Quote Originally Posted by Rosacrux redux
I have in the past posted a rather huge and detailed account on Stalin's victims and the USSR demographics. So, I'll just remind you all that USSR in 1929 (according to official census data) had 152 million people. In 1945, after a war that costed the country at least 26.6 million victims, USSR had 170.5 million inhabitants.

To achieve such growth had stalin killed 10 million people, the Russkies should reproduce at an extraordinary rate (double their normal, which was already way higher than the European average at the time). If we are to believe the more ludicrus numbers (like that 30 millions that seems a convenient point for those who are serving the anti-communist cause even today) the Soviets should've reproduced like rabits on viagra. And even during wartime.
From what I found on the net, the estimated data in 1939 spawns from 168 M to 182 M.
Add to that the fact USSR annexed lands where were living about 20 M of people at the end of the war, and the estimations of 15 M to 20 M people killed by Stalin don't sound that unbelievable.

The same thing could be said of post-Revolutionnary France. Despite civil war, Revolutionnary wars, the Terror (fairly similar to Stalin's purge, though on a lower scale) and Napoleonic wars, France's population was far higher in 1816 than in 1789.