemned to detention, but the number of sentence s
was greater than the number of actual people sentenced , since some people were sentence d more than
once. Accordingl y they suggest that the actual number of people sentence d was about 17–18 million.
Of these totals they state that only about 4,000,000 (20%) were condemned for ‘counterrevolutionar y
crimes’ (this is the Pavlov report gure). See A. Kokurin & Yu. Morukov, ‘GULAG: struktura i
kadry’, Svobodnay a Mysl’-XXI, 2001, 12, pp. 100–101.
77
The numbers in this section refer to Soviet citizens in the USSR only. They exclude foreign
POWs, internees and other detainee s in the USSR, and also victims of Soviet repressio n outside the
USSR. Obviously Trotsky, the Spanish leftists repressed in the Spanish civil war, the Mongolian s
represse d in the 1930s, many of the East Europeans represse d in 1945–53 etc were also victims of
Soviet repression , but they are not included in this article. The terrible fate of the approximatel y
300,000 German civilians interned in Soviet death camps in 1945–46 is described by Wheatcroft in
‘German and Soviet Repression …’, pp. 1345–1346. (This descriptio n covers only a small part of this
group, but it seems quite possible that it was typical for the whole group.)
78
Wheatcroft, ‘The Scale and Nature …’, p. 1320.
79
Ibid., p.1334.
80
Davies, Harrison & Wheatcroft , The Economic Transformation …, pp. 60–64; M. Buttino,
‘Study of the Economic Crisis and Depopulation in Turkestan, 1917–1920’, Central Asian Survey, 9,
4, 1990; M. Buttino, ‘Economic Relations Between Russia and Turkestan, 1914–18, or How to Start
a Famine’, in J. Pallot (ed.), Transforming Peasants (Basingstoke, 1998); Naselenie Rossii … tom 1,
chapters IV, V and VI.
81
Kudryavtsev & Trusov, Politicheskay a yustitsiya …, p. 339.
82
Ibid., p. 301.
83
According to Glover, HUMANITY …, p. 237, ‘Stalinist deliberat e killing was on a scale
surpasse d only by war’. This is not so. It was also surpasse d by famine and disease.
SOVIET REPRESSION STATISTICS 1171
84
S. Wheatcroft , ‘The Great Leap Upwards’, Slavic Review, 58, 1, 1999, pp. 27–60.
85
It is greatly to the credit of Conquest that he wrote a whole book about ethnic cleansing and
also a whole book about the famine of 1931–34, which focussed on the suffering of the peasants and
which includes a chapter on the Kazakh experience . The former book rightly drew attention to a
series of events which adversel y affected a large number of people. The latter book drew the attention
of the general reader to an enormous humanitaria n disaster and was a major contributio n to adult
educatio n (althoug h the present author disagree s with the interpretatio n offered in the book).
Solzhenitsy n too has always stressed the scale of the 1931–34 disaster.
86
A. de Waal, Famine Crimes (London and Bloomington Indiana, 1997).
87
O.V. Khlevnyuk et al. (eds), Stalin i Kaganovich . Perepiska, 1931–1936 gg (Moscow, 2001),
p.217.
88
Khlevnyuk et al. (eds), Stalin i Kaganovich …, p.245.
89
Conquest himself simply argues the case for ‘criminal responsibility ’ but does not state for
which crime (R. Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow (London, 1986), p.330).
90
This is also the view of A.F. Kulish, Henotsyd. Holodomor 1932–1933. Prychyny, zhertvy,
zlochyntsi (Kharkiv, 2001).
91
R. Rosdolsky, ‘Engels and the “Nonhistoric” Peoples: The National Question in the Revol-
ution of 1848’, Critique, 18–19 passim.
92
Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow, p.329.
93
Ibid., p.329. Ivnitsky agrees with this. See N.A. Ivnitsky, Repressivnay a politika sovetsko i
vlasti v derevne (1928–1933 gg) (Moscow, 2000), p.299 (this passage refers speci cally to the famine
along the Volga).
94
Davies et al., The Economic Transformatio n …, Table 22, p. 290.
95
Actually, ethnic cleansing under wartime condition s is not uniquely Stalinist. In the UK in
1940 Germans and Italians (most of whom were anti-fascist political refugees ) were interned, and in
1942 in the USA 110,000 Japanese-American s and Japanese were interned. However, the Soviet and
UK/USA cases differ substantiall y with respect to numbers involved , mortality rates and length of
time away from home.
Appendix. Do the famine victims belong in the same category as repression victims?
Some writers include famine victims with repression victims, but others treat them as a separate
category . In this connectio n it should be noted that:
(1) The categorisatio n of famine victims is theory-impregnated . This means that it depends on one’s
theory either of famines in general or of Soviet famines in particular . It seems that in nineteent h
century Russia peasants generally considered famines ‘the will of God’. Naturally, if one accepts
the theory of the divine causation of famines then the question of human responsibilit y cannot
arise. Many writers ascribe a large share of the blame for famines to natural conditions (e.g.
droughts). In this case a large share of the explanatio n for the famine deaths would be an ‘act of
Nature’, even though possibly suitable actions by the authorities might have prevented or reduced
famine deaths regardles s of the adverse natural conditions . On the other hand, some writers treat
famines as conquerabl e and, when they take place, as the fault of the local political system. Given
this theory of the causation of famines, then famines are crimes and the criminals are the
dictator/generals/politicians who run the country where the famine occurred .86
(2) Whether famine deaths should be considered murder or manslaughte r or something else partly
depends on the information available to the leadershi p at the time. If the leadershi p was unaware
of the actual situation their responsibilit y would be less than if they were fully informed. For
example, although the Ukrainian leadershi p requested a reduction in grain procuremen t in the
summer of 1932 as a result of the needs of their own people, Stalin was informed by Markevich ,
the deputy Narkom for agriculture , on 4 July 1932 that the 1932 harvest was average and
considerabl y better than that of 1931.87 On 25 July 1932 Stalin, although he fully recognise d the
need to partially reduce the grain procurement plan of Ukrainian collective farms, thought that
for the USSR as a whole the harvest had been ‘undoubtedl y good’.88 However, even if careful
study of the information environment surroundin g Stalin leads to the conclusion that he was
inadequatel y informed about the true situation, this does not eliminate the possibility of criminal
responsibility . That depends on the extent to which the inadequate information was itself a result
of his policies, in particula r the extensiv e repressio n which could have made the provision of
accurate information very dangerou s for the person or organisatio n providin g it. Similarly, the
absence of accurate media reports of the situation , which might have forced the governmen t to
1172 MICHAEL ELLMAN
take appropriat e famine relief measures, was a direct result of the Soviet policy of use of the
media as propagand a instruments .
(3) For a charge of (mass) murder or a crime against humanity (as opposed to manslaughte r or
criminal negligence ) the question of intent is very important. While there is plenty of evidence
to justify a charge of manslaughter or criminal negligence , there seems to the present author to
be little evidence for murder.89 Conquest thinks that Stalin wanted large numbers of Ukrainians
to die in 1933.90 This seems to the present author possible but unproven and no explanation of
the deaths of Kazakhs and Russians. Of course, the general attitude of Marx and Engels and of
Russian Marxists to the Ukrainian cause was unsympatheti c and during the Civil War many
Bolsheviks considered Ukrainian a ‘counter-revolutionary ’ language .91 In addition, it is well
known that in 1932–33 Stalin thought he was engaged in a war against wreckers, saboteur s and
sit-down strikers. In a war one strives to bend to one’s will, and if necessar y kill, one’s enemies.
Many people were deliberatel y shot or deported. Nevertheless , evidence that Stalin consciousl y
decided to kill millions of people is lacking. It seems to the present author more likely that Stalin
simply did not care about mass deaths and was more intereste d in the balance of payments (which
required grain exports) and the industrialisatio n programme. Just as the British governmen t in
1943 was more interested in the war effort than in saving the life of Bengalis, so the Soviet
governmen t in 1931–33 was more intereste d in industrialisatio n than in saving the life of peasants
or nomads.
(4) We are intereste d in uniquely Stalinist evil, not in events which have their parallels in many
countries and thus cannot be considere d uniquely Stalinist. Unfortunately , famines in which
millions of people die are not unique to the USSR in the Stalin era. Not only was there one in
Soviet Russia (in 1921–22) prior to Stalin’s accession to supreme power, but major famines were
widespread throughou t the world in the nineteent h and twentieth centuries , for example in the
British empire (India and Ireland), China, Russia and elsewhere. Furthermore, the world-wide
death of millions of people in recent decades which could have been prevented by simple public
health measures or cured by applicatio n of modern medicine, but was not, might be considere d
by some as mass manslaughte r—or mass death by criminal negligence—by the leaders of the G8
(who could have prevented these deaths but did not do so). The present author is sympatheti c to
the idea that the leaders of the British Empire in the past (India and Ireland) and of the G8 in
recent years are guilty of mass manslaughter or mass deaths from criminal negligence because of
their not taking obvious measures to reduce mass deaths. However, if they are not condemned for
this, it is not clear why—except on a very doubtful historica l account of Stalin’s knowledge and
intention s in 1932–33—Stalin should be convicted for the famine deaths of 1931–34 or of the
other Stalin-era famines. Conquest has argued that the ‘only conceivabl e defence’ for Stalin and
his associates is that they did not know about the famine.92 This ignores another possible
defence—that their behaviou r was no worse than that of many rulers in the nineteent h and
twentieth centuries .
(5) Conquest argues that ‘the cause of the famine was the setting of highly excessiv e grain requisition
targets by Stalin and his associates’.93 But it seems the grain procurement s in the agricultura l year
1932–33 (the main famine year) were less than in every other agricultura l year in the period
1930–31 to 1939–40 inclusive .94 This suggests that something other than procurements , namely
the size of the harvest, was also an important factor. Although the low harvests of 1931 and 1932
were partly a result of the political and agronomic policies of the Stalinist leadership , they were
partly a result of adverse natural condition s (weather). Hence the exclusiv e blame which
Conquest attaches to procuremen t policy is one-side d and ignores the size of the harvest.
Accordingl y the present author consider s it appropriat e to place the famine victims in a different
category from the repression victims, even if one judges Stalin during the famines to have been guilty
of causing mass deaths by manslaughter or criminal negligence . Both categorie s contain huge
numbers of victims, but only the latter was unusual by internationa l standards . About 12 million
people were arrested or deported, and at least 3 million died, as a result of political persecution by
their own government.95
This distinctio n between famines and political persecutio n correspond s to normal historica l
practice. The victims of the 1943 Bengal famine are usually considere d to be ‘famine victims’ rather
than ‘repression victims’ even though by appropriat e actions the British Government could have
saved many of the lives of those who died. Similarly with the Irish famine of the 1840s. It also
correspond s to current internationa l law. Unintentiona l famine, unlike murder or deportation , is not
classi ed as a crime against humanity (see article 7 of the Rome Statute of the Internationa l Criminal
Court).
Vol. 54, No. 7, 2002, 1151–1172
Soviet Repression Statistics: Some
Comments
MICHAEL ELLMAN
… a debate is taking place between a historian who in his research bases himself on real
documents of the MVD, and those whose estimates are based on the evidence of witnesses
and scattered (often unreliable) data. This situation turns the question of the necessity for
academic criticism of the data which entered the of cial departmental statistics of the MVD,
Ministry of Justice and Procuracy, into a practical one.
V.P. Popov, ‘Gosudarstvennyi terror v sovetskoi Rossii,
1923–1953 gg. (istochniki i ikh interpretatsiya)’,
Otechestvennye arkhivy, 1992, 2, pp. 20–21.
… the of cial data are clearly better than earlier outside estimates, but are they complete?
They need critical scrutiny. We do not yet know the answers to many important questions,
because the accounting system was chaotic and the gures lent themselves to manipulation.
Bureaucratic as well as political motives led to the separate registration of various categories
of prisoner … One has to … avoid leaping to conclusions. Scholars in this sensitive eld
need to be humble about the extent of current knowledge but ambitious in setting future
goals.
J. Keep, ‘Recent writing on Stalin’s Gulag: an overview’,
Crime, Histoire & Societes, 1997, 2, p. 110.
´´
Judging by the example of Turkmenistan, a task requiring time and labour, undertaken by
groups of historians, will be necessary to verify the data [on 1937–38 repression victims] and
ll in the gaps. Besides the accounts of the central NKVD apparatus, it is essential to take
account of documents from provincial archives which contain the data on the place and
concrete activities [which comprised the] repressive operations.
´
O. Hlevnjuk [Khlevnyuk], ‘Les mecanismes de la “Grande Terreur”
´ ´
des annees 1937–38 au Turkmenistan’,
Cahiers du Monde russe, 39, January–June 1998, p. 205.
Recently a debate took place in this journal about the accuracy and meaning of Soviet
repression statistics.1 The present article discusses ve aspects of these statistics:
releases from the Gulag, repression deaths in 1937–38, ubyl’, the relationship between
stocks and ows, and the total number of repression victims.
ISSN 0966-8136 print; ISSN 1465-342 7 online/02/071151-2 2 Ó 2002 University of Glasgow
DOI: 10.1080/096681302200001717 7
1152 MICHAEL ELLMAN
Releases from the Gulag
In their well known 1993 paper giving a preliminary presentation of archival
repression data,2 Getty, Rittersporn & Zemskov surprised many readers by their
unexpectedly high gures for releases.3 According to this paper, in 1934–52, 5.4
million people were freed from the Gulag. The largest annual gures (about 620,000
in 1941 and 510,000 in 1942) are obviously mainly explained by releases to the armed
forces. Getty, Rittersporn & Zemskov state that during the war about 975,000 Gulag
inmates were released to military service (in particular to punitive or ‘storm’ units,
which suffered the heaviest casualties).4 Similarly, the large number (approximately
340,000) of prisoners released in 1945 was a consequence of the July 1945 amnesty.
Nevertheless, their data show 370,000 released in 1936, 317,000 in 1940 and about
330,000 in 1952.
Since these large gures for releases are for many people counter-intuitive, it is not
surprising that Conquest writes that, ‘as to the numbers “freed”: there is no reason to
accept this category simply because the MVD so listed them’.5 In this connection it
is important to note the following: prisoners can be freed because they complete their
sentences, because the sentences are remitted, because of an amnesty or because they
are too ill to work and hence are a burden on the camps’ food supply and number of
guards and other personnel, and on their report gures for output, productivity,
mortality and nancial results. Whereas an amnesty (as in 1953) is a sign of
humanity, release to die indicates a callous attitude of camp bosses to their prisoners.
In 1930 the OGPU issued order no. 361/164 of 23 October ‘On the unloading from
the OGPU camps of the elderly, complete invalids and the very ill’. This provided a
procedure for the release of this ‘un t for work ballast’.6 In January 1934 this order
was cancelled by OGPU order no. 501.7 In November 1934 NKVD order no. 00141
once again provided a procedure for the release of ‘the ill, the elderly and invalids’.
Amongst other things it instructed the relevant bodies to draw up a list of illnesses
which would qualify the person concerned for release. In June 1939 a decree of the
Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet banned the practice of early release of
prisoners. 8 On 29 April 1942 Beriya and the USSR Procurator Bochkov signed a joint
directive banning ‘until the end of the war’ all releases from the camps (e.g. of people
who had completed their sentences) with the exception of ‘complete invalids, the un t
for work, the elderly and women with children’, who could be released ‘in the case
of complete impossibility of using them in the camps’.9
In accordance with a decree of the USSR Supreme Court of 1 August 1942 and the
joint directive of the NKVD, Narkomyust and the Procuracy of 23 October 1942
resulting from it, prisoners suffering from incurable diseases were to be released from
their places of detention. In accordance with a list of incurable conditions, approved
by the head of the Gulag, people were to be freed if they suffered from ‘emaciation
as a result of avitaminosis’ (this was a bureaucratic expression for starvation),
‘alimentary distrophy’ (this was another bureaucratic expression for starvation),
leukaemia, malignant anaemia, decompressed tuberculosis of the lungs, open bacil-
liary tuberculosis of the lungs, acute amphysemna of the lungs etc. As Isupov sensibly
notes, ‘In other words, the prisoners were released to die’.10 Conquest quotes two
cases of people being released when they were on the point of death and correctly
SOVIET REPRESSION STATISTICS 1153
points out that this shows that the categories used in Gulag statistics may be
misleading. 11 He seems to be unaware, however, that the release of prisoners on the
point of death was of cial policy and practised on a currently unknown scale over
many years.
The Gulag had two functions, punitive and economic. To implement the latter, its
inmates had to provide large amounts of hard physical labour. Prisoners who could
not do that and could not do any other kind of work were for many of its of cials
just an unwanted burden which worsened its economic success indicators.12 The
policy of releasing ‘un t for work ballast’ was a cost-cutting measure which was
intended to save on food consumption and on guards and other personnel, and hence
reduce the de cit and improve productivity in the Gulag. It increased ‘ef ciency’ (i.e.
the ratio of output to inputs) while simultaneously improving the nancial results and
the mortality statistics. (Similarly, after the war, German POWs who were invalids or
very ill were released before the able-bodied. From an economic point of view this
was entirely rational and optimised the results of utilising the POWs.) Wheatcroft
correctly drew attention to the fact that senior of cials were concerned about high
mortality and that ‘incidents of high mortality were often investigated’.13 This,
however, did not necessarily lead to an improvement in conditions, since camp bosses
could improve their mortality statistics by releasing those about to die. In fact, the
bosses of the Gulag as a whole were keen to improve the mortality statistics this way.
An instruction of 2 April 1943 by the head of the Gulag forbade including deaths of
released former prisoners in Gulag mortality statistics.14 (This is not the only example
of the use of mortality data as success indicators leading to misleading mortality
statistics. The postwar ltration statistics, which purport to show that as of 1 March
1946, out of the 4.2 million people checked, 58% had been sent home, include those
who died in the ltration camps among those ‘sent home’.15)
The release of ‘un t for work ballast’ continued after the war. According to
Volkogonov , quoting archival sources, ‘In July 1946 Beriya reported to Stalin that the
MVD’s corrective labour camps during the war had “accumulated” more than
100,000 prisoners who were completely un t for work and whose upkeep required
substantial resources. The MVD recommended that the incurably ill, including the
mentally disturbed, be released. Stalin agreed …’.16
At the present time there do not appear to be any data available on the number of
those who died within, say, 6 months of being freed from the Gulag.17 Nevertheless,
two things are already clear. First, the large number of people recorded as being
‘freed’ are not necessarily a sign of the humaneness of the system but may simply
re ect—at least in part—its callous attitude to its prisoners. Second, the of cial Gulag
statistics on mortality in the camps understate mortality caused by the camps, since
they exclude deaths taking place shortly after release but which resulted from
conditions in the Gulag.18
Repression deaths in 1937–38
There are two types of contemporary of cial documents from which one can derive
gures on repression deaths in 1937–38. They are the NKVD records and the
demographic statistics (the censuses of 1926, 1937 and 1939 and the population
1154 MICHAEL ELLMAN
registration data). The former have been presented and discussed by Wheatcroft in
this journal,19 the latter were discussed by Wheatcroft & Davies.20 In addition there
are a wide variety of estimates not based on contemporary of cial documents but
based on personal, rst-hand, unof cial, so-called literary sources.
Isupov, relying on the NKVD data, came to the conclusion that repression deaths
in 1937–38 were ‘about a million’.21 This gure was based on the NKVD of cial
gures of 682,000 shot in 1937–38 following sentence on NKVD cases (po delam
organov NKVD)22 1 116,000 who died in the Gulag23 1 non-article 58 arrestees who
were shot 24 1 an allowance for possible underestimation.25 If one relies entirely on the
NKVD data, then about a million seems to be a reasonable estimate, and possibly
even an overestimate. For example, simply adding all those who died in detention to
those of cially recorded as being shot may result in some double counting, since it
seems that in some cases people who died during interrogation were registered as
having been condemned by a troika.26 However, although the NKVD data are very
useful, they suffer from three limitations. First, the categories used may be mislead-
ing, as in the case of those recorded as ‘freed’, which was discussed above.27 Second,
the NKVD data on killings are known to exclude some categories of victims.
Wheatcroft has explained that the NKVD data for 1939–41 exclude the Katyn
massacre, other killings of the population of the newly annexed areas, especially the
Poles, and the mass shooting of soldiers (deserters and so-called deserters) in 1941.28
Third, there are apparent or real contradictions in the NKVD data. For example,
Ivanova has drawn attention to apparent signi cant discrepancies in the data on the
number of people sentenced by the Osoboe soveshchanie in 1940–52.29 The data
given for this category in the much cited 1953 Pavlov report (‘Kruglov gures’)30
appear to be contradicted by other data. In such cases it is necessary to examine the
data carefully to see whether the discrepancies are merely apparent (e.g. resulting
from de nitional differences) or real. If they are real, it is necessary to assess the
relative value of the different sources. These three limitations are common ground
amongst all the participants in the debate. They suggest that an estimate which takes
literally the currently available NKVD data may be too low.
In view of these limitations, it seems inappropriate to treat the NKVD statistics as
a point estimate and more appropriate to treat them as a range. The lower bound of
this range would be formed by taking the NKVD data and categories literally. In that
case the number of excess deaths would be 682,000 (the number of those reported as
shot on NKVD cases) 1 150,000 registered deaths in detention (the SANO/URO
average—see note 23) 1 2,000 excess non-article 58 shootings, which equals 834,000.
Since there is reason to think that the Pavlov report excludes some NKVD killings
(‘executions’), that the data for registered deaths in detention understate actual deaths
in detention, and that some of those released in 1937–38 died in 1937–38 as a result
of their treatment in the Gulag (see above), then a reasonable minimum estimate is
950,000. The upper bound of the range would be formed by estimating the actual
number of NKVD killings at, say, 850,000, the actual number of deaths in detention
in 1937–38 at, say, 200,000, the actual number of excess non-article 58 deaths at, say,
5,000 and treating all those recorded as released from the Gulag in 1937–38 (644,000)
as having died by 31 December 1938 as a result of their treatment in the Gulag. This
produces an upper bound of 1,699,000.31 This gure, however, is much too high,
SOVIET REPRESSION STATISTICS 1155
since the assumption that all those released in 1937–38 were dead by 31 December
1938 is most implausible. In April 1937 Ezhov told Molotov that more than 60,000
prisoners a month were being released from camps and other places of detention and
requested the organisation of a programme to reintegrate released prisoners into the
labour force.32 This implies that in the rst half of 1937 large numbers of able-bodied
prisoners were being released. Similarly, of the 54,000 prisoners recorded as having
been released from the Gulag in the rst quarter of 1940, 66.5% were released
because their sentence had expired and only 0.006% (three persons) on the grounds
of illness.33 If one assumes that three-quarters of those recorded as released in
1937–38 were still alive on 31 December 1938, then that would reduce the upper
bound to 1,216,000 or, rounded to the nearest 50,000, 1.2 million.
The above means that in view of the uncertainties about their accuracy and the
meaning of the categories they use, it is too early to argue for a precise gure for
repression deaths in 1937–38 on the basis of the currently available NKVD account-
ing data. Rather, they can be used to support a range. It was argued above that the
most convincing estimate of this range, given current knowledge, is 950,000–1.2
million. This range includes the Isupov estimate. It also includes the Rose elde
estimate (1.075 million).34 The two main areas of uncertainty are NKVD killings
(‘executions’), excluded from the Pavlov report, and the mortality experience of the
644,000 people recorded as being released from the Gulag in 1937–38. Further
research on these two topics would be most valuable.
In 1994 Wheatcroft & Davies, using both the demographic and NKVD data,
1
suggested that repression deaths in 1937–38 were ‘about 1–12 million’.35 The range
was wide because of uncertainty about the accuracy of the NKVD statistics and the
dif culty of allocating victims among the various demographic disasters of the 1930s.
These include the famine of 1931–34, excess deaths among repressed peasants and
deportees, and the repression of 1937–38. The Wheatcroft–Davies estimate overlaps
with that suggested above on the basis of a consideration of the NKVD data alone,
but its upper bound is above that which a consideration of the NKVD data
alone would suggest. Since 1994 we have learned more about the NKVD data, their
meaning and limitations. It now seems more sensible to rely on the corrected NKVD
data. This reduces the upper bound of the Wheatcroft–Davies estimate by 300,000.
Conquest, on the other hand, suggests that repression deaths in 1937–38 were 2–3
million, i.e. more than double the above estimate based on NKVD records and double
the Wheatcroft–Davies estimate.36 Conquest’s estimate raises three issues: the method
used in deriving it, its compatibility with the demographic data and the sources on
which it is based.
Method
Conquest’s method is the utilisation of a wide variety of personal, rst-hand,
unof cial, so-called literary sources. Before glasnost’ this was the only source
available. As Wheatcroft has repeatedly acknowledged, its use enabled Conquest to
generate estimates of NKVD killings (‘executions’) in 1937–38 much more accurately
than the sceptics thought. They were also more accurate than the estimates of some
Western academics. However, as a result rst of glasnost’ and then of the collapse of
1156 MICHAEL ELLMAN
the USSR, we now have much better sources, the new demographic and NKVD data.
The unof cial sources are now just one of three possible sources for studying
repression, alongside the demographic and NKVD data. The unof cial sources can be
of great value for providing a qualitative picture of what happened and for conveying
the subjective impressions of those involved. However, when comparing the value of
these three sources, it is important to realise that the use of the unof cial sources for
generating numerical estimates suffers from a major weakness. It is well known that
the unof cial sources are frequently very unreliable as sources of quantitative data.
An example of this is Antonov-Ovseenko ’s underestimate of the USSR’s 1937
population. 37 Antonov-Ovseenk o fell into the trap of using a (downward) approxi-
mation of the normally enumerated population as an estimate of the total population
(which also included those enumerated by the NKVD and NKO and those not
enumerated at all). Furthermore, the use of unof cial sources introduces an important
bias into our study of Soviet repression and penal policy, in favour of politicals and
against criminals. Although only a minority of the inhabitants of the Gulag were
of cially classi ed as ‘counterrevolutionaries’ (although, as is agreed by all the
participants in this debate, the division between criminals and politicals was blurred
under Soviet conditions38), the unof cial or literary sources mainly derive directly or
indirectly from the politicals and hence give a one-sided picture. In these sources
criminals gure mainly as a hostile and dangerous element, rather than as, say,
themselves victims of rapid and violent social change. A former NKVD of cial has
observed of Solzhenitsyn’s writings that they give ‘the impression that the prisoners
of the Gulag were mainly political prisoners. This is not so. The overwhelming
majority of prisoners were criminals. Otherwise the Gulag would not have been able
to ful l its tasks. With the hands of intellectuals, which is what the political prisoners
were, it would have been impossible to carry out the immense works, in the course
of which a mass of heavy manual labour was undertaken’.39 In only 2 years, 1946 and
1947, did the ‘counterrevolutionaries’ form a majority of Gulag inmates.40 If more use
had been made of the experience of the criminals (e.g. by means of oral history) our
image of the Gulag would be substantially different.
However, it is important to note that the categories used in the Gulag statistics to
classify the inmates by type of offence were ‘highly misleading’.41 Hence the
statistical division between ‘politicals’ and ‘criminals’ is somewhat arbitrary. For
example, according to the Gulag statistics for 1 January 1939, the proportion of
prisoners for ‘counterrevolutionary’ offences was only 34.4%. However, the same
statistics also classify 21.7% of the prisoners as ‘socially harmful elements and
socially dangerous elements’.42 It seems likely that this group consisted mainly of
criminals and marginals (vagabonds, homeless, street children, unemployed, beggars
etc.). Their classi cation is problematic. Was someone who killed an OGPU of cer
or urban Communist come to deport his family a ‘murderer’ or a person acting in
‘self-defence’ against barbarians? Was a homeless person who lived by theft a
‘criminal’ or a ‘victim of political persecution’ by inhumane authorities who had
deported his parents or taxed out of existence the shop from which his family had
earned their livelihood? Similarly, was someone shot as a ‘counterrevolutionary’
because some malicious person coveted their living space really a victim of political
persecution? These dif culties in classi cation re ect the fact that the categories
SOVIET REPRESSION STATISTICS 1157
‘criminal’ and ‘political’ are much more appropriate in a settled society than in the
violent and revolutionary upheaval which took place in the USSR in the 1930s.
It should be pointed out, however, that Conquest’s method has one important
advantage. It instils a healthy scepticism as to the meaning of the categories in the
documents from the NKVD archives and the completeness of the gures in these
documents. The relevance of the rst type of scepticism was shown above. The
relevance of the second is shown in the section on stocks and ows below.
Compatibility with the demographic data
On the basis of the demographic data for the 1930s it seems that there were about 10
million excess deaths in 1926–39.43 The total number of excess deaths suggested by
Conquest is higher. He suggests a total of perhaps 16–18 million.44 This is above what
seems likely on the basis of the demographic data. It can only be made compatible
with the demographic data by assuming high birth rates between the 1926 and 1937
censuses of babies who soon died and by reducing the 1939 census totals. The birth
rate in the early 1930s is uncertain and controversial.45 By assuming a suf ciently
high birth rate in the early 1930s and adjusting down the 1939 census totals, one can
reconcile the Conquest gures with the demographic data.46 Some adjustment to the
contemporary population registration data for births and to the originally published
totals for the 1939 census are generally agreed to be necessary. However, the
adjustments required to reconcile Conquest’s totals with the censuses are regarded as
too large and implausible by most specialists. It should be noted, however, that
Conquest reduced some of his numerical estimates in the light of the new data.
Sources
Furthermore, the sources Conquest gives for his estimate are not very impressive. For
example, he cites an estimate of 20 million arrests and 7 million deaths in 1935–41
given by Sergo Mikoyan, the son of A.I. Mikoyan, in a Soviet newspaper article.47
However, the published version of A.I. Mikoyan’s memoirs, edited by Sergo
Mikoyan, presents a somewhat different picture.48 Neither in the USSR nor elsewhere
are newspapers reliable statistical sources.
It is important to note that criticism of Conquest’s numerical estimates is not a
criticism of the qualitative picture painted by Conquest. As Conquest correctly noted,
‘… historical work that uses gures that may have to be corrected in the light of later
evidence may be sound in every other respect, as is true of the work of historians
from Herodotus and Tacitus (impossible gures on Xerxes’s and Calgacus’s forces,
reliable and conscientious as to fact)’.49 Conquest is not a specialist in demography
or penology whose main aim was to generate accurate statistics. He is a writer on
Soviet affairs for the general public. His main aim was to give a qualitative picture
of enormous horrors to the general public, and in this he succeeded admirably.
In the present state of knowledge the range derived from the NKVD data of
950,000–1,200,000 seems to be the range which takes maximum account of the
available data. It is a range rather than a point estimate precisely because of the
limitations of the currently available data. Naturally, as Wheatcroft has repeatedly
1158 MICHAEL ELLMAN
stressed, and is in principle the same for all historical data, it is a provisional estimate
which may have to be revised as new data come to light.
The number of excess deaths in 1937–38 is, of course, considerably less than the
number of repression victims in 1937–38. It excludes those arrested and still alive in
places of detention on 31 December 1938. It also excludes those deported in 1937–38.
These were mainly the Soviet Koreans, usually estimated as 172,000 persons,
deported in September–October 1937—the rst Soviet people to be deported as a
whole.50 It also excludes army of cers, party of cials and state of cials who were
dismissed from their posts in 1937–38 but not arrested. It also excludes the emotional
and material suffering of those close relatives of the repressed who themselves were
not arrested or deported (but frequently discriminated against—often for many
years). In Russia in the 1990s there existed a legal category of postradavshii which
consisted of people such as children of repression victims, who were not themselves
incarcerated but ‘suffered’ as a result of the repression of their close relatives such as
parent/s.51
Ubyl’
In March 1947 USSR Minister of Internal Affairs Kruglov sent a report to Beriya in
which he explained his labour requirements for the second quarter. Amongst other
things he stated that he would need 100,000 people ‘to cover losses’ (‘na pokrytie
ubyli’). This passage was quoted by Volkogonov in his Trotsky biography, published
in 1992. 52 In a footnote Volkogonov explained that ‘ “Pokrytie ubyli” … means the
delivery of fresh workers to replace those who had died in the camps of the
innumerable Dal’strois, Spetsstrois etc”. Conquest concluded from this that in the rst
quarter of 1947 100,000 prisoners had died in the camps. He used this to illustrate the
inadequacies of the MVD data and to criticise their use by Wheatcroft. According to
Conquest, Volkogonov had shown that the MVD data on releases were a
falsi cation.53
Was the Volkogonov interpretation in fact correct? Volkogonov enjoyed substantial
access both to archives and to persons involved in Stalinist repression and his writings
contain a mass of valuable information, much of it previously unknown. His work
added substantially to knowledge. Furthermore, he presented his new data to a wide
public. This was important both from an educational and from a political point of
view. However, he was very sensitive to the changing political climate. When he
published his Trotsky biography, the political demand was for high gures for
Stalinist repression. Furthermore, study of Soviet demographic statistics for the
post-war period shows that ubyl’, which literally means ‘diminution’ or ‘decrease’
and is frequently used for military losses, was not a synonym for deaths (just as for
an army ‘losses’—which include injured and those taken prisoner by the enemy—are
not a synonym for deaths). In Soviet demographic statistics of the post-war period
ubyl’ includes not just deaths but also other facts leading to a population decline,
such as the call-up of conscripts, moving elsewhere for work or education, or
reclassi cation of rural areas as urban. This can be clearly seen, for example, in the
February 1948 report of the deputy representative of the USSR Gosplan to the
Secretary of the Moldovan CC reporting the results of his calculation of the size of
SOVIET REPRESSION STATISTICS 1159
the rural population of Moldova after the famine of 1946–47 and explaining the
reasons for its decline in 1947.54
As far as the Gulag is concerned, by now numerous works have been published
presenting contemporary Gulag statistics.55 These all show that ubyl’, although it
includes deaths, is not used as a synonym for deaths and includes other categories
leading to a decline in the number of prisoners. For example, a top secret (sover-
shenno sekretno) 1956 report on the numbers imprisoned in the Gulag and colonies
in 1953–55 stated that in 1953 ubyl’ was 1.6 million, of whom 1.2 million were
amnestied and released under the amnesty of 27 march 1953.56
Hence it is obvious that Volkogonov ’s explanation of ubyl’ was mistaken. This
means that one of Conquest’s arguments for criticising the NKVD–MVD statistics,
and the use made of them by Wheatcroft, is erroneous.
Stocks and ows
In a series of articles Wheatcroft has criticised Conquest’s estimates of the number of
detainees in various years. He has used the recently available NKVD data to argue
that they are both incompatible with Conquest’s earlier estimates and more reliable
than them. Both of these arguments are correct.57 The same points were made in
Getty, Rittersporn & Zemskov’s 1993 American Historical Review article. It seems to
be widely thought that this shows that earlier ‘high’ estimates of the scale of the terror
were exaggerated.58 This is true if one looks only at data on the stock of prisoners at
any one time. However, the new data also provide information about the ow of
victims through the repression system. The unexpected nding about the high rate of
releases automatically means that the total number of people in the system at one time
or another was much higher, relative to the stock of prisoners at any one time, than
previously thought. The newly available numbers on the ow are truly enormous.
Moreover, as Conquest sensibly noted, they are of a similar order of magnitude to
older ‘high’ estimates of the total number sentenced in the Stalinist era.59
According to Zemskov the number of people deported in 1930–53 ( rst peasant
victims of collectivisation and then victims of ethnic cleansing) was ‘not less than six
million’.60 Of this total, 1.8 million ‘kulaks’ were deported in 1930–31, 1.0 million
peasants and ethnic minorities were deported in 1932–39, 61 and about 3.5 million
people (mainly ethnic minorities) in 1940–52. 62 This makes a total of 6.3 million in
1930–52. Rounded to the nearest million this makes six million, of whom the majority
were victims of ethnic cleansing. According to the Pavlov report, the number of
people sentenced for political offences in 1921–53—more precisely on cases of the
Cheka-OGPU-(GUGB)NKV D in 1921–38 and for ‘counterrevolutionary’ offences for
1939–53—was approximately 4,000,000. The number arrested in these same cate-
gories in 1921–53 according to the Pavlov report was about 6,000,000. Luneev for his
1997 book examined the data on repression in the Central Archive of the FSB and
came to the conclusion that the number charged with political crimes in 1918–58 was
about 7,000,000 and the number sentenced about 5,000,000.63 According to A.N.
Yakovlev, speaking in November 1999 and placing his remarks in an openly political
context, a recently unearthed document stated that the number arrested for political
crimes in 1921–53 was actually approximately 8,000,000.64 Kudryavtsev & Trusov
1160 MICHAEL ELLMAN
re-examined the Luneev gures and suggested that it was appropriate to include
groups excluded from the Luneev gures, e.g. those repressed by SMERSH in
1941–45. Hence they reached a gure for those sentenced for political offences in
1918–58 of 6.1 million.65 These additions to the Pavlov/Kruglov gures by Luneev,
Yakovlev and Kudryavtsev & Trusov suggest that Conquest and Keep were right to
be sceptical about their completeness. However, it is unlikely that the substantial
deduction which Kudryavstsev & Trusov make for ‘justi ably condemned’ (see the
next section) will nd favour with Conquest.
Of those deported or arrested for political reasons from 1921 onwards, the number
of deaths about which we have more or less reliable information seems to have been
about 3–3.5 million, of which about 1 million were shootings,66 1–1.5 million deaths
of deportees (see note 60) and perhaps 1 million deaths of prisoners.67 In addition
there is the currently unknown number of those who died shortly after being released
from the Gulag.68 (Moreover, there is also the currently unknown number killed by
the Bolsheviks in 1918–20.) As absolute gures for the number of citizens of a
country killed or caused to die by its own government, these gures are very large.
They greatly exceed, for example, the number of German citizens killed by the Nazis
(if one excludes German soldiers killed in wars started by the Nazis and German
civilians killed by enemy action in wars started by the Nazis).69 On the other hand,
relative to the total number of Soviet deaths in 1930–53 they were more modest. If
the total number of deaths in the above mentioned categories was, say, 4 million,70
that would be only about 3.7% of total USSR deaths in 1930–53.71 Writing about the
role of Gulag deaths in total Soviet mortality, Kokurin & Morukov correctly say that,
‘Contrary to widespread opinion, the share of deaths in detention rarely exceeded
2–3% of total deaths in the country and did not have a major in uence on the
demographic situation as a whole’.72
This latter conclusion may strike some as strange and counter-intuitive. This
re ects a general problem in historical interpretation—attention to extreme cases may
distort understanding. As Gregory has noted, with special reference to the impact of
the famine of 1891–92 on the image of Russian agricultural development before 1905,
‘single observations do not permit the evaluation of long-term tendencies. Remarkable
or catastrophic events (for example a famine) create a stronger impression than
everyday phenomena. The in uence of catastrophic events is so strong that it eclipses
the long-run trends, which are an average of periodic catastrophes and normal years.
In the same way that people after the coldest winter of the century think that there
is a general tendency to cooler winters, so historians are inclined to generalise on the
basis of unique or catastrophic events’.73
The number of people in the Gulag (camps and colonies) for shorter or longer
periods just in 1941–53 was about 16 million.74 The number in the Gulag for shorter
or lesser periods in 1934–40 was about 4,250,000.75 Allowing for the 1.5 million
stock of prisoners at the end of 1940, this might seem to mean that 18.75 million
prisoners owed through the Gulag in 1934–53. Actually, the situation is more
complex. Since some people were sentenced more than once, this gure contains an
upward bias (it actually measures sentences rather than individuals). On the other
hand, as a measure of total Gulag inmates, it also contains downward biases. It takes
no account of the numbers in the Gulag prior to 1934 or after 1953.76 It also excludes
SOVIET REPRESSION STATISTICS 1161
some groups classi ed separately from the other prisoners but who were in the Gulag
(or administratively subordinate to it) at certain periods. These included for example
the so-called ‘special contingent’, ‘labour army’ and ‘special settlers’. (The ‘labour
army’ of Soviet Germans in 1942–45 comprised more than 400,000 people.) It also
excludes those sentenced to forced labour at their normal place of work (for example
under the notorious decree on labour discipline of the Presidium of the Supreme
Soviet of 26 June 1940) even though they were under the direction of the Bureau of
corrective labour (Byuro ispravitel’nykh rabot or BIR) which was administratively
subordinate to the Gulag. It also takes no account of those repatriated after the war
to ltration camps (unless they were subsequently sent to the Gulag). These extra-
ordinary numbers show the enormous scale of political repression and forced labour
by criminals in the Stalin period. They are also higher than the (rightly criticised) old
high estimates of the stock of prisoners at various periods.
‘Victims of Stalinism’/‘Soviet power’
Many writers want to give a single gure for the ‘victims of Stalinism’ or ‘victims
of Soviet power’77 and are surprised to nd such confusion in the literature. Apart
from inaccurate estimates of particular categories, an important part of the explanation
is simply disagreement about which categories of deaths in the Stalin period should
be labelled as ‘victims of Stalinism’. Most of the excess deaths in the Stalin period
were victims of the three Stalin-era famines or of World War II (these two categories
overlap since the second Stalin-era famine was during World War II). Whether these
last two categories should be considered to be as much ‘victims of Stalinism’ as
repression victims is a matter of judgement and heavily coloured by political opinion.
Wheatcroft has argued that when thinking about excess deaths in the Stalin era one
should make a distinction between murder and manslaughter.78 Those who were shot
by the NKVD were killed by a deliberate decision of the state. Those who died during
or after deportation died because the state failed to make adequate provision for them.
Both groups, in the opinion of the present author, belong to the category of
‘repression victims’. This also seems to be the opinion of Wheatcroft, who groups
‘about a million’ purposive killings with ‘about two million’ victims among the
repressed whose death resulted from ‘criminal neglect and irresponsibility’.79 In view
of the scale of the deaths and the development of international law, one can nowadays
classify these excess deaths as crimes against humanity (Rome Statute of the
International Criminal Court, article 7), although this concept was only introduced
into international law after World War II and the permanent court to try charges of
them was only established decades after the acts concerned came to an end.
More dif cult to classify are famine victims. They are considered in the appendix.
It should be noted that the categories ‘war victims’ and ‘repression victims’ also
overlap since approximately 1 million prisoners died during the war and there
were also political arrests and shootings during it. As for the wider category of
‘victims of Soviet power’, that also includes the victims of the demographic
catastrophe of 1918–23.80 Who—if anyone—is to blame for that catastrophe is also
a matter of political and historical judgement. In addition, whether or not it is
appropriate to reduce the total of those unjusti ably sentenced for political offences
1162 MICHAEL ELLMAN
on the grounds that some of the sentences were ‘justi able’ is also a matter of
judgement. Kudryavtsev & Trusov, for example, consider that many people sentenced
in and after 1941–45 for collaboration and treason really were guilty of those
offences. Similarly, they argue that many of the armed opponents of Soviet power in
the western Ukraine and the Baltic republics were also justi ably condemned. (Armed
resistance to the state by separatists is regarded as an offence–often known as
‘terrorism’—which should be punished, throughout the world, not just in the USSR
under Stalin.) Accordingly, they reduce their estimate of 6.1 million condemned for
political reasons by 1.4 million ‘justi ably condemned’ (this gure also includes
of cers of the organs who themselves became victims of persecution under Ezhov,
Beriya and Khrushchev) to arrive at a gure of 4.7 million ‘unjustly condemned’ for
political reasons.81 Similarly, to what extent it is appropriate to offset ‘excess lives’
(resulting from falling mortality rates) against ‘excess deaths’ is also a matter of
judgement.
As Wheatcroft has repeatedly—quite rightly—stressed, our current quantitative
knowledge of repression is provisional and imperfect. A Russian book on political
justice in the USSR published in 2000, whose authors were able to use the already
existing literature and also had extensive archival access, including to the Central
Archive of the FSB, concluded, with special reference to the numbers sentenced to
death, ‘we do not yet have precise gures for the number of citizens killed in 1917–53
by order of a court or by extra-judicial organs for “political crimes” or for belonging
to a particular social or national group’.82
Since ‘victims of Stalinism’ or ‘victims of Soviet power’ are poorly de ned and
controversial categories, differing estimates would be inevitable even if we had
perfect statistics. Since the currently available statistics are imperfect, the wide range
of estimates for these categories is unavoidable. In this situation the best that
academic analysis can do is to try to generate the most accurate data possible on the
various sub-totals and explain the nature of the different categories and the differing
ways in which they can be evaluated. It is to be hoped that via textbooks the best
available data will in due course enter general consciousness and that the inaccurate
and misleading gures frequently presented will gradually fade away.
Conclusions
(1) The surprisingly high gures for those freed from the Gulag are partly explained
by several decisions to increase the ‘ef ciency’ 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 nancial results, but was not a sign
of the humanity of the system, and arti cially 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
SOVIET REPRESSION STATISTICS 1163
signi cant 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. Con-
quest’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 gures 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 falsi ed. 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 gures are still surrounde d by a signi cant margin
of uncertainty. The latter is a matter of theoretical, political and historical
judgement. The number of deportees ( rst 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 de ned 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 ‘justi ably punished for political offences’. It can also be
increased substantially by including those peasants who were deported ‘only’
1164 MICHAEL ELLMAN
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
gure excludes the deportees, prisoners of war and internees, those in the
post-war ltration 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 gure which exaggerates the number of people involved since some
people were detained more than once). These huge gures 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 classi cation of the prisoners are mis-
leading, and the concepts themselves are problematic under the conditions of the
1930s. Some (e.g. the homeless) are dif cult 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 anthro-
pometric indicators (height and weight)84 and the extra lives resulting from falling
mortality rates generally interest only a few specialists.85 Repression was enor-
mously 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 gures for the total number of
SOVIET REPRESSION STATISTICS 1165
victims or for some sub-totals. Further archival research—and discussion of the
meaning and signi cance of its ndings—is still needed.
University of Amsterdam
I am grateful to N. Adler, R. Binner, R. Conquest, R.W. Davies, M. Haynes, J. Keep, G. Oly,
E. van Ree and G. Rittersporn for helpful comments. I am also grateful to R.W. Davies, L. Viola, S.
Wheatcroft and G. Rittersporn for their helpful answers to queries. None of them is responsibl e for
anything written in this article. The author alone is responsibl e for the interpretatio n offered and for
the remaining errors.
1
S. Wheatcroft , ‘The Scale and Nature of German and Soviet Repression and Mass Killings,
1930–45’, Europe-Asia Studies, 48, 8, December 1996; R. Conquest, ‘Victims of Stalin: A Com-
ment’, Europe-Asia Studies, 49, 7, November 1997; S. Wheatcroft , ‘Victims of Stalinism and the
Soviet Secret Police: The Comparability and Reliability of the Archival Data—Not the Last Word’,
Europe-Asia Studies, 51, 2, March 1999; J. Keep, ‘Wheatcroft and Stalin’s Victims: Comments’,
Europe-Asia Studies, 51, 6, September 1999; R. Conquest, ‘Comment on Wheatcroft’, Europe-Asia
Studies, 51, 8, December 1999; S. Wheatcroft, ‘The Scale and Nature of Stalinist Repression and its
Demographic Signi cance: On Comments by Keep and Conquest’, Europe-Asia Studies, 52, 6,
September 2000.
2
J.A. Getty, G.T. Rittersporn & V.N. Zemskov, ‘Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the
Pre-war Years: A First Approach on the Basis of Archival Evidence’, American Historical Review,
98, 4, October 1993.
3
One reason for this surprise is the widespread image of Gulag prisoners as being mainly
intellectual s sentence d on political grounds. It is indeed true that article 58ers were frequentl y not
released during Stalin’s lifetime, even if their original sentence had expired. However, a large
proportio n of the Gulag’s prisoner s were ordinary Soviet citizens sentenced for non-politica l crimes
(as de ned by Soviet law) and often released on expiry of their sentence s or in an amnesty (as
in 1953) or for other reasons. The fact that the Gulag prisoners were not mainly intellectual s can
easily be seen from the data on their cultural and educationa l level. On 1 January 1940 8.4% of
them were illiterate and 30.3% were semi-literat e (malogramotnye), 49.6% had only a primary
educatio n and only 1.8% had a higher education . See V.N. Zemskov, ‘Zaklyuchenny e v 1930-e gody:
sotsial’no-demogra cheskie problemy’, Otechestvennay a istoriya, 1997, 4, p. 68.
4
For more detailed and somewhat different gures on wartime releases to the armed forces see
A.I. Kokurin & N.V. Petrov (eds), GULAG: Glavnoe upravleni e lagerei. 1918–1960 (Moscow,
2000), p. 428.
5
Conquest, ‘Victims of Stalin …’, p. 1317.
6
This phrase comes from OGPU order no. 143 of 17 September 1933. See A. Kokurin & N.
Petrov, ‘GULAG: struktura i kadry’, Svobodnay a mysl’—XXI, 1999, 8, p. 122.
7
Ibid., p. 127. The text of the 1930 order has not been available .
8
A. Kokurin & N. Petrov, ‘GULAG: struktura i kadry’, Svobodnay a mysl’—XXI, 2000, 3, pp.
119–120. This decree is also printed in Kokurin & Petrov (eds), GULAG: Glavnoe …, p. 116. It
seems to have been mainly aimed at the practice of early release for good work.
9
A. Kokurin & N. Petrov, ‘GULAG: struktura i kadry’, Svobodnay a mysl’—XXI, 2000, 6,
p. 123.
10
V.A. Isupov, Demogra cheskie katastrof y i krizisy v Rossii v pervoi polovine XX veka
(Novosibirsk , 2000) p. 164. The present author has checked the archival referenc e given by Isupov
and can con rm that Isupov’s statements are supporte d by the archival document cited. A.S.
Narinsky, Vospominaniy a glavnogo bukhgalter a (St. Petersburg, 1997), p. 241, relates the following
story. In 1942 a woman received a message from a Siberian camp that her father had been released
and that she should come and collect him. Long-distanc e travellin g in wartime was complicate d and
time-consuming . When, after 2 months, she nally reached the camp, her ‘released ’ father was dead.
11
Conquest, ‘Comment …’, p. 1482.
12
For example, in March 1940, in a report on the activities of the Gulag, its deputy director
stated that 73,000 of its inmates were sick and un t for work and that ‘the expenses associate d with
their maintenance (more than 100 million rubles p.a.) are a heavy burden on the Gulag’s budget’. See
Ekonomika GULAGa i ee rol’ v razvitii strany v 1930-e gody (Moscow, 1998), p. 128. (In 1940 100
million rubles was only 1.3% of the Gulag’s planned expenditure , but was 20% of its planned de cit.
See ibid., pp. 153–154.)
13
Wheatcroft , ‘The Scale and Nature …’, p. 1151.
1166 MICHAEL ELLMAN
14
Isupov, Demogra cheskie katastrof y …, p. 164.
15
Naselenie Rossii v XX veke, tom 2 1940–1959 gg (Moscow, 2001), pp. 154–155.
16
D. Volkogonov, Triumf i tragediy a, 2nd ed (Moscow, 1990), vol. 1, p. 410.
17
Even some of those who died more than 6 months after release basically died as a result of
their treatment in the Gulag. For example the engineer Zheleznyak was released as a result of
illness/frailty in the summer of 1943 but did not actually die for almost 2 years. See S. Zhuravlev,
‘Malen’kie lyudi’ i ‘bol’shaya istoriya’. Inostrants y moskovskog o Elektrozavod a v sovetskom
obshchestv e 1920-kh–1930-kh gg (Moscow, 2000), p. 334.
18
Conquest, ‘Comment …’, p. 1481, observed that ‘even when a Gulag document is right as to
totals, its categorie s may be wrong or misleading ’. The phenomenon discusse d in the text (‘freeing’
people to die) is an example of the categorie s used in Gulag documents being ‘misleading’.
19
Wheatcroft, ‘The Scale and Nature …’; and Wheatcroft, ‘Victims of Stalinism …’.
20
S. Wheatcroft & R. Davies, ‘Population’, in R.W. Davies, M. Harrison & S. Wheatcroft (eds),
The Economic Transformation of the Soviet Union, 1913–1945 (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 67–77.
21
Isupov, Demogra cheskie katastrof y …, p. 118.
22
Strictly speaking , in 1937–38 the ordinary police (militsiya) were part of the NKVD so that
po delam NKVD if taken literally should include ‘ordinary ’ arrests. However, since we know that in
1937–38 a total of 3.1 million people were arrested (Naselenie Rossiyi … tom 1, p.318) it seems that
the gures in the Pavlov report only refer to cases of the GUGB (Glavnoe Upravlenie Gosudarstven -
noi Bezopasnosti ) of the NKVD and its local administrations . (See P. Hagenloh, ‘ “Chekist in
Essence, Chekist in Spirit”; Regular and Political Police in the 1930s’, Cahiers du Monde russe, 42,
2–4, April–December 2001.)
23
In 1937–38 there were 140,000–160,000 registere d deaths in the Gulag (camps, colonies and
prisons). The reason why there are two different mortality gures is that there were two different
agencies that compiled these gures, the medical department (SANO) and the accounting and
allocatio n department (URO). The former gure is the SANO gure, the latter the URO one; see A.
Kokurin & Yu. Morukov, ‘GULAG: struktura i kadry’, Svobodnay a mysl’—XXI, 2000, 10, p. 114.
Isupov’s 116,000 gure is the URO gure for the camps alone (excluding the colonies and Gulag
prisons where URO recorded another 44,000 deaths in 1937–38). Wheatcroft , ‘The Scale and Nature
…’, suggests that the number of registered deaths in detention should be treated as a minimum
estimate of the number of actual deaths in detention. For a maximum estimate of the number of actual
deaths in detention he suggests adding to the gures for registere d deaths also the gures for
disappearanc e in transit plus all uncapture d runaways. This produces a maximum estimate of deaths
in detention in the Gulag (excludin g the colonies and prisons) in 1937–38 of 165,000. (This latter
gures is not given explicitly but can be derived by applying his maximum death rates per thousand
to the gures he gives for the numbers present on 1 January 1937 and 1938.)
24
Whereas most writers are intereste d in the total number of victims of political excess deaths,
Isupov is interested in total excess deaths. The difference is accounte d for by excess deaths among
criminals. Naturally, one could argue, as is done by Conquest, ‘Comment …’, p. 1481, that many of
those classi ed as criminals in the USSR were ‘really’ victims of political repression. The same point
was made by Wheatcroft, ‘The Scale and Nature …’, p. 1335. Wheatcroft (‘The Scale and Nature …’,
note 35) also quotes a literary source (Solzhenitsyn ) which states that in 1937–38, in addition to the
shooting of politicals , 480,000 criminals were shot. In his later ‘Victims …’, p. 327, quoting archival
sources, he gives the gure for of cially recorded criminal execution s in 1937–38 of 5,000. If the
number of recorded criminal executions in 1939–40 (3,000—see ibid., p. 337) is taken as the ‘normal’
level, then the number of recorded excess criminal execution s in 1937–38 was only 2,000. It seems,
however, that a considerabl e number of those shot po delam organov NKVD were not political s but
were ‘really’ criminals. For example, V.N. Khaustov, ‘Deyatel’nost’ organov gosudarstvenno i
bezopasnost i NKVD SSSR (1934–1941 gg)’, dissertation , Moscow, 1997, pp. 482–483, states on the
basis of archival documents that in 1937 157,694 people were arrested by the NKVD (he probably
means by the GUGB NKVD) for ‘non-political ’ offences and in 1938 45,183.
25
As far as unrecorded execution s are concerned , the only hard evidence currently available
seems to be Khlevnyuk’s analysis of Turkmenistan , commented on by Wheatcroft , ‘Victims of
Stalinism …’, p. 329. This suggests that the actual number of executions there was about 25% more
than that authorised by the centre and hence that the of cial NKVD gures for the USSR as a whole
´
could be ‘lower than reality’ (O. Hlevnjuk, ‘Les mecanismes de la “Grande Terreur” des annees
´
1937–1938 au Turkmenistan’, Cahiers du Monde russe, 39, January–June 1998, p. 205).
26
M. Jansen & N. Petrov, Stalin’s Loyal Executioner: People’s Commissar Nikolai Ezhov,
1895–1940 (Stanford, California, 2002), pp. 104, 135.
27
According to the NKVD data presented by Getty, Rittersporn & Zemskov, ‘Victims of the
Soviet Penal System …’, p. 1048, in 1937–38 the Gulag freed 644,000 prisoners .
SOVIET REPRESSION STATISTICS 1167
28
Wheatcroft , ‘The Scale and Nature …’, pp. 1344–1345; Wheatcroft , ‘Victims of Stalinism …’,
p. 328. R.W. Davies, Soviet History in the Yeltsin Era (Basingstoke, 1997), pp. 169–170, also drew
attention to the fact that it is not known whether or not the mass shooting s of ‘several tens of
thousand s of deserters ’ in the early stages of the Soviet–German war, for which Beriya claimed the
credit in his letter of 1 July 1953 to Malenkov, are included in the Pavlov gures.
29
G.M. Ivanova, ‘GULAG yazykom dokumentov’, Novaya i noveishay a istoriya, 2001, 4,
p.153. See also G.M. Ivanova, Gulag v sisteme totalitarnog o gosudarstv a (Moscow, 1997), p.34.
Ivanova notes (Ibid., pp. 34–35) that one possible reason for this discrepanc y is that after the split into
two narkomaty in 1943 there was an Osoboe soveshchani e attached to the NKGB and another one
attached to the NKVD. There is another possible explanatio n (personal communicatio n from G.
Rittersporn) . The gures given in the Pavlov report for 1939–52 refer only to article 58ers. Those
sentence d to death under other articles (for example West Ukrainian or Baltic guerillas sentenced for
‘banditry’—article 59–3) are excluded . Hence a discrepanc y between the gures in the Pavlov report
for those shot by order of the Osoboe soveshchani e and the total number of people actually shot by
order of the Osoboe soveshchani e is to be expected . This suggests that what we have here is a merely
apparent discrepancy . Ivanova’s discussion of it may just re ect her inadequat e knowledge of the
meaning of the sources.
30
The Pavlov report was published in Kokurin & Petrov (eds), GULAG: Glavnoe …,
pp. 431–434.
31
There are also two other categories of repression deaths in 1937–38; excess deaths among the
‘special settlers’ (mainly deported peasants) and excess suicides. The former does not seem to be
demographicall y signi cant. In 1937–38 recorded actual deaths among the ‘special settlers’ were only
33,000 (Naselenie Rossii … tom 1, p.280) and recorded excess deaths (compared to deaths among
age/gender comparable cohorts among the general population ) were still fewer. Excess suicides
certainly existed, but seem unlikely to have been demographicall y signi cant.
32
P. Hagenloh, ‘ “Socially Harmful Elements” and the Great Terror’, in S. Fitzpatrick (ed.),
Stalinism : New Directions (London, 2000), p.300; Zemskov, ‘Zaklyuchenny e v 1930-e gody …’,
p.66.
33
Zemskov, ‘Zaklyuchenny e v 1930-e gody …’, p. 66.
34
S. Rose elde, ‘Stalinism in Post-Communist Perspective : New Evidence on Killings, Forced
Labour and Economic Growth in the 1930s’, Europe-Asia Studies, 48, 6, 1996, pp. 974–975.
35
Wheatcroft & Davies, ‘Population’, p. 77.
36
R. Conquest, The Great Terror: A Reassessment (New York, 1990), pp. 485–486; R.
Conquest, ‘Excess Deaths and Camp Numbers: Some Comments’, Soviet Studies, 43, 5, 1991, p. 951.
37
M. Ellman, ‘On Sources: A Note’, Soviet Studies, 44, 5, 1992. For another mistake in
quantitative estimation by Antonov-Ovseenko , this time resulting from a misinterpretatio n of archival
data (confusin g monthly average with annual gures and hence producing estimates 12 times too
high), see Ivanova, ‘GULAG yazykom …’, p. 152.
38
See for example J. Keep, ‘Recent Writing on Stalin’s Gulag: An Overview’, Crime, Histoire
& Societes, 1997, 2, pp. 100–101. The example which Keep gives, however, is problematic . He writes
´ ´
that ‘Some of those not indicted under Article 58 committed offences that were indirectl y the result
of the regime’s repressive policies and would not normally be considere d criminal, as when peasant
women stole stalks of grain from the collectiv e elds to feed their starving children’ (italics added
and one footnote omitted). Keep is of course right that many ‘criminal’ offences were an indirect
result of the regime’s policies. But theft is normally considere d a crime, regardless of the economic
position of the thief’s family. The victims of the ferociou s anti-poachin g laws and anti-poachin g
devices (e.g. mantraps) in early nineteent h century England were at the time of cially considered to
be criminals even if their children were hungry. Later writers and penal reformers normally
considere d them to be victims of an unfair system of criminal justice rather than of political
repression. (Only under the Old Testament ‘law of the corner’ would the peasant women in the above
example not be considered criminals.)
39
Narinsky, Vospominaniy a glavnogo …, p. 217.
40
See the appendix to Getty, Rittersporn & Zemskov, ‘Victims …’, or the table in V.
Kudryavtse v & A. Trusov, Politicheskay a yustitsiya v SSSR (Moscow, 2000), p. 305. The main text
of the former does not draw the reader’s attention to this exceptiona l 2-year period, although it does
very sensibly stress the blurred line under Soviet condition s between ‘political’ and ‘criminal’
offences.
41
¨ ¨ ¨
G. Rittersporn, ‘Zynismus, Selbsttauschung und unmogliches Kalkul: Strafpolitik und
¨
Lagerbevolkerung in der UdSSR’, in D. Dahlmann & G. Hirschfeld (eds), Lager, Zwangsarbeit ,
Vertreibung und Deportatio n (Essen, 1999), p.305.
42
Ibid., p. 306; Kokurin & Petrov (eds), GULAG: Glavnoe …, pp. 416–418. The latter source
1168 MICHAEL ELLMAN
refers to this group as ‘IVE i SOE’. It has been suggeste d to the present author that the rst ‘I’ is a
misprint for ‘S’ (personal communication from G. Rittersporn) . In that case the category in full is
‘Sotsial’no-vredny i element i sotsial’no-opasnyi element’. Most of these people seem to have been
rowdies, thieves, people with a criminal record or the homeless. Someone who is arrested for being
homeless would normally be considere d neither a ‘criminal’ nor a ‘political’.
43
Wheatcroft & Davies, ‘Population’, p. 77. Wheatcroft & Davies point out that if ADK are
right about the number of births in 1933 then the number of excess deaths in 1926–39 would be
signi cantly above 10 million. For criticism by Wheatcroft of ADK’s 1933 mortality estimates see
V. Danilov et al. (eds), Tragediya sovetsko i derevni, vol.3 (Moscow, 2001), pp. 883–886.
44
Conquest, ‘Excess Deaths …’, p. 951.
45
M. Ellman, ‘A Note on the Number of 1933 Famine Victims’, Soviet Studies, 43, 2, 1991;
Ellman, ‘On Sources …’.
46
Rose elde, ‘Stalinism in Post-Communist …’, pp. 974–975.
47
The source cited is Literaturnay a gazeta, 9 August 1989; see Conquest, The Great Terror: A
Reassesment, p. 544. The present writer has checked this reference , and was unable to nd in it an
article by, or interview with, Sergo Mikoyan, or any other con rmation of Conquest’s assertion .
48
A.I. Mikoyan, TAK BYLO Razmyshleniya o minuvshem (Moscow, 1999). In a footnote on p.
592 the gures of ‘about a million’ (not seven million) shot in 1934–41 and of an additiona l ‘more
than 18.5 million’ repressed are cited. The former of these gures is accurate . The accuracy of the
latter mainly depends on which period it refers to. ‘More than 18.5 million’ is in fact an accurate
estimate of the number of prisoners—more precisely sentences to detention—in the Gulag in
1934–53. (It should be noted that these gures are not rst-hand accounts by Mikoyan of what he had
seen in documents he himself had read, but statements about what he had heard from O.
Shatunovskaya , who may have misunderstoo d the information she received from the KGB or said
something that was not a correct descriptio n of the data she had been given.)
49
Conquest, ‘Comment …’, p.1481.
50
P. Polyan, Ne po svoei vole … (Moscow, 2001), pp. 90–93; T. Kulbaev & A. Khegai,
Deportatsiya (Almaty, 2000), pp. 49–75. Also about 2,000 Kurds and about 9,000 Chinese and
‘Harbiners’ were deported in 1937 and 6,000 Iranian Jews and an unknown number of other Iranians
in 1938.
51
N. Adler, The Gulag Survivor (New Brunswick and London, 2002), p. 33.
52
D. Volkogonov, Trotskii, vol. 2 (Moscow, 1992), p. 371.
53
Conquest, ‘Victims …’, p.1317. The same point was made in his letter in the American
Historical Review, 99, 3, June 1994, p.1039.
54
Golod v Moldove (1946–1947), Sbornik dokumento v (Kishinev, 1993), p. 729. Naturally this
report uses weasel words to describe the famine. Instead of deaths from ‘famine’ or ‘starvation’ it
uses the of cial euphemism of ‘alimentary distrophy ’. However, this does not affect the way it uses
the term ubyl’.
55
A.N. Dugin, Neizvestnyi GULAG: Dokumenty i fakty (Moscow, 1999); Kokurin & Petrov
(eds), GULAG: Glavnoe …; V.N. Zemskov, ‘Smertnost’ zaklyuchennyk h v 1941–1945gg’ , in
Lyudskie poteri SSSR v Velikoi Otechestvenno i voine (St. Petersburg, 1995), pp. 174–177; V.N.
Zemskov, chapters XIII and XIV in Naselenie Rossii … tom 1.
56
Kokurin & Petrov (eds), GULAG: Glavnoe …, p. 435.
57
Popov has argued that the archival data on Gulag numbers cited by Zemskov and others refer
not to the number of prisoners but to the capacity of the Gulag, and that there could be signi cant
discrepancie s between the two since the Gulag could be run at under capacity , at capacity, or over
capacity . For example, he cites a statement by the head of the Gulag that at the beginning of 1946
the capacity of the Gulag was 1.3 million, but the actual number of inmates 1.5 million (V.P. Popov,
‘Gosudarstvenny i terror v sovetskoi Rossii, 1923–1953 gg. (istochnik i i ikh interpretatsii) ’,
Otechestvenny e arkhivy, 1992, 2, p. 22). This argument has been cited by Conquest, ‘Victims …’, p.
1317 (the year of the citation should be 1992 not 1993). However, Popov’s argument does not seem
to be relevant to the data presente d by Getty, Rittersporn & Zemskov. They give the population of
the Gulag (camps and colonies ) at 1 January 1946 as 1,557,121 . This is in fact slightly larger than
the above-mentione d gure for the number of prisoners at the beginnin g of 1946 ascribed to the head
of the Gulag.
58
For example, writing in a CPRF publication , L. Pykhalov conclude d from the new stock data
that talk about ‘tens of millions of Gulag prisoners ’ was completely wrong. See I. Pykhalov, ‘O
masshtabakh “Stalinskikh repressii ” ’, Dialog, 2001, 10, p. 58.
59
American Historical Review, 99, 3, June 1994, p.1039 (letter to the editor from R. Conquest).
60
V.N. Zemskov, ‘Deportatsii naseleniya . Spetsposelents y i ssyl’nye. Zaklyuchennye ’, chapter
IX in Naselenie Rossii … tom 2 (Moscow, 2001), p. 179. Zemskov’s gures are somewhat higher than
SOVIET REPRESSION STATISTICS 1169
those of Polyan, Ne po …, pp. 245–249, according to whom the number deported in 1930–52
(excludin g the third category of ‘kulaks’ who were deported ‘only’ within their own region and the
Kazakhs who ed to other republics or abroad in 1931–33) was ‘only’ 5.545 million. (For the division
of ‘kulaks’ into three categorie s see the Politburo’s decree of 30 January 1930 in V. Danilov et al.
(eds), Tragediya sovetsko i derevni, vol. 2 (Moscow, 2000), pp.126–134.) Zemskov’s estimate of ‘not
less than six million’ also excludes the third category of ‘kulaks’; see V.N. Zemskov, ‘ “Kulatskaya
ssylka” v 1930-e gody: chislennost ’, rasselenie, sostav’, chapter XIII in Naselenie Rossii … tom 1
(Moscow, 2000), p. 277. According to Wheatcroft & Davies, ‘Population …’, p. 68, the number of
people in this group was 2–2.5 million. However, according to Polyan, Ne po …, p. 245, in 1930 it
was ‘only’ a quarter of a million and in 1932 there was a further relocatio n of ‘kulaks’ within their
region of uncertain dimensions . In R. W. Davies & S. Wheatcroft , Years of Hunger (forthcoming),
it is argued that ‘a clear understandin g of the fate and size of Category III must await regional studies
based on local archives ’. As for the Kazakhs, Polyan estimates that about 1,000,000 ed Kazakhstan
in 1931–33. Of this number he estimates that 400,000 ed permanentl y to other Soviet republics ,
400,000 eventuall y returned to Kazakhstan , and 200,000 ed abroad. Of the deportees , 490,000 had
escaped or died (mainly escaped) by 1 January 1932. In 1932–40, 390,000 were of cially recorded
as dying as deportees . In addition, there were substantial numbers of deaths during transportatio n in
1932–33 which are excluded from the Zemskov data for those years since these record what happene d
to the deportee s after they had arrived and been registered, not before. In 1940–52 a further half a
million deportee s died (Zemskov, ‘Deportatsii naseleniy a …’, p.182). This suggests that among the
‘not less than six million’ deportees , deaths were in the range of 1–1.5 million. The data cited by
Zemskov and Polyan also appear to exclude the rst category of ‘kulaks’. Of these, 284,000 were
arrested in January–September 1930. See L. Viola, The Role of the OGPU in Dekulakization , Mass
Deportation s and Special Resettlement in 1930, The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European
Studies, no.1406 (University of Pittsburgh, 2000). The data in the Pavlov report suggest that ‘only’
about 7% of them were shot and that most of them were sent to camps and prisons. How complete
was the accounting for rst category ‘kulaks’ in the Pavlov report is uncertain.
61
Polyan, Ne po …, pp. 245–246.
62
Zemskov, ‘Deportatsii naseleniya …’, p. 173.
63
V.V. Luneev, Prestupnost ’ XX veka (Moscow, 1997), p. 180. Unfortunately Luneev does not
give precise archival references , which makes it impossible to check his assertions . Furthermore, the
very high estimates for repression in the Stalin era which he quotes from a number of unreliabl e
authors undermine his own credibilit y as a serious researcher .
64
A.N. Yakovlev, ‘Noveishaya istoriya Rossii XX veka v dokumentakh : opyt istorio-
gra cheskogo issledovaniya ’, Vestnik Rossiiskoi akademii nauk, 2000, 6, p. 505.
65
V. Kudryavtsev & A. Trusov, Politicheskay a yustitsiya v SSSR (Moscow, 2000), pp. 315–316.
66
According to a December 1955 report by the USSR Ministry of Justice, in addition to those
shot prior to 1940, in 1940–June 1955 approximatel y 256,000 people were sentence d by courts to be
shot (168,000 of them in 1941–42). How many of them were condemned for political offences is not
clear, but it seems likely that the overwhelming majority of these victims were condemned for
political or military offences . In addition, in 1940–June 1955 there were shooting s by order of the
Military Collegium of the Supreme Court and by order of the Osoboe soveshchani e of the
MGB-MVD which are not included in these gures. See A. Kokurin & Yu. Morukov, ‘GULAG:
struktura i kadry’, Svobodnay a Mysl’-XXI, 2001, 12, pp. 98–99.
67
Estimating accuratel y the number of those detained for political offences who died in
detention is dif cult. The number of registere d Gulag deaths (camps and colonies ) in 1930–56 was
1.6–1.7 million (see note 75) but a substantia l proportion of those who died in the Gulag will have
been criminals. One can obtain a very crude estimate of the number of politicals among the group
of cially recorded as dying in the Gulag in the following way. According to one estimate, about a
fth of those sent to the Gulag were ‘counterrevolutionaries ’ (see note 76). If their mortality
experienc e was the same as other Gulag prisoners , then the number of ‘counterrevolutionaries ’ who
died in the Gulag would have been 1/5 of 1.6–1.7 million which is about a third of a million. It seems
quite possible, however, that the mortality experienc e of the political s was worse than that of the
criminals. If one makes the rather arbitrary assumption that it was twice as bad, that would suggest
that about two-thirds of a million ‘counterrevolutionaries ’ died in the Gulag. It is necessar y also to
take into account unrecorde d Gulag deaths, deaths among those who were not recorded as ‘counter-
revolutionaries ’ but can reasonabl y be considere d political prisoners, and deaths in prisons (the
Kokurin–Morukov mortality data exclude all non-Gulag prison deaths and also Gulag prison deaths
for all years except 1935–1938). An example of the former is that, just in 1934–40, about 500,000
prisoners are recorded as escaping from camps and colonies , but less than 300,000 are recorded as
recaptured. Part of this more than 200,000 discrepanc y were probably deaths (cf. footnote 23). See
1170 MICHAEL ELLMAN
also Zemskov, ‘Zaklyuchenny e v 1930-e gody …’, p. 65. Taking account of these factors and
rounding upwards produces the crude estimate of ‘perhaps one million’.
68
It might be possible to estimate these by examining the statistics of the numbers of ‘un t for
work ballast’ released from the camps. Records for this category were probably made at the time, and
probably still exist somewhere in the archives .
69
On the other hand, the number murdered by Stalin (about a million) was certainly less than
the number murdered by the Nazis. Hence it is untrue to write (J. Glover, HUMANITY. A Moral
History of the Twentieth Century (London, 1999), p. 317) that ‘The numbers of people murdered by
Stalin’s tyranny far surpass those killed in the Nazi camps’. The only way to save this assertion is
to include Stalin’s manslaughter/criminal negligence victims and the Stalin era famine victims with
the murder victims. For the reasons given in the text the present author considers this misleading .
70
Wheatcroft, ‘The Scale and Nature …’, p. 1334, suggests a gure of about three million. The
differenc e is explaine d by two factors. First, Wheatcroft suggests the number of deaths among
prisoner s and deportees was ‘about two million’ whereas the present author suggests ‘about two to
two and a half million’. Second, Wheatcroft takes no account of Gulag deaths after ‘release’.
71
In 1930–53 there were about 107 million deaths in the USSR. See E.M. Andreev, L.E. Darskii
& T.L. Kharkova, Naselenie Sovetskogo Soyuza 1922–91 (Moscow, 1993), p. 118; M. Ellman & S.
Maksudov, ‘Soviet Deaths in the Great Patriotic War: A Note’, Europe-Asia Studies, 46, 4, 1994.
72
Kokurin & Morukov, ‘Gulag: struktura i kadry’, Svobodnay a mysl’ – XXI, 2000, 10, p. 119.
73
P. Gregori [P. Gregory], ‘Ekonomicheskay a istoriya Rossii: chto my o nei znaem i chego
ne znaem. Otsenka ekonomista ’, Ekonomicheskay a istoriya. Ezhegodnik . 2000 (Moscow, 2001), pp.
10–11.
74
This number excludes about six million who are recorded as arriving ‘from NKVD/MVD
camps’. This category may have included some new prisoners . On the other hand, there may be some
double counting as a result of repeated arrest/recidivism.
75
This gure is arrived at by summing the number of detainees in Gulag camps on 1 January
1934 and the arrivals in 1934–40 from ‘other places of detention ’. The data used are published in
English in Getty, Rittersporn & Zemskov, ‘Victims of the Soviet Penal System …’, pp. 1048–1049,
and in Russian in Zemskov, ‘Massovye repressii …’, p. 314. The number of cially recorded as dying
in the camps and colonies in 1930–1956 was 1.61–1.74 million (Kokurin & Morukov, ‘GULAG:
struktura i kadry’, Svobodnay a mysl’ – XXI, 2000, 10, pp. 114–115). The former gure is the SANO
one, the latter the URO one (see note 23). According to Ivanova, Gulag v sisteme …, p. 110, just in
the war more than two million people died in the camps and colonies of the Gulag, but she does not
present any evidence for this high estimate.
76
Kokurin & Morukov estimate that in the 27 years of the existence of the Gulag (1930–1956)
the total number of prisoners who owed through the camps, colonies and prisons was ‘about 20
million’. In 1930–56 20.2 million people were condemned to detention, but the number of sentence s
was greater than the number of actual people sentenced , since some people were sentence d more than
once. Accordingl y they suggest that the actual number of people sentence d was about 17–18 million.
Of these totals they state that only about 4,000,000 (20%) were condemned for ‘counterrevolutionar y
crimes’ (this is the Pavlov report gure). See A. Kokurin & Yu. Morukov, ‘GULAG: struktura i
kadry’, Svobodnay a Mysl’-XXI, 2001, 12, pp. 100–101.
77
The numbers in this section refer to Soviet citizens in the USSR only. They exclude foreign
POWs, internees and other detainee s in the USSR, and also victims of Soviet repressio n outside the
USSR. Obviously Trotsky, the Spanish leftists repressed in the Spanish civil war, the Mongolian s
represse d in the 1930s, many of the East Europeans represse d in 1945–53 etc were also victims of
Soviet repression , but they are not included in this article. The terrible fate of the approximatel y
300,000 German civilians interned in Soviet death camps in 1945–46 is described by Wheatcroft in
‘German and Soviet Repression …’, pp. 1345–1346. (This descriptio n covers only a small part of this
group, but it seems quite possible that it was typical for the whole group.)
78
Wheatcroft, ‘The Scale and Nature …’, p. 1320.
79
Ibid., p.1334.
80
Davies, Harrison & Wheatcroft , The Economic Transformation …, pp. 60–64; M. Buttino,
‘Study of the Economic Crisis and Depopulation in Turkestan, 1917–1920’, Central Asian Survey, 9,
4, 1990; M. Buttino, ‘Economic Relations Between Russia and Turkestan, 1914–18, or How to Start
a Famine’, in J. Pallot (ed.), Transforming Peasants (Basingstoke, 1998); Naselenie Rossii … tom 1,
chapters IV, V and VI.
81
Kudryavtsev & Trusov, Politicheskay a yustitsiya …, p. 339.
82
Ibid., p. 301.
83
According to Glover, HUMANITY …, p. 237, ‘Stalinist deliberat e killing was on a scale
surpasse d only by war’. This is not so. It was also surpasse d by famine and disease.
SOVIET REPRESSION STATISTICS 1171
84
S. Wheatcroft , ‘The Great Leap Upwards’, Slavic Review, 58, 1, 1999, pp. 27–60.
85
It is greatly to the credit of Conquest that he wrote a whole book about ethnic cleansing and
also a whole book about the famine of 1931–34, which focussed on the suffering of the peasants and
which includes a chapter on the Kazakh experience . The former book rightly drew attention to a
series of events which adversel y affected a large number of people. The latter book drew the attention
of the general reader to an enormous humanitaria n disaster and was a major contributio n to adult
educatio n (althoug h the present author disagree s with the interpretatio n offered in the book).
Solzhenitsy n too has always stressed the scale of the 1931–34 disaster.
86
A. de Waal, Famine Crimes (London and Bloomington Indiana, 1997).
87
O.V. Khlevnyuk et al. (eds), Stalin i Kaganovich . Perepiska, 1931–1936 gg (Moscow, 2001),
p.217.
88
Khlevnyuk et al. (eds), Stalin i Kaganovich …, p.245.
89
Conquest himself simply argues the case for ‘criminal responsibility ’ but does not state for
which crime (R. Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow (London, 1986), p.330).
90
This is also the view of A.F. Kulish, Henotsyd. Holodomor 1932–1933. Prychyny, zhertvy,
zlochyntsi (Kharkiv, 2001).
91
R. Rosdolsky, ‘Engels and the “Nonhistoric” Peoples: The National Question in the Revol-
ution of 1848’, Critique, 18–19 passim.
92
Conquest, The Harvest of Sorrow, p.329.
93
Ibid., p.329. Ivnitsky agrees with this. See N.A. Ivnitsky, Repressivnay a politika sovetsko i
vlasti v derevne (1928–1933 gg) (Moscow, 2000), p.299 (this passage refers speci cally to the famine
along the Volga).
94
Davies et al., The Economic Transformatio n …, Table 22, p. 290.
95
Actually, ethnic cleansing under wartime condition s is not uniquely Stalinist. In the UK in
1940 Germans and Italians (most of whom were anti-fascist political refugees ) were interned, and in
1942 in the USA 110,000 Japanese-American s and Japanese were interned. However, the Soviet and
UK/USA cases differ substantiall y with respect to numbers involved , mortality rates and length of
time away from home.
Appendix. Do the famine victims belong in the same category as repression victims?
Some writers include famine victims with repression victims, but others treat them as a separate
category . In this connectio n it should be noted that:
(1) The categorisatio n of famine victims is theory-impregnated . This means that it depends on one’s
theory either of famines in general or of Soviet famines in particular . It seems that in nineteent h
century Russia peasants generally considered famines ‘the will of God’. Naturally, if one accepts
the theory of the divine causation of famines then the question of human responsibilit y cannot
arise. Many writers ascribe a large share of the blame for famines to natural conditions (e.g.
droughts). In this case a large share of the explanatio n for the famine deaths would be an ‘act of
Nature’, even though possibly suitable actions by the authorities might have prevented or reduced
famine deaths regardles s of the adverse natural conditions . On the other hand, some writers treat
famines as conquerabl e and, when they take place, as the fault of the local political system. Given
this theory of the causation of famines, then famines are crimes and the criminals are the
dictator/generals/politicians who run the country where the famine occurred .86
(2) Whether famine deaths should be considered murder or manslaughte r or something else partly
depends on the information available to the leadershi p at the time. If the leadershi p was unaware
of the actual situation their responsibilit y would be less than if they were fully informed. For
example, although the Ukrainian leadershi p requested a reduction in grain procuremen t in the
summer of 1932 as a result of the needs of their own people, Stalin was informed by Markevich ,
the deputy Narkom for agriculture , on 4 July 1932 that the 1932 harvest was average and
considerabl y better than that of 1931.87 On 25 July 1932 Stalin, although he fully recognise d the
need to partially reduce the grain procurement plan of Ukrainian collective farms, thought that
for the USSR as a whole the harvest had been ‘undoubtedl y good’.88 However, even if careful
study of the information environment surroundin g Stalin leads to the conclusion that he was
inadequatel y informed about the true situation, this does not eliminate the possibility of criminal
responsibility . That depends on the extent to which the inadequate information was itself a result
of his policies, in particula r the extensiv e repressio n which could have made the provision of
accurate information very dangerou s for the person or organisatio n providin g it. Similarly, the
absence of accurate media reports of the situation , which might have forced the governmen t to
1172 MICHAEL ELLMAN
take appropriat e famine relief measures, was a direct result of the Soviet policy of use of the
media as propagand a instruments .
(3) For a charge of (mass) murder or a crime against humanity (as opposed to manslaughte r or
criminal negligence ) the question of intent is very important. While there is plenty of evidence
to justify a charge of manslaughter or criminal negligence , there seems to the present author to
be little evidence for murder.89 Conquest thinks that Stalin wanted large numbers of Ukrainians
to die in 1933.90 This seems to the present author possible but unproven and no explanation of
the deaths of Kazakhs and Russians. Of course, the general attitude of Marx and Engels and of
Russian Marxists to the Ukrainian cause was unsympatheti c and during the Civil War many
Bolsheviks considered Ukrainian a ‘counter-revolutionary ’ language .91 In addition, it is well
known that in 1932–33 Stalin thought he was engaged in a war against wreckers, saboteur s and
sit-down strikers. In a war one strives to bend to one’s will, and if necessar y kill, one’s enemies.
Many people were deliberatel y shot or deported. Nevertheless , evidence that Stalin consciousl y
decided to kill millions of people is lacking. It seems to the present author more likely that Stalin
simply did not care about mass deaths and was more intereste d in the balance of payments (which
required grain exports) and the industrialisatio n programme. Just as the British governmen t in
1943 was more interested in the war effort than in saving the life of Bengalis, so the Soviet
governmen t in 1931–33 was more intereste d in industrialisatio n than in saving the life of peasants
or nomads.
(4) We are intereste d in uniquely Stalinist evil, not in events which have their parallels in many
countries and thus cannot be considere d uniquely Stalinist. Unfortunately , famines in which
millions of people die are not unique to the USSR in the Stalin era. Not only was there one in
Soviet Russia (in 1921–22) prior to Stalin’s accession to supreme power, but major famines were
widespread throughou t the world in the nineteent h and twentieth centuries , for example in the
British empire (India and Ireland), China, Russia and elsewhere. Furthermore, the world-wide
death of millions of people in recent decades which could have been prevented by simple public
health measures or cured by applicatio n of modern medicine, but was not, might be considere d
by some as mass manslaughte r—or mass death by criminal negligence—by the leaders of the G8
(who could have prevented these deaths but did not do so). The present author is sympatheti c to
the idea that the leaders of the British Empire in the past (India and Ireland) and of the G8 in
recent years are guilty of mass manslaughter or mass deaths from criminal negligence because of
their not taking obvious measures to reduce mass deaths. However, if they are not condemned for
this, it is not clear why—except on a very doubtful historica l account of Stalin’s knowledge and
intention s in 1932–33—Stalin should be convicted for the famine deaths of 1931–34 or of the
other Stalin-era famines. Conquest has argued that the ‘only conceivabl e defence’ for Stalin and
his associates is that they did not know about the famine.92 This ignores another possible
defence—that their behaviou r was no worse than that of many rulers in the nineteent h and
twentieth centuries .
(5) Conquest argues that ‘the cause of the famine was the setting of highly excessiv e grain requisition
targets by Stalin and his associates’.93 But it seems the grain procurement s in the agricultura l year
1932–33 (the main famine year) were less than in every other agricultura l year in the period
1930–31 to 1939–40 inclusive .94 This suggests that something other than procurements , namely
the size of the harvest, was also an important factor. Although the low harvests of 1931 and 1932
were partly a result of the political and agronomic policies of the Stalinist leadership , they were
partly a result of adverse natural condition s (weather). Hence the exclusiv e blame which
Conquest attaches to procuremen t policy is one-side d and ignores the size of the harvest.
Accordingl y the present author consider s it appropriat e to place the famine victims in a different
category from the repression victims, even if one judges Stalin during the famines to have been guilty
of causing mass deaths by manslaughter or criminal negligence . Both categorie s contain huge
numbers of victims, but only the latter was unusual by internationa l standards . About 12 million
people were arrested or deported, and at least 3 million died, as a result of political persecution by
their own government.95
This distinctio n between famines and political persecutio n correspond s to normal historica l
practice. The victims of the 1943 Bengal famine are usually considere d to be ‘famine victims’ rather
than ‘repression victims’ even though by appropriat e actions the British Government could have
saved many of the lives of those who died. Similarly with the Irish famine of the 1840s. It also
correspond s to current internationa l law. Unintentiona l famine, unlike murder or deportation , is not
classi ed as a crime against humanity (see article 7 of the Rome Statute of the Internationa l Criminal
Court).