[lbo-talk] Gulag query

[andie nachgeborenen]

I think the estimates for collectization deaths run up to 8 million. I am not sure what exacttly Brad's point is, but the fact is that on the best evidence we now have (1) the toll of imprisonment and death of innocent people during the Stalin Terror was unacceptably high, and (2) was much, much lower than the standard guesstimates made before the archive were opened (20 million dead according to Conquest, 35 million according to Pipes, 50 million according to Solzhenitsyn, and indeed 10-15 million according to Medvedev). That does not make Stalinism OK. jks

Brad DeLong <jbdelong at uclink.berkeley.edu> wrote:From: "Chris Doss" <itschris13 at hotmail.com>

I just read that during the worst years of Stalin only 2.5% of the Sovietpopulation was in prison. This CAN'T be true, can it?
Your stay in the GULAG could be short for one of two reasons, remember.
What's the current guess of deaths during the collectivization of agriculture? 5 million? What proportion of the 5 million "displaced persons" returned to the Soviet Union after World War II ever made it home? Half? Perhaps 1 million shot by the NKVD during the Great Terror itself who never made it to the GULAG.
I do remember being struck that *both* of Gorbachev's grandparents were arrested during the 1930s (although both survived): his paternal grandfather for failing to meet production targets, and his maternal grandfather for being a right-wing Trotskyist. Stalin was much harder on Communists than on peasants and workers, and the closer you got to Stalin, the lower your chances of surviving became...

Brad DeLong

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