[lbo-talk] Gulag query

[Brad DeLong]

>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

Well, two points: (i) Medvedev looks pretty good. (ii) The fact that 
the death and imprisonment totals among the appraratchiki made the 
system look very, very bad to Gorbachev-era Communists--who tended to 
identify with the apparatchiki...

Brad DeLong