Discussion of Stalinism

[Sarmatian]

Understood, but I'm done. I've linked to sources, I've explained why the Soviet archives are flawed, I've linked to sources explaining why the archives and demographics arguments are flawed, and now the same points are being rehashed regardless.

You've linked to exactly one website, in the 5th post of this thread...

Those who defend Stalin are precisely the same as those who defend Hitler. They are defending the two most evil regimes ever put on the face of the earth, and it disgusts me. I ask that anyone who tries to defend Stalin educates themselves before they continue defending such a monster.

... and that is exactly the same website you linked to when we touched the topic of Stalin the last time. Now, I couldn't find anything there about the data in Russian Archives being flawed. Granted, it's a rather big and poorly organized site and I may have missed it. If that's the case, please provide a link directly to the part that deals with that, because I didn't find it.

On the other hand, I've found the part that deals with references and sources for the USSR(click). There's more than 100 sources and references to various books, papers and other research material the guy used and not a single one is after 1990, and majority being from 1930's - 1970's.

The first 10 for example are...
"Afghanistan: Six Years of Soviet Occupation." United States Department of State Special Report No. 135, Washington, D.C., December 1985.

THE WORLD ALMANAC AND BOOK OF FACTS 1986. New York: Newspaper Enterprise Association, 1985.

Ambartsumov, Yevgeny. "Remembering the Millions that Stalin Destroyed." MOSCOW NEWS, (July, 1988), p. 12.

Andics, Hellmut. RULE OF TERROR. Translated by Alexander Lieven. London: Constable & Co, 1969.

Antonov-Ovseyenko, Anton. THE TIME OF STALIN: PORTRAIT OF A TYRANNY. Translated by Stephen F. Cohen. New York: Harper & Row, 1981.

Ashton, D. L. W. "Communist Concentration Camps-Today." EAST-WEST DIGEST, Vol. 9 (September, 1973), pp. 664-676.

Backer, George. THE DEADLY PARALLEL: STALIN AND IVAN THE TERRIBLE. New York: Random House, 1950.

Bawden, C. R. THE MODERN HISTORY OF MONGOLIA. London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1968.

Beck, F. and W. Godin. RUSSIAN PURGE AND THE EXTRACTION OF CONFESSION. Translated by Eric Mosbacher and David Porter. New York: Hurst & Blackett Ltd., 1951.

Bennigsen, Alexandre. "Afghanistan & the Muslims of the USSR." in Rosanne Klass (Ed.), AFGHANISTAN: THE GREAT GAME REVISITED. New York: Freedom House, 1987, pp. 287-299.

... and those that come after are generally older. Except several (one a daily newspaper, in other says "translated" but doesn't say from which language or the name of the original work or where it comes from), all sources are western, predominantly American.

Sarmatian, EMFM:

You'd be better off citing and linking to your sources rather than questioning same -- at least it would take you less time.

That's the point really. That's precisely what I didn't want to do. There are thousands of sources, there are over 100 just on that one website and I can't possible address them all. That's why I addressed what they all have in common and why I think they mustn't be accepted without critical assessment. Hell, even wikipedia has many sources that state many different figures...

I'm not really arguing a case for Stalin here. I'm not saying he killed 1, 5, 25, 50 or 100 millions. I'm just saying I find the number of people he killed exaggerated because all the research on the issue is flawed for the reasons I already stated.

The website EMFM linked to says it all, of the 100+ sources used:

95%-100% are western
100% are before 1990's
app. 95% are from the Cold War, the rest even before

I'm not a historian but I know that's not how you conduct research. If I want to research American Civil War, I won't go to India but to the US. If I want to write a paper about Vasco de Gama, I won't go to Canada but to Portugal. If it's about Han dynasty, I won't go to Nigeria, I'll go to China. For Hitler, it would be Germany. I'm not saying 100% of the material must be from the country in question - no, but the bulk and the basis should.

It's perfectly understandable for scholars back then not to do that. They simply couldn't and they had to use every bit of information they could get their hands on (I'm talking about serious scholars, not those who created propaganda). Nowadays, scholars can do that but instead they're constantly rehashing stuff written 20-80 years ago, like that guy in the website that's in question.

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

You've linked to exactly one website, in the 5th post of this thread...

Not just in this thread. In previous debates I have linked to you websites in both English and Russian on this issue - those websites also addressed the ones of research on the Russian Archives being flawed (though last I checked, that was also on Wikipedia).

That being said, the following link kind of disproves that demographics were not taken into account and that Russian sources were not used.

THE WORLD ALMANAC AND BOOK OF FACTS 1986. New York: Newspaper Enterprise Association, 1985.

Don't Almanacs generally take into account demographics?

Ambartsumov, Yevgeny. "Remembering the Millions that Stalin Destroyed." MOSCOW NEWS, (July, 1988), p. 12.

Antonov-Ovseyenko, Anton. THE TIME OF STALIN: PORTRAIT OF A TYRANNY. Translated by Stephen F. Cohen. New York: Harper & Row, 1981.

Doesn't sound very Western to me.

I'm not really arguing a case for Stalin here. I'm not saying he killed 1, 5, 25, 50 or 100 millions. I'm just saying I find the number of people he killed exaggerated because all the research on the issue is flawed for the reasons I already stated.

The demographics argument is the one that is flawed. I have already pointed out why. From an earlier post:

I think you and Sarmatian may be making two fatal errors. Firstly, Stalin did not just kill people who were in the USSR. He killed a massive number of Poles, for example. Secondly, nobody is suggesting that everybody was killed all at once - Stalin ruled for thirty years, and even before that he had power to murder - executing Tsarists, burning villages and killing peasants, etc. Also, not all of the dead were during the purges. Nonetheless, the quoted figure for Stalin usually hovers around forty million, not sixty to seventy - the latter number generally applies to the whole Soviet Union.

So yes, if you took the whole Soviet Union (but only the Soviet Union) in any one year during Stalin's reign, and subtracted the people killed, you would have a completely unreasonable number. But how about including surrounding countries and then averaging out the numbers over the years Stalin ruled? The totals you will come up with are perfectly fine, and I am 99% sure that professors/historians doing research will have taken this into account.

[Sarmatian]

Well, there is no way I'm going through every possible source to find out what he took from which source. In general, although it contains a lot of information that website looks more like a blog than a serious scholarly work, especially when on the home page there are phrases like "Deka Megamurder" and "Centi Kilomurder".

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.

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.

It doesn't matter. It seems we're going around in circles and we haven't moved from the start and it looks like no one else is really interested in this but you and me, so if you have something to add, maybe a PM would be a better way. Anyway, you've pretty much the only one who tried to discuss this instead of simply writing "OMG, Stalin is Teh Evil", and I appreciate it...

[Yoyoma1910]

I'm sorry, I don't mean to distract the issue, but I found this image of Stalin and the magical Obamacorn (with House).

[LittleGrizzly]

It doesn't matter. It seems we're going around in circles and we haven't moved from the start and it looks like no one else is really interested in this but you and me, so if you have something to add, maybe a PM would be a better way. Anyway, you've pretty much the only one who tried to discuss this instead of simply writing "OMG, Stalin is Teh Evil", and I appreciate it...

Im highly intrested, i had always assumed the stalin figures that EMFM is providing were correct... infact i had them overjudged (60 million) as i confused them with the Soviet Union figures...

Now i am unsure so your giving me food for thought at least...

[Alexander the Pretty Good]

The "conservative" numbers I've seen seem to be about 1M, though the people that come up with those numbers seem as emotionally invested as the most vigorous denouncer of Stalin. It doesn't really justify the man, of course.

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

In general, although it contains a lot of information that website looks more like a blog than a serious scholarly work, especially when on the home page there are phrases like "Deka Megamurder" and "Centi Kilomurder".

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.

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.

First, keep in mind that many of these were NKVD archives, and that records were not kept of every murder, even large ones.

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:

Even if the Russian archives were to yield everything they contain about the American names that so tantalisingly surface in his book, other questions would remain unanswered. When the eyewitnesses, perpetrators and victims are all dead, the real story of a crime dies too.

From a speech by a certain someone you could say it the authority on the Gulags:

Russia is a country where the recent tradition of falsification and manipulation of history is more profound than anywhere else. After all, Russia's soviet elite deliberately and decisively falsified history for a long time, over many years.

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.

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.

My parents were both born in the Eastern Bloc. I used to admire the Soviet Union (not because of them, mind you). Not anymore.

[Brenus]

“My comments on Hitler having lost his nerve and Stalin benefiting from that mistake were part of a rather well researched theory in the book Panzers East. While no such theory can be presumed correct beyond any doubt, the author did make a good case for -- unaltered -- a successful Barbarossa with the removal of Moscow from the Soviet industrial resource base and transportation network -- and that it would have hampered them badly.”

The problem with this theory is Barbarossa NEVER indented to take Moscow. The aim of it was to destroy the Red Army at the borders, not to go deep in USSR.
I am not a specialist of WW2, but I was a NCO in armoured units, and one think I learned during these years is that a tank is a fragile mechanic which needs a regular maintenance, oil, and petrol. Fixing broken caterpillar in the mud is just a piece of joy…
That is why Von Rundstedt was more than reluctant about the blitzkrieg and it application to Russia.
The Blitzkrieg to succeed needed roads, petrol stations and a reasonable size battle field, especially for the infantry to follow, and for the artillery to be able to support the iron fist. Remember than most of the German Artillery Units were mostly with horses...
Barbarossa was design in taking this hard reality in account.

Having fail in this objective, the German had no choice to pursuit the Red Army and try and try again, but it was to big to eat in one go.
So, when for one litre of fuel arriving to the troop 7 were needed to carry it, when material and men were exhausted, the mirage of taking Moscow to end the war became the dream…
But it became like Paris in 1915. As Paris, Moscow was a railways centre, allowing shifting reinforcement to one point to the other fast. The Russian logistic lines were shorter and the German longer. The German troops were exhausted, the Russian fresh. And the Germans had to face new material, in mass, under the command of one of the Allies best generals, Zhukov, having survived Stalin purges and fresh from his victory against the Japanese.

Where I do agree with Hitler having “lost his nerve”, is more about his indecision to fix new direction, one day Leningrad, the other Moscow, then the Caucasus, the Stalingrad (later). But it was more a lack of new strategy than really a lost of nerve. Same for his Generals, who were just going forward in the hope to fix and destroy the Red Army for good, thing which as we know, never happened.

It was no Plan B to Blitzkrieg. As simple as this, but it is still amazing.

“The man is a professor, and is often referenced on the issue by others”
That is not a guaranty as such…

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

That is not a guaranty as such…

No, but it is proof that he is someone besides a random blogger.

[Sarmatian]

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.

That by itself doesn't mean anything. Radovan Karadzic is also a professor and Dr. Mengele, too (or did he only have a phd?). Also, I don't know if I would take University of Hawaii as a fairly prominent university, although "fairly prominent" is hardly definable.

It's not about him, it's about sources he uses. Every single source he uses is before 1990. He puts 49% of the dead to gulags. Now, tell me how could possibly any of the pre-1990's research accurately assess how many gulags there were, where they were, how many people were in them and how many died in them? Satellites didn't exist back then, and even if they did, I doubt NATO would use them to constantly monitor gulags. Just a simple logical explanation how's that possible, because I really don't see it. Don't tell me they just know because that's precisely what I'm arguing - they don't know and there was no possible way for them to know. Based on what information they had they could only make a guess. An educated guess perhaps, but a guess nevertheless.

Furthermore, how is it possible for them to know how many people in the Gulags were innocent? Not only political prisoners were sent to Siberia, criminals got sent there, too. For example, during the WW2, there were tens of thousands of Russian fighting in the German army. That Soviet general that was captured by the Wehrmacht, Vlassov, even tried to organize Russian Liberation Army that would fight alongside Germans against USSR. He was never truly allowed to do that, Russians mostly fought in the various SS divisions, but he was allowed to form one division made of Russians. After the war, Vlassov and other higher officers were shot and most of the soldiers and lower officers were sent to Siberia. Not a most humane punishment but not a really harsh one for the traitors. I sincerely doubt French who fought in the SS got a hero's welcome in France after the war. Those that didn't die or managed to run away, anyway. Were people like that counted in the dead or not? If they were, we're back on square one - how did they (western researchers) possibly had the information needed to make that distinction?

First, keep in mind that many of these were NKVD archives, and that records were not kept of every murder, even large ones.

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:

It's impossible for archives to contain every bit of information about everything, true, but generally they contain a lot, even the "embarrassing" bits. That's probably the reason why UK and US archives aren't opened to the public still. Actually, I know they weren't a couple of years ago, maybe that changed in the meantime. Anyway, not really the point. I'm willing to accept that Russian archives may not be complete or 100% accurate, but they still seem much more sensible starting point for any research than research conducted 20-80 years ago from 10,000 km away.

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.

I don't disagree really. History is often the victim of nationalism, ideologies, conspiracies etc.. As Churchill said - History will be kind to me because I intend to write it. What I don't understand is why you're considering NATO countries as totally guiltless of the same. Why is every western source automatically considered 100% accurate and free of bias, nationalism and similar stuff? I have yet to see a Hundred Years War discussion where French and English are in agreement and that's something that ended 6 centuries ago. Obviously, there are disagreements still. How history can history in Germany from 1933-1945 can be considered free of bias? How can western politicians be considered totally free of this? What McCarthy did was nothing short of witch hunt and a lot of sources about the issue at hand come from the US from that time period. I don't consider western or nato countries free of bias and propaganda and I can't accept anything as 100% accurate without critical evaluation, just because it comes from the west. Maybe you can, but I can't.

That's why I'm asking all these questions. Why are western sources considered perfect just because they are western when they come from a period when there was mutual bias, fear and even paranoia? How it was possible to conduct serious scholarly work in the USSR back then? Why isn't new research conducted? If I tried to research the issue now, the first thing I'd do is head to Russia, instead of relying on papers written in 50's. Starting from the archives, trying to find as many as possible live people and question them directly. There's bound to be a good number of them. IIRC, just last year the last Serbian soldier involved in the breakthrough of the Macedonian Front in the WW1 died. Try to get my hands on as many documents from the Gulags as I can. Visit and check them out directly etc... That guy, that professor from the University of Hawaii, wrote several books in the nineties, even after 2000 about this issue and yet not single one contains any original research, just rehash of old, Cold War sources.

P.S. I'm sorry I used so much the terms"west" (or "westerners" or "western", for that matter). I find it pretty distasteful and don't like to use it, but I don't know other short way of referring to countries that made up NATO during the Cold War.

[Brenus]

“I have yet to see a Hundred Years War discussion where French and English are in agreement and that's something that ended 6 centuries ago.” We agree on that the English lost the war…

[PershsNhpios]

Oh.. I must be reading through the wrong thread..

I could swear this was "Discussion of Stalinism", and not, "How many people did Stalin kill, the blighter?".

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

Now, tell me how could possibly any of the pre-1990's research accurately assess how many gulags there were, where they were, how many people were in them and how many died in them?

Eyewitness accounts (from thousands of different people), accessible records, intelligence reports...the list really goes on and on and on.

Don't tell me they just know because that's precisely what I'm arguing - they don't know and there was no possible way for them to know. Based on what information they had they could only make a guess. An educated guess perhaps, but a guess nevertheless.

This has truth and untruth. Yes, the best they could do would be an educated guess - but this could come very, very close. I don't think you can get a closer figure by using the archives as your primary source, as you suggest.

Furthermore, how is it possible for them to know how many people in the Gulags were innocent? Not only political prisoners were sent to Siberia, criminals got sent there, too.

This falls under cruel and unusual punishment then, and remains a crime against humanity.

For example, during the WW2, there were tens of thousands of Russian fighting in the German army.

Tens of thousands is, with all due respect to the victims, a drop in the ocean against the forty million or so murdered by Stalin. I don't deny that there is some room for error - but not much.

It's impossible for archives to contain every bit of information about everything, true, but generally they contain a lot, even the "embarrassing" bits. That's probably the reason why UK and US archives aren't opened to the public still. Actually, I know they weren't a couple of years ago, maybe that changed in the meantime. Anyway, not really the point. I'm willing to accept that Russian archives may not be complete or 100% accurate, but they still seem much more sensible starting point for any research than research conducted 20-80 years ago from 10,000 km away.

Firstly, you're presuming that all research was conducted with no Russian sources - an presumption which is inaccurate, as stated below. Russian archives have, undoubtedly, been used - and the only information I can find on them in regard to death tolls is them telling us about people (specifically Americans) who we didn't even know had died in the Soviet Union (thereby very slightly increasing the toll). As well, I think it is quite safe to assume that the archives of Western countries are in a much better state than the Russian ones. Some countries have much more reliable archives than others, as Ms. Applebaum so eloquently stated.

What I don't understand is why you're considering NATO countries as totally guiltless of the same. Why is every western source automatically considered 100% accurate and free of bias, nationalism and similar stuff?

It isn't - but you're dismissing it all as Western. There is plenty of work by Russians on the subject from the same timeframe, including from Russians who had gone through the Gulags.

That's why I'm asking all these questions. Why are western sources considered perfect just because they are western when they come from a period when there was mutual bias, fear and even paranoia?

Shockingly to you, perhaps, the first real accounts of the Gulags, for example, were not Western sources. They were Russians, Ukranians, Poles, Latvians, Lithuanians, Georgians, Cossacks, and Mongols. Solzhenitsyn is the first name that springs to mind in this - it was he who truly opened the Gulag story to the West, and he was a Russian if I ever saw one.

How it was possible to conduct serious scholarly work in the USSR back then?

I think you may have just proven my point with that line.

Why isn't new research conducted? If I tried to research the issue now, the first thing I'd do is head to Russia, instead of relying on papers written in 50's. Starting from the archives, trying to find as many as possible live people and question them directly. There's bound to be a good number of them. IIRC, just last year the last Serbian soldier involved in the breakthrough of the Macedonian Front in the WW1 died. Try to get my hands on as many documents from the Gulags as I can. Visit and check them out directly etc...

People have conducted plenty of new research, using old and new things that have been uncovered and examing their correlations. Have you read Anne Applebaum? Specifically Gulag: A History? She has studied extensively on the subject, and is fluent in Russian. She has viewed Russian sources firsthand.

[Sarmatian]

Eyewitness accounts (from thousands of different people), accessible records, intelligence reports...the list really goes on and on and on.

Thousands? How many thousands? One, two, three, four...forty? Compared to estimated death toll of 40,000,000, that's 0.1%. Any mathematician can tell you that 0.1% is not enough for serious statistical analysis. You need 2-4% (if I remember correctly, it's been a few years since I had statistics) of carefully selected samples, not random like those witnesses would have been. If it's random you need a much a larger sample to make an estimate with acceptable margin of error.

Accessible records - very few, as already stated.

Intelligence reports - well, you may be on to something there, although I don't think either of us can know just how complete those reports were. Somehow I think that western intelligence agents in the USSR had more pressing concerns than finding out stuff about gulags and, as you said, it was people from the USSR who first got the story out, not western intelligence agencies.

This has truth and untruth. Yes, the best they could do would be an educated guess - but this could come very, very close. I don't think you can get a closer figure by using the archives as your primary source, as you suggest.

Glad that we agree on that at least.

I wasn't suggesting using only archives. It's a good starting point, but the key should be field research. What's left of those gulags is still there and it would speak volumes.

This falls under cruel and unusual punishment then, and remains a crime against humanity.

True, but I'd still make a very large and important distinction between an innocent man and a criminal punished too harshly.

Tens of thousands is, with all due respect to the victims, a drop in the ocean against the forty million or so murdered by Stalin. I don't deny that there is some room for error - but not much.

Also a drop in the ocean of examples. What about those who acted subversively during the Nazi invasion/occupation, what about collaborationists etc...

Firstly, you're presuming that all research was conducted with no Russian sources - an presumption which is inaccurate, as stated below. Russian archives have, undoubtedly, been used - and the only information I can find on them in regard to death tolls is them telling us about people (specifically Americans) who we didn't even know had died in the Soviet Union (thereby very slightly increasing the toll). As well, I think it is quite safe to assume that the archives of Western countries are in a much better state than the Russian ones. Some countries have much more reliable archives than others, as Ms. Applebaum so eloquently stated.

It isn't - but you're dismissing it all as Western. There is plenty of work by Russians on the subject from the same timeframe, including from Russians who had gone through the Gulags.

That part might also mean - we took into consideration the part which increases the death toll and declared the other parts as unreliable

I think you misunderstood me here. I wasn't trying to dismiss those source because they are western and are inherently biased or prejudiced, although some certainly are. It's not - John Smith = bad, Oleg Ivanov = good, no. I was dismissing them because I don't believe they could have done any serious field research or get access to any serious documents.

Those works that were listed in bibliography on that site which authors were Russian are published in USA. It's not about the nationality of the author, it's about where that work has been done. It is - John Smith or Oleg Ivanov conducting research in the USA = bad and John Smith or Oleg Ivanov conducting research in what used to be USSR = good, if I may be so blunt. The only Soviet source (as in from Soviet Union) that I've seen on that list were Moscow News, which I presume are daily newspapers. There are several others where it says "translated", but doesn't state from which language, what's the name of original work and where it was originally published.

Shockingly to you, perhaps, the first real accounts of the Gulags, for example, were not Western sources. They were Russians, Ukranians, Poles, Latvians, Lithuanians, Georgians, Cossacks, and Mongols. Solzhenitsyn is the first name that springs to mind in this - it was he who truly opened the Gulag story to the West, and he was a Russian if I ever saw one.

Getting the story out and performing a scientific research are two totally different things. No one here questioned existence of the gulags, just the numbers because of flawed/incomplete research after the story got out.

I think you may have just proven my point with that line.

Actually I meant for outside researchers but it's true for Soviet researchers in those times, although to a lesser extent. That's why any pre-1990's research should be taken with more than just a pinch of salt.

People have conducted plenty of new research, using old and new things that have been uncovered and examing their correlations. Have you read Anne Applebaum? Specifically Gulag: A History? She has studied extensively on the subject, and is fluent in Russian. She has viewed Russian sources firsthand.

Haven't read it so obviously I can't comment on the book or its sources. I'll do that if I get my hands on it, which would be so much easier if stupid Amazon would start delivering to Serbia