Discussion of Stalinism

[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