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).