Discussion of Stalinism

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

Precisely my argument. Anything above 20 million during the Purges before WWII is too much. Then again 10 million of purges during and after WWII and you get 30 million at the most. That is still a lot for USSR after WWII, with 120-140 million people total.

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.

I have already noted that while everyone seems to have a family member lost to the Nazis in WWII, very few have lost family members due to Stalin in comparison. I think I am the only Russian here.

As stated, he did not only kill Russians. I myself lost four relatives to their brutality, and various others were tortured and then released by the Soviets. What was the crime, you may ask? The fact they were German.