>Incidentally, and I'm almost afraid to ask, with all the recent access to
>Soviet archives, has there been an update on the estimate of Stalin's
>victims or conclusive evidence regarding the motives behind some of the
>fuzzier events, such as the famines? Or is this something destined to be
>disputed until the end of time?
I go back to my original question: what is the utility of these discussions on numbers? Personally, the powers that be have never given a darn about the judgments I pass on "world leaders" (the Suhartos they've garnered). On the other hand, working with the victims, past and present, one learns a bit about the mechanics of terror. For me this has been helpful politically to identify and denounce the forms of (neo-liberal) state sponsored terror being pursued today.
I don't write off the Nuremberg problems, or the utility of Russell's War Crimes Tribunals, etc. I am, however, suspicious of conversations on terror & mayhem that are pitched only at such atmosphereic levels of abstraction.
Most such acts are undertaken for their material outcome (atrrit the enemy, reduce sheer human numbers) and the exemplary force ("teaching lessons", "demonstrating resolve", etc.). Regarding the former, an interesting article that seeks to reconstruct the demography of death 1965-75 in Vietnam suggests that not even in this was the US successful, that is, Westmorland's attrition machine overestimated the degree to which it could physically deny the enemy new recruits. The authors write:
"As high as Vietnamese death rates were, they were not high enough to sustain the assumptions behind a war of attrition. This strategy, as pursued by General Westmoreland and the American military, was flawed by a lack of elementary demographic logic." And this with an estimated 4 (low est.) to 15 (hi est.) million tons of explosives expended in the period, in comparison to the 2.7 million tons dropped by allied forces in WWII. (See Hirschman, Preston and Mahn Loi, "Vietnamese Casualties During the American War: A New Estimate" in Population and Development Review 21(4), Dec. 1995.)
And what of the exemplary part? What of the social/political/economic/cultural impact of terror? In January of 1998, people in Chile were still lowering their voices when addressing Pinochet's senatorial seat; in Bolivia today the "power of public secrets" is enoromous: you know criminals run the country; you know the crimes; you act as if it were a secret -- to mention it is, well, pase, indiscreet. Everyone knows the numbers Banzer killed; he himself noted not long ago in reference to his victims "...it was a time of war ... they weren't angels either you know...." This is the terrain of politics (here) today, and frankly I'm not sure how another iteration of the numbers game helps out in navigating it.
Tom
BTW: the death toll in the coca growing Chapare region, owing to the latest militarizarion of the war on drugs there, is now up to 11.
Tom Kruse / Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-42) 48242 Email: tkruse at albatros.cnb.net