The man is a professor, and is often referenced on the issue by others. Though the website may look like a blog, it is from a fairly prominent university. But he isn't the only source - there are many, many others, and just looking at his source list will start you down that road if you are so inclined.
First, keep in mind that many of these were NKVD archives, and that records were not kept of every murder, even large ones.You haven't shown me where it says Russian Archives are flawed/incomplete, in this or any other website. This is the third or fourth time we mentioned the archives and I'm still waiting for a single link from you about it.
About the archives not answering everything - even if they did "yield everything they contain," which the article makes it quite clear that they did not do:
From a speech by a certain someone you could say it the authority on the Gulags:Originally Posted by The Economist
Nothing we don't already know. Applebaum really makes the case for this - the history of the Soviet retouching of history gives us no reason to believe their records, and plenty of reason to disbelieve them. Also, there are problems with trusting any archives of any dictatorial regime which murdered, regardless of their attempts at keeping accurate records, as has been pointed out before. There were always plenty of off-the-record kills.Originally Posted by Anne Applebaum
My parents were both born in the Eastern Bloc. I used to admire the Soviet Union (not because of them, mind you). Not anymore.I don't know, it could be that just me being born in what used to be Yugoslavia, I learned rather young that looking only at one side isn't a good idea. Unless you get information from all sides, unless you look at it in conjunction, unless you critically assess it you'll end up with a pretty distorted and flawed view of what happened.
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