This post is interesting as an indication, probably, of all irresponsible sources, the names of their authors, as well as numbers according to the principle: who is more?
In short: good material for memory and reflection!

Original taken from takoe_sky in

"The concept of dictatorship means nothing more than power unrestricted by any laws, absolutely not constrained by any rules, based directly on violence."
V.I. Ulyanov (Lenin). Sobr. Op. T. 41, p. 383

"As we move forward, the class struggle will intensify, and the Soviet government, whose strength will grow more and more, will pursue a policy of isolating these elements." I.V. Dzhugashvili (Stalin). Works, vol. 11, p. 171

Vladimir Putin: “Repressions crushed people without considering nationalities, beliefs, or religions. Entire estates in our country became their victims: Cossacks and priests, ordinary peasants, professors and officers, teachers and workers.
There can be no justification for these crimes.” http://archive.government.ru/docs/10122/

How many people in Russia / USSR were destroyed by the communists under Lenin-Stalin?

Foreword

This is a subject of constant controversy, and this extremely important historical topic needs to be sorted out. For several months I studied all the possible and available materials on the network, at the end of the article there is an extensive list of them. The picture turned out to be more than sad.

There are a lot of words in the article, but now you can confidently poke any communist face into it (mild pardon for my French), broadcasting that "there were no mass repressions and deaths in the USSR."

For those who do not like long texts: according to dozens of studies, the Leninist-Stalinist communists destroyed at least 31 million people (direct irretrievable losses without emigration and the Second World War), a maximum of 168 million (including emigration and, most importantly, demographic losses from the unborn ). See the section "Statistics of total numbers". The most reliable figure seems to be direct losses of 34.31 million people - the arithmetic average of the sums of several of the most serious works on actual losses, which in general do not differ very much from each other. Not counting the unborn. See "Average figure" section.

For ease of reference, this article is divided into several sections.

"Pavlov's Help" - an analysis of the most important myth of the neo-Commies and Stalinists about "less than 1 million people were repressed."
"Average figure" - calculation of the number of victims by years and topics, with the ghost of the corresponding minimum and maximum figures from sources, from which the arithmetic average figure of losses is derived.
"Statistics of total numbers" - statistics on total numbers from the 20 most serious studies found.
"Used materials" - quotes and links in the article.
"Other important related materials" - interesting and useful links and information on the topic, not included in this article or not directly mentioned in it.

I would be grateful for any constructive criticism and additions.

Pavlov's help

The minimum figure of the dead, which all neo-communists and Stalinists adore, “only” 800 thousand people were shot (and no one else was killed according to their mantras) - is given in a 1953 certificate. It is called "Reference of the special department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR on the number of those arrested and convicted by the bodies of the Cheka-OGPU-NKVD of the USSR in 1921-1953." and is dated December 11, 1953. The certificate is signed by acting. the head of the 1st special department, Colonel Pavlov (the 1st special department was the accounting and archival department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs), which is why its name “Pavlov’s certificate” is found in modern materials.

This reference in itself is false and absurd a little more than completely,, and because. it is the main and main argument of the neocomms - it must be analyzed in detail. True, there is a second document, no less beloved by the neo-Communists and the Stalinists, a memorandum to the Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU, Comrade Khrushchev N.S. dated February 1, 1954, signed by the Prosecutor General R. Rudenko, the Minister of Internal Affairs S. Kruglov and the Minister of Justice K. Gorshenin. But the data in it practically coincides with the Help and, unlike the Help, does not contain any details, so it makes sense to analyze the Help.

So, according to this Certificate from the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR for the years 1921-1953, a total of 799.455 were shot. Excluding the years 1937 and 1938, 117,763 people were shot. 42.139 shot in the years 1941-1945. Those. during the years 1921-1953 (excluding the years 1937-1938 and the years of the war), during the struggle against the White Guards, against the Cossacks, against priests, against kulaks, against peasant uprisings, ... a total of 75,624 people were shot (according to "quite reliable" data). Only in the 37s under Stalin did they slightly increase activity in purges of "enemies of the people". And so, according to this information, even in the bloody times of Trotsky and the cruel "Red Terror", it turns out, it was quiet.

I will give for consideration an excerpt from this certificate for the period 1921-1931.

Let us first pay attention to the data on those convicted for anti-Soviet (counter-revolutionary) propaganda. In 1921-1922, at the height of the fiercest struggle against counter-terrorism and the officially declared "Red Terror", when people were seized only for belonging to the bourgeoisie (bespectacled man and white hands), no one was arrested for counter-revolutionary, anti-Soviet propaganda (according to the Help). Openly agitate against the Soviets, speak at rallies against the surplus appraisal and other actions of the Bolsheviks, curse the blasphemous new government from church ambos, and nothing will happen to you. Direct freedom of speech! In 1923, however, 5,322 people were arrested for propaganda, but then again (until 1929) complete freedom of speech for anti-Soviet people, and only starting from 1929 did the Bolsheviks finally begin to “tighten the screws” and persecute counter-revolutionary propaganda. And such freedom and patient perception of anti-Soviet people (according to an honest document, for many years, NOT A SINGLE one imprisoned for anti-government propaganda) occurs during the officially declared "Red Terror", when the Bolsheviks closed down all opposition newspapers and parties, imprisoned and shot clergymen for what they said is not what is needed ... As an example of the complete falsity of these data, one can cite a surname index of those shot in the Kuban (75 pages, of those surnames that I read - all were acquitted after Stalin).

For 1930, on the item convicted for anti-Soviet agitation, it is generally modestly noted that "There is no information." Those. The system worked, people were condemned, shot, but no information was received!
This certificate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the “No information” in it directly openly confirms and is documentary evidence that many information about the punishments carried out were not registered and generally disappeared.

Now I want to analyze the point of the fascinating Help on the number of executions (VMN - Capital Punishment). In the Certificate for 1921, 9,701 were shot. In 1922, only 1,962 people, and in 1923, in general, only 414 people (12,077 people were shot in 3 years).

Let me remind you that this is still the time of the "Red Terror" and the ongoing civil war (which ended only in 1923), a terrible famine that claimed several million lives and was organized by the Bolsheviks, who took almost all the bread from the "class alien" breadwinners - the peasants, and also the time of peasant uprisings caused by this surplus and famine, and the most severe suppression of those who dared to be indignant.
At a time when, according to the official Information, the number of executions was already small in 1921, in 1922 it was still greatly reduced, and in 1923 it almost stopped altogether, in reality, due to the most severe food requisition, a terrible famine reigned in the country, dissatisfaction with the Bolsheviks intensified and the opposition became more active, everywhere peasant uprisings broke out. The unrest of the dissatisfied, opposition and uprisings, the Bolshevik leadership demands to be suppressed in the most severe way.

Church sources give data on those killed as a result of the implementation of the wisest "general plan" in 1922: 2,691 priests, 1,962 monks, 3,447 nuns were (Russian Orthodox Church and Communist State, 1917-1941, M., 1996, p. 69). In 1922, 8,100 clergymen were killed (and the most honest Information claims that in total, including criminals, 1,962 people were shot in 1922).

The suppression of the Tambov uprising of 1921-22. If we recall how this was reflected in the surviving documents of that time, then Uborevich reported to Tukhachevsky: "1000 people were taken prisoner, 1000 were shot", then "500 people were taken prisoner, all 500 were shot." And how many of these documents were destroyed? And how many such executions were not reflected in the documents at all?

Note (curious comparison):
According to official figures, 24,422 people were sentenced to death in the peaceful USSR from 1962 to 1989. An average of 2,754 people over 2 years in a very calm, peaceful time of golden stagnation. In 1962, 2,159 people were sentenced to death. Those. in the benevolent times of the "golden stagnation" they were shot, it turns out more than during the cruelest "red terror". According to the Information for 2 years 1922-1923, only 2,376 were shot (almost as many as in 1962 alone).

In the Certificate from the 1st Special Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR on repressions, only those convicts who were officially registered as "contra" are included. Bandits, criminals, violators of labor discipline and public order, of course, were not included in the statistics of this Certificate.
For example, in the USSR in 1924, 1,915,900 people were officially convicted (see: Results of the Decade of Soviet Power in Figures. 1917-1927. M, 1928. S. 112-113), and according to the Information through the special departments of the Cheka-OGPU this year only 12,425 people were convicted (and only they can officially be considered as repressed; the rest are just criminals).
Do I need to remind you that in the USSR they tried to declare that we do not have political people, there are only criminals. Trotskyists were sued as wreckers and saboteurs. The rebellious peasants were suppressed as bandits (even the Commission under the RVSR, which led the suppression of peasant uprisings, was officially called the “Commission for Combating Banditry”), etc.

I will give two more facts to the wonderful statistics of the Help.

According to the well-known archives of the NKVD, which are cited by those who refute the scale of the Gulags, the number of prisoners in prisons, camps and colonies at the beginning of 1937 was 1.196 million people.
However, in the census conducted on January 6, 1937, 156 million people were received (without the population rewritten by the NKVD and the NPO (that is, without the special contingent of the NKVD and the army), and without passengers on trains and ships). The total population according to the census was 162,003,225 people (including contingents of the Red Army, NKVD and passengers).

Considering the size of the army at that time 2 million (specialists give the figure 1.645.983 on 01.01.37) and assuming that there were about 1 million passengers, we get approximately that the NKVD special contingent (prisoners) by the beginning of 1937 was about 3 million. Close to our calculated specific number of 2.75 million prisoners was indicated in the certificate of the NKVD provided by the TsUNKhU for the 1937 census. Those. according to another OFFICIAL certificate (and also, of course, true), the actual number of prisoners was 2.3 times higher than the generally accepted one.

And one more, last example from official, truthful information about the number of prisoners.
In a report on the use of prisoner labor in 1939, it is reported that there were 94,773 of them in the UZHDS system at the beginning of the year, and 69,569 at the end of the year. (In principle, everything is wonderful, it is these data that the researchers simply reprint and make up the total amount of prisoners from them. But the trouble is, another interesting figure is given in the same report) The prisoners worked, as stated in the same report, 135,148,918 people days. Such a combination is impossible, since if 94 thousand people worked every day without days off during the year, then the number of days worked by them would be only 34.310 thousand (94 thousand for 365). If we agree with Solzhenitsyn, who claims that the prisoners were supposed to have three days off per month, then 135,148,918 man-days could be provided by approximately 411 thousand workers (135,148,918 for 329 working days). Those. and here the OFFICIAL distortion of reporting is about 5 times.

Summing up, it can be emphasized once again that the Bolsheviks / Communists far from recorded all their crimes, and what was nevertheless recorded was then repeatedly subjected to purges: Beria destroyed dirt on himself, Khrushchev cleared the archives in his favor, Trotsky, Stalin, Kaganovich also did not they were very fond of keeping “ugly” materials for themselves; similarly, the leaders of the republics, regional committees, city committees, and departments of the NKVD cleaned out the local archives for themselves. ,

And yet, knowing full well about the then practice of executions without trial or investigation, about the numerous purges of archives, the neo-commies sum up the remnants of the lists found and give the final figure of less than 1 million executed from 1921 to 1953, this includes criminals sentenced to capital punishment. The falsity and cynicism of these statements "beyond good and evil" ...

Average figure

Now about the real numbers of communist victims. These numbers of people killed by the communists are made up of several main points. The numbers themselves are listed as the minimum and maximum I have encountered in various studies, with an indication of the study / author. The numbers in the items marked with an asterisk are for reference only and are not included in the final calculation.

1. "Red Terror" from October 1917 - 1.7 million people (Commission Denikin, Melgunov), - 2 million.

2. Epidemics of 1918-1922 - 6-7 million,

3. Civil war of 1917-1923, losses on both sides, soldiers and officers killed and died of wounds - 2.5 million (Polyakov) - 7.5 million (Aleksandrov)
(For reference: even the minimum figures are more than the death toll for the entire First World War - 1.7 million.)

4. The first artificial famine of 1921-1922, 1 million (Polyakov) - 4.5 million (Aleksandrov) - 5 million (with 5 million indicated in the TSB)
5. Suppression of peasant uprisings of 1921-1923 - 0.6 million (own calculations)

6. Victims of forced Stalinist collectivization of 1930-1932 (including victims of extrajudicial repressions, peasants who died of starvation in 1932 and special settlers in 1930-1940) - 2 million.

7. The second artificial famine of 1932-1933 - 6.5 million (Aleksandrov), 7.5 million, 8.1 million (Andreev)

8. Victims of political terror in the 1930s - 1.8 million

9. Those who died in places of detention in the 1930s - 1.8 million (Aleksandrov) - more than 2 million

ten*. "Lost" as a result of Stalin's corrections of the population censuses of 1937 and 1939 - 8 million - 10 million.
According to the results of the first census, 5 TsUNKhU leaders were shot in a row, as a result, the statistics were "improved" - "increased" the population by several million. These figures are probably distributed in paragraphs. 6, 7, 8 and 9.

11. Finnish War 1939-1940 - 0.13 million

12*. Irretrievable losses in the war of 1941-1945 - 38 million, 39 million according to Rosstat, 44 million according to Kurganov.
The criminal mistakes and orders of Dzhugashvili (Stalin) and his henchmen led to colossal and unjustified casualties among the personnel of the Red Army and the civilian population of the country. At the same time, there were no massacres of the civilian non-belligerent population by the Nazis (except for Jews). Moreover, it is only known about the targeted destruction of communists, commissars, Jews and partisan saboteurs by the Nazis. The civilian population was not subjected to genocide. But of course, it is impossible to isolate from these losses the part in which the communists are directly to blame, so this is not taken into account. Nevertheless, the death rate of prisoners in Soviet camps over the years is known, according to various sources, this is about 600,000 people. This is entirely on the conscience of the communists.

13. Repressions 1945-1953 - 2.85 million (together with paragraphs 13 and 14)

14. Famine of 1946-47 - 1 million

15. In addition to deaths, the country's demographic losses also include irretrievable emigration as a result of the actions of the communists. In the period after the coup of 1917 and the beginning of the 1920s, it accounted for 1.9 million (Volkov) - 2.9 million (Ramsha) - 3 million (Mikhailovsky). As a result of the war of 41-45, 0.6 million - 2 million people did not want to return to the USSR.
The arithmetic average of losses is 34.31 million people.

Used materials.

Calculation of the number of victims of the Bolsheviks according to the official methodology of the USSR State Statistics Committee http://www.slavic-europe.eu/index.php/articles/57-russia-articles/255-2013-05-21-31

The well-known incident of the summary statistics of the repressed in cases of the State Security Service ("Pavlov's certificate") in terms of the number of executions in 1933 (although this is actually defective statistics from the summary certificates of the State Security Committee, deposited in the 8th Central Asia of the FSB), disclosed by Alexei Teplyakov http://corporatelie.livejournal .com/53743.html
It resulted in an underestimation of the number of those shot by at least 6 times. And perhaps more.

Repressions in the Kuban, a surname index of the executed (75 pages) http://ru.convdocs.org/docs/index-15498.html?page=1 (of those that I read, everyone was rehabilitated after Stalin).

Stalinist Igor Pykhalov. "What are the scales of the 'Stalinist repressions'?" http://warrax.net/81/stalin.html

Census of the USSR (1937) https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9F%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BF%D0%B8%D1%81%D1%8C_ %D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%81%D0%B5%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%8F_%D0%A1%D0%A1%D0%A1%D0 %A0_%281937%29
Red Army before the war: organization and personnel http://militera.lib.ru/research/meltyukhov/09.html

Archival materials on the number of prisoners in the late 30s. Central State Archive of the National Economy (TSGANKh) of the USSR, Fund of the People's Commissariat - Ministry of Finance of the USSR http://scepsis.net/library/id_491.html

Article by Oleg Khlevnyuk on massive distortions of the statistics of the Turkmen NKVD in 1937-1938. Hlevnjuk O. Les mecanismes de la "Grande Terreur" des annees 1937-1938 au Turkmenistan // Cahiers du Monde russe. 1998. 39/1-2. http://corporatelie.livejournal.com/163706.html#comments

A special investigative commission to investigate the atrocities of the Bolsheviks, the Commander-in-Chief of the All-Union Socialist Republic, General Denikin, cites the numbers of victims of the Red Terror only for 1918-19. - 1.766.118 Russians, of which 28 bishops, 1.215 clergy, 6.775 professors and teachers, 8.800 doctors, 54.650 officers, 260.000 soldiers, 10.500 policemen, 48.650 police agents, 12.950 landlords, 355.250 representatives of the intelligentsia, 193.015.350 peasants
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9E%D1%81%D0%BE%D0%B1%D0%B0%D1%8F_%D1%81%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0 %B4%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B2%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%8F_%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%B8 %D1%81%D1%81%D0%B8%D1%8F_%D0%BF%D0%BE_%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%81%D1%81%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0 %B4%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B8%D1%8E_%D0%B7%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B4%D0%B5%D1%8F %D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B9_%D0%B1%D0%BE%D0%BB%D1%8C%D1%88%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0 %BE%D0%B2#cite_note-Meingardt-6

Suppression of peasant uprisings 1921-1923

The number of victims during the suppression of the Tambov uprising. A large number of Tambov villages and villages were wiped off the face of the earth as a result of sweeps (as punishment for supporting the "bandits"). As a result of the actions of the occupying and punitive army and the Cheka in the Tambov region, according to Soviet data, at least 110 thousand people were killed. Many analysts call the figure of 240 thousand people. How many “Antonovites” were destroyed later from organized famine
The Tambov security officer Goldin said: “For the execution, we do not need any evidence and interrogations, as well as suspicions and, of course, useless, stupid office work. We find it necessary to shoot and shoot.”

At the same time, almost all of Russia was engulfed in peasant uprisings. In Western Siberia and the Urals, the Don and Kuban, the Volga region and the central provinces, the peasants came out against the Soviet power, who had fought yesterday against the whites and interventionists. The scale of the performances was enormous.
book Materials for the study of the history of the USSR (1921 - 1941), Moscow, 1989 (compiled by Dolutsky I.I.)
The largest of them was the West Siberian uprising of 1921-22. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%97%D0%B0%D0%BF%D0%B0%D0%B4%D0%BD%D0%BE-%D0%A1%D0%B8% D0%B1%D0%B8%D1%80%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B5_%D0%B2%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%81%D1%82%D0% B0%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B5_%281921%E2%80%941922%29
And all of them were suppressed by this government with approximately the same extreme measure of cruelty, briefly described on the example of the Tambov province. I will give only one extract from the protocols on the methods of suppressing the West Siberian uprising: http://www.proza.ru/2011/01/28/782

Fundamental research of the largest historian of the revolution and the Civil War S.P. Melgunov “Red Terror in Russia. 1918-1923" is a documentary evidence of the atrocities of the Bolsheviks, committed under the slogan of the fight against class enemies in the first years after the October Revolution. It is based on testimonies collected by the historian from various sources (the author was a contemporary of those events), but primarily from the printed organs of the Cheka itself (VChK Weekly, Red Terror magazine), even before his expulsion from the USSR. Published according to the 2nd, supplemented edition (Berlin, Vataga publishing house, 1924). You can buy on Ozone.
The human losses of the USSR in the Second World War - 38 million. A book by a team of authors with an eloquent title - "Washed with blood"? Lies and truth about losses in the Great Patriotic War". Authors: Igor Pykhalov, Lev Lopukhovsky, Viktor Zemskov, Igor Ivlev, Boris Kavalerchik. Publishing house "Yauza" - "Eksmo, 2012. Volume - 512 pages, of which by authors: And Pykhalov - 19 pp., L. Lopukhovsky in collaboration with B. Kavalerchik - 215 pp., V. Zemskov - 17 pp., I. Ivlev - 249 pp. Circulation 2000 copies.

The anniversary collection of Rosstat, dedicated to the Second World War, indicates the figure of the country's demographic losses in the war at 39.3 million people. http://www.gks.ru/free_doc/doc_2015/vov_svod_1.pdf

Genby. "The Demographic Cost of Communist Rule in Russia" http://genby.livejournal.com/486320.html.

The terrible famine of 1933 in figures and facts http://historical-fact.livejournal.com/2764.html

Underestimated by 6 times the statistics of executions in 1933, detailed analysis http://corporatelie.livejournal.com/53743.html

Calculation of the number of victims of the communists, Kirill Mikhailovich Alexandrov - Candidate of Historical Sciences, Senior Researcher (major in History of Russia) of the Encyclopedic Department of the Institute of Philological Research, St. Petersburg State University. Author of three books on the history of anti-Stalinist resistance during World War II and more than 250 publications on national history of the 19th-20th centuries. http://www.white-guard.ru/go.php?n=4&id=82

Repressed census of 1937. http://demoscope.ru/weekly/2007/0313/tema07.php

Demographic losses from repressions, A. Vishnevsky http://demoscope.ru/weekly/2007/0313/tema06.php

Censuses 1937 and 1939 Demographic losses by the balance method. http://genby.livejournal.com/542183.html

Red terror - documents.

On May 14, 1921, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) supported the expansion of the rights of the Cheka in relation to the application of capital punishment (CMN).

On June 4, 1921, the Politburo decided "to give the Cheka a directive to intensify the struggle against the Mensheviks in view of the intensification of their counter-revolutionary activities."

Between January 26 and 31, 1922. V.I. Lenin - I.S. Unshlikht: “The publicity of revolutionary tribunals is not always; to strengthen their composition with “your” [i.e. VChK - G.Kh.] people, to strengthen their connection (any) with the Cheka; to increase the speed and force of their repressions, to increase the attention of the Central Committee to this. The slightest increase in banditry, etc. should entail martial law and executions on the spot. The Council of People's Commissars will be able to quickly carry it out if you do not miss it, and it is possible by telephone ”(Lenin, PSS, vol. 54, p. 144).

In March 1922, in a speech at the 11th Congress of the RCP(b), Lenin declared: "Our revolutionary courts must be shot for public proof of Menshevism, otherwise these are not our courts."

May 15, 1922. "vol. Kursk! In my opinion, it is necessary to expand the application of shooting ... to all types of activities of the Mensheviks, Socialist-Revolutionaries, etc. ... ”(Lenin, PSS, vol. 45, p. 189). (According to the figures from the Reference, it follows that the use of executions, on the contrary, was rapidly reduced in these years)

Telegram dated August 11, 1922, signed by Deputy Chairman of the State Political Administration of the Republic I. S. Unshlikht and Head of the Secret Department of the GPU. T. P. Samsonov, ordered the provincial departments of the GPU: “immediately liquidate all active Socialist-Revolutionaries in your area.”

March 19, 1922 Lenin, in a letter addressed to members of the Politburo, explains the need right now, using a terrible famine, to launch an active campaign to expropriate church property and inflict a "mortal blow on the enemy" - the clergy and the bourgeoisie: The greater the number of representatives of the reactionary clergy and the reactionary bourgeoisie will succeed we shoot on this occasion, so much the better: it is necessary right now to teach this public a lesson so that for several decades they will not even dare to think about any resistance<...>» RTSKHIDNI, 2/1/22947/1-4.

Pandemic "Spanish flu" 1918-1920. in the context of other influenza pandemics and "bird flu", M.V. Supotnitsky, Ph.D. Sciences http://www.supotnitskiy.ru/stat/stat51.htm

S.I. Zlotogorov, "Typhus" http://sohmet.ru/books/item/f00/s00/z0000004/st002.shtml

Statistics on the total numbers from the studies found:

I. The most minimal direct victims of the Bolsheviks according to the official methodology of the USSR State Statistics Committee, without emigration - 31 million http://www.slavic-europe.eu/index.php/articles/57-russia-articles/255-2013-05-21- 31
If it is impossible to establish the number of victims of military "communism" through the Bolshevik archives, then is it possible to establish here, apart from speculation, anything corresponding to reality? It turns out that it is possible. Moreover, quite simply - through the bed and the laws of ordinary physiology, which no one has yet canceled. Men sleep with women regardless of who has snuck into the Kremlin.
Note that it is in this way (and not by compiling lists of the dead) that all serious scientists (and the State Commission of the USSR State Statistics Committee, in particular) calculate the loss of life during the Second World War.
Total losses of 26.6 million people - the calculation was made by the Department of Demographic Statistics of the USSR State Statistics Committee in the course of work as part of a comprehensive commission to clarify the number of human losses of the Soviet Union in the Great Patriotic War. - Mobupravlenie GOMU of the General Staff of the AFRF, d.142, 1991, inv. No. 04504, sheet 250. (Russia and the USSR in the wars of the twentieth century: Statistical research. M., 2001. p. 229.)
31 million people seems to be the lowest point in the regime's death toll.
II. In 1990, statistician O.A. Platonov: “According to our calculations, the total number of people who did not die of their own death from mass repression, famine, epidemics, wars amounted to more than 87 million people in 1918-1953. And in total, if we add up the number of people who died not by their own death, who left their homeland, as well as the number of children that could be born to these people, then the total human damage to the country will be 156 million people.

III. Outstanding philosopher and historian Ivan Ilyin, "The size of the Russian population".
http://www.rus-sky.com/gosudarstvo/ilin/nz/nz-52.htm
"All this is only for the years of the Second World War. Adding this new shortfall to the previous one of 36 million, we will get a monstrous sum of 72 million lives. This is the price of the revolution."

IV. Calculation of the number of victims of the communists, Kirill Mikhailovich Alexandrov - Candidate of Historical Sciences, Senior Researcher (major in History of Russia) of the Encyclopedic Department of the Institute of Philological Research, St. Petersburg State University. Author of three books on the history of anti-Stalinist resistance during World War II and more than 250 publications on national history of the 19th-20th centuries. http://www.white-guard.ru/go.php?n=4&id=82
"Civil War 1917-1922 7.5 million.
The first artificial famine of 1921-1922 over 4.5 million people.
Victims of the Stalinist collectivization of 1930-1932 (including victims of extrajudicial repressions, peasants who starved to death in 1932 and special settlers in 1930-1940) ≈ 2 million
Second artificial famine of 1933 - 6.5 million
Victims of political terror - 800 thousand people
1.8 million died in places of detention.
The victims of the Second World War ≈ 28 million people.
Total ≈ 51 million."

V. Data from the article by A. Ivanov "Demographic losses of Russia-USSR" - http://ricolor.org/arhiv/russkoe_vozrojdenie/1981/8/:
"... All this makes it possible to judge the total losses of the country's population with the formation of the Soviet state, caused by its internal policy, its conduct of civil and world wars during 1917-1959. We have identified three periods:
1. The establishment of Soviet power - 1917-1929, the number of casualties - over 30 million people.
2. The costs of building socialism (collectivization, industrialization, liquidation of the kulaks, the remnants of the "former classes") - 1930-1939. - 22 million people.
3. World War II and post-war difficulties - 1941-1950 - 51 million people; Total - 103 million people.
As you can see, this approach, using the latest demographic indicators, leads to the same assessment of the amount of human casualties suffered by the peoples of our country during the years of the existence of Soviet power and the communist dictatorship, which was reached by different researchers who used different methods and different demographic statistics. This once again indicates that 100-110 million human victims of building socialism is the real "price" of this "building."
VI. Opinion of the liberal historian R. Medvedev: ““Thus, the total number of victims of Stalinism reaches, according to my calculations, figures of about 40 million people” (R. Medvedev “Tragic Statistics // Arguments and Facts. 1989, February 4-10. No. 5 (434), p. 6.)

VII. Opinion of the commission for the rehabilitation of victims of political repression (headed by A. Yakovlev): "According to the most conservative estimates of the specialists of the commission for rehabilitation, our country lost about 100 million people during the years of Stalin's rule. This number includes not only the repressed themselves, but also those doomed to the death of their family members and even children who could have been born, but never were born. (Mikhailova N. Underpants of counter-revolution // Prime Minister Vologda, 2002, July 24-30. No. 28 (254). P. 10.)

VIII. Fundamental demographic research of the team led by Doctor of Economic Sciences Professor Ivan Koshkin (Kurganov) “Three figures. About human losses for the period from 1917 to 1959. http://slavic-europe.eu/index.php/comments/66-comments-russia/177-2013-04-15-1917-1959 http://rusidea.org/?a=32030
"Nevertheless, the widespread belief in the USSR that all or most of the human losses in the USSR are associated with military events is wrong. The losses associated with military events are grandiose, but they far from cover all the losses of the people during the Soviet period. They, contrary to popular belief in the USSR, they account for only a part of these losses.Here are the corresponding figures (in million people):
The total number of casualties in the USSR during the dictatorship of the Communist Party from 1917 to 1959 110.7 million - 100%.
Including:
Losses in wartime 44.0 million - 40%.
Losses in non-military revolutionary times 66.7 million - 60%.

P.S. It was this work that Solzhenitsyn mentioned in a famous interview with Spanish television, which is why it causes especially fierce hatred of the Stalinists and neo-Commi.

IX. The opinion of the historian and publicist B. Pushkarev is about 100 million.

X. The book edited by the leading Russian demographer Vishnevsky "Demographic Modernization of Russia, 1900-2000". The demographic loss from the communists is 140 million (mainly due to unborn generations).
http://demoscope.ru/weekly/2007/0313/tema07.php

XI. O. Platonov, the book "Memoirs of the national economy", losses in total 156 million people.
XII. Russian emigrant historian Arseny Gulevich, book "Tsarism and Revolution", the direct losses of the revolution amounted to 49 million people.
If we add to them the losses due to the birth deficit, then with the victims of the two world wars, we get the same 100-110 million people destroyed by communism.

XIII. According to the documentary series "History of Russia of the XX century", the total number of direct demographic losses suffered by the peoples of the former Russian Empire from the actions of the Bolsheviks from 1917 to 1960. is about 60 million people.

XIV. According to the documentary "Nicholas II. A thwarted triumph", the total number of victims of the Bolshevik dictatorship is about 40 million people.

XV. According to the forecasts of the French scientist E. Teri, the population of Russia in 1948, without unnatural deaths and taking into account normal population growth, should have been 343.9 million people. At that time, 170.5 million people lived in the USSR, i.e. demographic losses (including unborn) for 1917-1948. - 173.4 million people

XVI. Genby. the demographic cost of communist rule in Russia is 200 million http://genby.livejournal.com/486320.html.

XVII. Summary tables of victims of Lenin-Stalin repressions

The history of Russia, as well as other former post-Soviet republics in the period from 1928 to 1953, is called the “Stalin era”. He is positioned as a wise ruler, a brilliant statesman, acting on the basis of "expediency." In fact, they were driven by completely different motives.

Talking about the beginning of the political career of the leader who became a tyrant, such authors shyly hush up one indisputable fact: Stalin was a recidivist convict with seven “walkers”. Robbery and violence were the main form of his social activity in his youth. Repression became an integral part of the state course pursued by him.

Lenin received in him a worthy successor. “Creatively developing his teachings,” Iosif Vissarionovich came to the conclusion that he should rule the country by methods of terror, constantly instilling fear in his fellow citizens.

The generation of people whose mouths can speak the truth about Stalin's repressions is leaving... Are the newfangled articles that whitewash the dictator a spit on their suffering, on their broken life...

Leader who sanctioned torture

As you know, Iosif Vissarionovich personally signed the death lists for 400,000 people. In addition, Stalin toughened repression as much as possible, authorizing the use of torture during interrogations. It was they who were given the green light to complete lawlessness in the dungeons. It was directly related to the notorious telegram of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks dated January 10, 1939, which literally unleashed the hands of the punitive authorities.

Creativity in introducing torture

Let us recall excerpts from the letter of commander Lisovsky, who is being abused by the satraps of the leader ...

"... A ten-day conveyor interrogation with a cruel, vicious beating and no way to sleep. Then - a twenty-day punishment cell. Then - forcing to sit with arms raised up, and also to stand bent over, with his head hidden under the table, for 7-8 hours ..."

The desire of the detainees to prove their innocence and their failure to sign fabricated charges caused an increase in torture and beatings. The social status of the detainees did not play a role. Recall that Robert Eikhe, a candidate member of the Central Committee, had his spine broken during interrogation, and Marshal Blucher died from beatings during interrogations in Lefortovo prison.

Leader's motivation

The number of victims of Stalin's repressions was not tens, not hundreds of thousands, but seven million starved to death and four million arrested (general statistics will be presented below). Only the number of those shot was about 800 thousand people ...

How did Stalin motivate his actions, boundlessly striving for the Olympus of power?

What does Anatoly Rybakov write about this in Children of the Arbat? Analyzing the personality of Stalin, he shares with us his judgments. “A ruler who is loved by the people is weak because his power is based on the emotions of other people. Another thing is when people are afraid of him! Then the power of the ruler depends on him. This is a strong ruler!” Hence the leader's credo - to inspire love through fear!

Steps adequate to this idea were taken by Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin. Repression became his main competitive tool in his political career.

Beginning of revolutionary activity

Iosif Vissarionovich became interested in revolutionary ideas at the age of 26 after meeting V. I. Lenin. He was engaged in robbery of funds for the party treasury. Fate took him 7 links to Siberia. Stalin was distinguished by pragmatism, prudence, promiscuity in means, rigidity towards people, egocentrism from a young age. Repressions against financial institutions - robberies and violence - were his. Then the future leader of the party participated in the Civil War.

Stalin in the Central Committee

In 1922, Joseph Vissarionovich received a long-awaited career opportunity. Sick and weakening, Vladimir Ilyich introduces him, along with Kamenev and Zinoviev, to the Central Committee of the party. Thus, Lenin creates a political counterbalance to Leon Trotsky, who really claims to be the leader.

Stalin simultaneously heads two party structures: the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee and the Secretariat. In this post, he brilliantly studied the art of party undercover intrigues, which was useful to him later in the fight against competitors.

Stalin's position in the system of red terror

The red terror machine was launched even before Stalin came to the Central Committee.

09/05/1918 The Council of People's Commissars issues a Decree "On the Red Terror". The body for its implementation, called the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission (VChK), operated under the Council of People's Commissars from December 7, 1917.

The reason for such a radicalization of domestic politics was the assassination of M. Uritsky, chairman of the St. Petersburg Cheka, and the attempt on the life of V. Lenin, Fanny Kaplan, acting from the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. Both events took place on August 30, 1918. Already this year, the Cheka unleashed a wave of repression.

According to statistics, 21,988 people were arrested and imprisoned; 3061 hostages taken; 5544 shot, imprisoned in concentration camps 1791.

By the time Stalin came to the Central Committee, gendarmes, policemen, tsarist officials, entrepreneurs, and landlords had already been repressed. First of all, a blow was dealt to the classes that are the backbone of the monarchical structure of society. However, "creatively developing the teachings of Lenin", Iosif Vissarionovich outlined new main directions of terror. In particular, a course was taken to destroy the social base of the village - agricultural entrepreneurs.

Stalin since 1928 - the ideologist of violence

It was Stalin who turned repression into the main instrument of domestic policy, which he substantiated theoretically.

His concept of the intensification of the class struggle formally becomes the theoretical basis for the constant escalation of violence by state authorities. The country shuddered when it was first voiced by Iosif Vissarionovich at the July Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in 1928. Since that time, he actually becomes the leader of the Party, the inspirer and ideologist of violence. The tyrant declared war on his own people.

Hidden by slogans, the real meaning of Stalinism is manifested in the unrestrained pursuit of power. Its essence is shown by the classic - George Orwell. The Englishman showed very clearly that power for this ruler was not a means, but an end. Dictatorship was no longer perceived by him as a defense of the revolution. The revolution became a means to establish a personal unlimited dictatorship.

Iosif Vissarionovich in 1928-1930 began by initiating the fabrication by the OGPU of a number of public trials that plunged the country into an atmosphere of shock and fear. Thus, Stalin's cult of personality began its formation with trials and instilling horror in the whole society ... Mass repressions were accompanied by public recognition of those who committed non-existent crimes as "enemies of the people." People were brutally tortured into signing accusations fabricated by the investigation. The cruel dictatorship imitated the class struggle, cynically violating the Constitution and all norms of universal morality...

Three global lawsuits were rigged: the “Union Bureau Affair” (putting managers at risk); "The Case of the Industrial Party" (the sabotage of the Western powers against the economy of the USSR was imitated); "The Case of the Labor Peasant Party" (obvious falsification of damage to the seed fund and delays with mechanization). Moreover, they all united in a single cause in order to create the appearance of a single conspiracy against the Soviet government and provide scope for further falsifications of the OGPU - NKVD.

As a result, the entire economic management of the national economy was replaced from the old "specialists" to "new cadres" ready to work on the instructions of the "leader".

Through the mouths of Stalin, who provided the state apparatus loyal to repressions with the courts, the Party's adamant determination was further expressed: to oust and ruin thousands of entrepreneurs - industrialists, merchants, small and medium; destroy the basis of agricultural production - the prosperous peasantry (indiscriminately calling it "kulaks"). At the same time, the new voluntarist party position was masked by "the will of the poorest strata of workers and peasants."

Behind the scenes, in parallel with this "general line", the "father of the peoples" consistently, with the help of provocations and false evidence, began to implement the line of liquidating their party competitors for the highest state power (Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev).

Forced collectivization

The truth about Stalin's repressions of the period 1928-1932. testifies that the main social base of the village - an efficient agricultural producer - became the main object of repression. The goal is clear: the entire peasant country (which in fact at that time were Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic and Transcaucasian republics) was to turn under the pressure of repression from a self-sufficient economic complex into an obedient donor for the implementation of Stalin's industrialization plans and the maintenance of hypertrophied power structures.

In order to clearly indicate the object of his repressions, Stalin went on an obvious ideological forgery. Economically and socially unjustified, he managed to ensure that party ideologists obedient to him singled out a normal self-supporting (profitable) producer into a separate "class of kulaks" - the target of a new blow. Under the ideological leadership of Joseph Vissarionovich, a plan was developed for the destruction of the social foundations of the village that had developed over the centuries, the destruction of the rural community - the Decree "On the liquidation of ... kulak farms" of 01/30/1930

The Red Terror came to the village. Peasants who fundamentally disagreed with collectivization were subjected to Stalinist trials - "troikas", in most cases ending in executions. Less active “kulaks”, as well as “kulak families” (any persons subjectively defined as “rural activists” could fall into the category) were subjected to forcible confiscation of property and eviction. A body of permanent operational management of the eviction was created - a secret operational management under the leadership of Efim Evdokimov.

Settlers in the extreme regions of the North, victims of Stalin's repressions, were previously identified on a list basis in the Volga region, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Siberia, and the Urals.

In 1930-1931. 1.8 million were evicted, and in 1932-1940. - 0.49 million people.

Organization of hunger

However, executions, ruin and eviction in the 30s of the last century are not all Stalin's repressions. Their brief enumeration should be supplemented by the organization of famine. The real reason for it was the inadequate approach of Joseph Vissarionovich personally to insufficient grain procurements in 1932. Why was the plan fulfilled by only 15-20%? The main reason was crop failure.

His subjective plan for industrialization was under threat. It would be reasonable to reduce plans by 30%, postpone them, and first stimulate the agricultural producer and wait for the harvest year ... Stalin did not want to wait, he demanded immediate provision of food for the bloated power structures and new gigantic construction projects - Donbass, Kuzbass. The leader made a decision - to withdraw from the peasants the grain intended for sowing and for consumption.

On October 22, 1932, two emergency commissions led by the odious personalities Lazar Kaganovich and Vyacheslav Molotov launched a misanthropic campaign of "fighting the kulaks" to seize bread, which was accompanied by violence, quick to punish by troika courts and the eviction of wealthy agricultural producers to the regions of the Far North. It was genocide...

It is noteworthy that the cruelty of the satraps was actually initiated and not stopped by Joseph Vissarionovich himself.

Known fact: correspondence between Sholokhov and Stalin

Mass repressions of Stalin in 1932-1933. are documented. M. A. Sholokhov, the author of The Quiet Flows the Don, addressed the leader, defending his countrymen, with letters, exposing lawlessness during the confiscation of grain. In detail, with an indication of the villages, the names of the victims and their tormentors, the famous resident of the village of Veshenskaya stated the facts. Bullying and violence against the peasants are horrifying: brutal beatings, breaking out of joints, partial strangulation, mock execution, eviction from houses ... In a response letter, Joseph Vissarionovich only partially agreed with Sholokhov. The real position of the leader can be seen in the lines where he calls the peasants saboteurs, "quietly" trying to disrupt the provision of food...

Such a voluntaristic approach caused famine in the Volga region, Ukraine, the North Caucasus, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Siberia, and the Urals. A special Statement of the State Duma of Russia, published in April 2008, disclosed to the public previously classified statistics (previously, propaganda concealed these repressions of Stalin in every possible way.)

How many people died of starvation in the above regions? The figure set by the State Duma commission is appalling: more than 7 million.

Other areas of pre-war Stalinist terror

We will also consider three more directions of Stalinist terror, and in the following table we will present each of them in more detail.

With the sanctions of Joseph Vissarionovich, a policy was also pursued to oppress freedom of conscience. A citizen of the Land of Soviets had to read the Pravda newspaper, and not go to church ...

Hundreds of thousands of families of formerly productive peasants, fearful of dispossession and exile to the North, became an army supporting the country's gigantic construction projects. In order to limit their rights, to make them manipulated, it was at that time that passportization of the population in cities was carried out. Only 27 million people received passports. Peasants (still the majority of the population) remained without passports, did not enjoy the full range of civil rights (freedom to choose their place of residence, freedom to choose work) and were “tied” to the collective farm at their place of residence with the obligatory condition that they fulfill workday norms.

Antisocial policy was accompanied by the destruction of families, an increase in the number of homeless children. This phenomenon has acquired such a scale that the state was forced to respond to it. With the sanction of Stalin, the Politburo of the Land of Soviets issued one of the most inhuman decrees - punitive in relation to children.

The anti-religious offensive as of 04/01/1936 led to a reduction in Orthodox churches to 28%, mosques - to 32% of their pre-revolutionary number. The number of clergy decreased from 112.6 thousand to 17.8 thousand.

Passportization of the urban population was carried out for repressive purposes. More than 385 thousand people did not receive passports and were forced to leave the cities. 22.7 thousand people were arrested.

One of the most cynical crimes of Stalin is his sanctioning of the secret resolution of the Politburo of 04/07/1935, which allows bringing teenagers from 12 years old to trial and determining their punishment up to the death penalty. In 1936 alone, 125,000 children were placed in NKVD colonies. As of April 1, 1939, 10,000 children were exiled to the Gulag system.

Great terror

The state flywheel of terror was gaining momentum ... The power of Joseph Vissarionovich, starting in 1937, as a result of repressions over the whole society, became comprehensive. However, their biggest leap was just ahead. In addition to the final and already physical reprisal against former party colleagues - Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev - mass "purges of the state apparatus" were carried out.

Terror has gained unprecedented proportions. The OGPU (since 1938 - the NKVD) responded to all complaints and anonymous letters. A person's life was broken for one carelessly dropped word ... Even the Stalinist elite was repressed - statesmen: Kosior, Eikhe, Postyshev, Goloshchekin, Vareikis; military leaders Blucher, Tukhachevsky; Chekists Yagoda, Yezhov.

On the eve of the Great Patriotic War, leading military personnel were shot on fabricated cases “under an anti-Soviet conspiracy”: 19 qualified commanders at the corps level - divisions with combat experience. The cadres who replaced them did not possess the proper operational and tactical art.

Stalin's cult of personality was characterized not only by the showcase facades of Soviet cities. The repressions of the “leader of the peoples” gave rise to a monstrous system of Gulag camps, providing the Land of Soviets with free labor, a mercilessly exploited labor resource for extracting wealth from the underdeveloped regions of the Far North and Central Asia.

The dynamics of the increase in those held in camps and labor colonies is impressive: in 1932 it was about 140 thousand prisoners, and in 1941 - about 1.9 million.

In particular, ironically, the convicts of Kolyma mined 35% of the allied gold, being in terrible conditions of detention. We list the main camps that are part of the GULAG system: Solovetsky (45 thousand prisoners), logging camps - Svirlag and Temnikovo (respectively 43 and 35 thousand); oil and coal production - Ukhtapechlag (51 thousand); chemical industry - Bereznyakov and Solikamsk (63 thousand); development of the steppes - Karaganda camp (30 thousand); construction of the Volga-Moscow canal (196 thousand); construction of BAM (260 thousand); gold mining in Kolyma (138 thousand); Nickel mining in Norilsk (70 thousand).

For the most part, people stayed in the Gulag system in a typical way: after a night of arrest and an ill-judged prejudiced trial. And although this system was created under Lenin, it was under Stalin that political prisoners began to enter it en masse after mass trials: “enemies of the people” - kulaks (in fact, an effective agricultural producer), or even entire deported nationalities. Most served a sentence of 10 to 25 years under Article 58. The process of investigation on it involved torture and a break in the will of the convict.

In the case of the resettlement of kulaks and small peoples, the train with prisoners stopped right in the taiga or in the steppe, and the convicts themselves built a camp and a special purpose prison (TON). From the 1930s, the labor of prisoners was mercilessly exploited to fulfill five-year plans - 12-14 hours a day. Tens of thousands of people died from overwork, poor nutrition, poor medical care.

Instead of a conclusion

The years of Stalin's repressions - from 1928 to 1953. - changed the atmosphere in a society that has ceased to believe in justice, which is under the pressure of constant fear. Since 1918, people were accused and shot by the revolutionary military tribunals. An inhuman system developed... The Tribunal became the Cheka, then the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, then the OGPU, then the NKVD. The executions as part of the 58th article were valid until 1947, and then Stalin replaced them with 25 years of serving in camps.

In total, about 800 thousand people were shot.

Moral and physical torture of the entire population of the country, in fact, lawlessness and arbitrariness, was carried out on behalf of the workers' and peasants' power, the revolution.

The disenfranchised people were terrorized by the Stalinist system constantly and methodically. The beginning of the process of restoring justice was laid by the 20th Congress of the CPSU.

The scale of Stalin's repressions - exact numbers

In a contest of liars

In a accusatory rage, the writers of anti-Stalinist horror stories seem to be competing to see who will lie the strongest, vying with each other naming the astronomical numbers of those who died at the hands of the “bloody tyrant”. Against their background, a dissident Roy Medvedev, limited to a “modest” figure of 40 million, looks like some kind of white crow, a model of moderation and conscientiousness:

“Thus, the total number of victims of Stalinism reaches, according to my calculations, figures of about 40 million people».

And in fact, it's inappropriate. Another dissident, son of a repressed revolutionary Trotskyist A. V. Antonov-Ovseenko, without a shadow of embarrassment, calls twice the figure:

“These calculations are very, very approximate, but I am sure of one thing: the Stalinist regime bled the people, destroying more 80 million his best sons."

Professional "rehabilitators" led by a former member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU A. N. Yakovlev are already talking about 100 million:

“According to the most conservative estimates of the specialists of the rehabilitation commission, our country lost about 100 million Human. This number includes not only the repressed themselves, but also members of their families doomed to death and even children who could have been born, but never were born.

However, according to the version Yakovlev the notorious 100 million includes not only direct "victims of the regime", but also unborn children. But the writer Igor Bunich, without hesitation, claims that all these "100 million people were ruthlessly exterminated."

However, this is not the limit. The absolute record was set by Boris Nemtsov, who announced November 7, 2003 in the Freedom of Speech program on NTV pro 150 million people allegedly lost by the Russian state after 1917.

Who are these fantastically absurd figures, willingly replicated by Russian and foreign mass media, intended for? For those who have forgotten how to think for themselves, who are accustomed to uncritically take on faith any nonsense rushing from the TV screens.

It is easy to see the absurdity of the multimillion-dollar figures of "victims of repression". It is enough to open any demographic directory and, picking up a calculator, make simple calculations. For those who are too lazy to do this, I will give a small illustrative example.

According to the population census conducted in January 1959, the population of the USSR amounted to 208,827 thousand people. By the end of 1913, 159,153 thousand people lived within the same borders. It is easy to calculate that the average annual population growth of our country in the period from 1914 to 1959 was 0.60%.

Now let's see how the population of England, France and Germany, countries that also took an active part in both world wars, grew in those same years.

So, the population growth rate in the Stalinist USSR turned out to be almost one and a half times higher than in the Western "democracies", although for these states we excluded the extremely unfavorable demographic years of World War I. Could this have happened if the “bloody Stalinist regime” had destroyed 150 million or at least 40 million inhabitants of our country? Of course no!

archival documents say

To find out the true number of those executed at Stalin, it is absolutely not necessary to engage in fortune-telling on coffee grounds. It is enough to familiarize yourself with the declassified documents. The most famous of them is a memorandum addressed to N. S. Khrushcheva dated February 1, 1954:

Comrade Khrushchev N. S.

In connection with the signals received by the Central Committee of the CPSU from a number of persons about illegal convictions for counter-revolutionary crimes in previous years by the Collegium of the OGPU, troikas of the NKVD, and the Special Meeting. By the Military Collegium, courts and military tribunals, and in accordance with your instructions on the need to reconsider the cases of persons convicted of counter-revolutionary crimes and now held in camps and prisons, we report:

According to the data available in the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR, for the period from 1921 to the present, the Collegium of the OGPU, troikas of the NKVD, the Special Meeting, the Military Collegium, courts and military tribunals have been convicted of counter-revolutionary crimes. 3 777 380 person, including:

to VMN - 642 980 Human,

Of the total number of those arrested, tentatively convicted: 2 900 000 people - the Collegium of the OGPU, the troikas of the NKVD and the Special Conference and 877 000 people - courts, military tribunals, the Special Collegium and the Military Collegium.

Prosecutor General R. Rudenko

Minister of Internal Affairs S. Kruglov

Minister of Justice K. Gorshenin

As is clear from the document, in total from 1921 to the beginning of 1954, on political charges, he was sentenced to death 642 980 person to imprisonment 2 369 220 , to the link - 765 180 .

However, there are more detailed data on the number of those sentenced to capital punishment for counter-revolutionary and other especially dangerous state crimes.

Thus, for the years 1921-1953 were sentenced to death 815 639 Human. In total, in 1918-1953, in the cases of state security agencies, they were prosecuted 4 308 487 the person of whom 835 194 condemned to the highest degree.

So, the “repressed” turned out to be somewhat more than indicated in the report dated February 1, 1954. However, the difference is not too great - the numbers are of the same order.

In addition, it is quite possible that a fair number of criminals were among those who received sentences under political articles. On one of the references stored in the archive, on the basis of which the above table was compiled, there is a pencil mark:

“Total convicts for 1921-1938. - 2 944 879 people, of which 30 % (1062 thousand) - criminals»

In this case, the total number of "victims of repression" does not exceed three million. However, in order to finally clarify this issue, additional work with sources is needed.

It should also be borne in mind that not all sentences were carried out. For example, out of 76 death sentences issued by the Tyumen District Court in the first half of 1929, by January 1930, 46 were changed or canceled by higher authorities, and only nine of the remaining ones were carried out.

From July 15, 1939 to April 20, 1940, 201 prisoners were sentenced to capital punishment for the disorganization of camp life and production. However, then some of them the death penalty was replaced by imprisonment for terms of 10 to 15 years.

In 1934, 3849 prisoners were kept in the NKVD camps, sentenced to the highest measure with the replacement of imprisonment. In 1935 there were 5671 such prisoners, in 1936 - 7303, in 1937 - 6239, in 1938 - 5926, in 1939 - 3425, in 1940 - 4037 people.

Number of prisoners

Initially, the number of prisoners in forced labor camps (ITL) was relatively small. So, on January 1, 1930, it amounted to 179,000 people, on January 1, 1931 - 212,000, on January 1, 1932 - 268,700, on January 1, 1933 - 334,300, on January 1, 1934 - 510 307 people.

In addition to the ITL, there were corrective labor colonies (NTCs), where convicts were sent for short periods. Until the autumn of 1938, the penitentiaries, together with the prisons, were subordinate to the Department of Places of Confinement (OMZ) of the NKVD of the USSR. Therefore, for the years 1935-1938, so far only joint statistics have been found. Since 1939, the penitentiaries were under the jurisdiction of the Gulag, and the prisons were under the jurisdiction of the Main Prison Directorate (GTU) of the NKVD of the USSR.

How reliable are these numbers? All of them are taken from the internal reports of the NKVD - secret documents not intended for publication. In addition, these summary figures are quite consistent with the initial reports, they can be expanded monthly, as well as by individual camps:

Let us now calculate the number of prisoners per capita. On January 1, 1941, as can be seen from the table above, the total number of prisoners in the USSR amounted to 2 400 422 person. The exact population of the USSR at this point is unknown, but is usually estimated at between 190-195 million.

Thus, we get from 1230 to 1260 prisoners for every 100 thousand of the population. On January 1, 1950, the number of prisoners in the USSR was 2 760 095 people - the maximum figure for the entire period of Stalin's rule. The population of the USSR at that moment totaled 178 million 547 thousand. We get 1546 prisoners per 100 thousand of the population, 1.54%. This is the highest figure ever.

Let's calculate a similar indicator for the modern USA. Currently, there are two types of places of deprivation of liberty: jail - an approximate analogue of our temporary detention facilities, jail contains persons on remand, as well as those sentenced to short terms, and prison - the prison itself. At the end of 1999, there were 1,366,721 people in prisons and 687,973 in jails (see the website of the Bureau of Legal Statistics of the US Department of Justice), which gives a total of 2,054,694. The population of the United States at the end of 1999 is approximately 275 million , therefore, we get 747 prisoners per 100,000 population.

Yes, half as much as Stalin, but not ten times. It is somehow undignified for a power that has taken upon itself the protection of "human rights" on a global scale.

Moreover, this is a comparison of the peak number of prisoners in the Stalinist USSR, which is also due first to the civil and then the Great Patriotic War. And among the so-called "victims of political repression" there will be a fair share of supporters of the white movement, collaborators, Hitler's accomplices, members of the ROA, policemen, not to mention ordinary criminals.

There are calculations that compare the average number of prisoners over a period of several years.

The data on the number of prisoners in the Stalinist USSR exactly match those given above. In accordance with these data, it turns out that on average for the period from 1930 to 1940, there were 583 prisoners per 100,000 people, or 0.58%. Which is much less than the same indicator in Russia and the USA in the 90s.

What is the total number of people who were in places of detention under Stalin? Of course, if you take a table with the annual number of prisoners and add up the rows, as many anti-Soviet do, the result will be wrong, since most of them were sentenced to more than a year. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate this by the amount of not sitting, but by the amount of convicts, which was given above.

How many of the prisoners were "political"?

As we can see, until 1942, the “repressed” made up no more than a third of the prisoners held in the Gulag camps. And only then did their share increase, having received a worthy "replenishment" in the person of Vlasov, policemen, elders and other "fighters against communist tyranny." Even smaller was the percentage of "political" in corrective labor colonies.

Mortality of prisoners

The available archival documents make it possible to shed light on this issue as well. In 1931, 7283 people died in the ITL (3.03% of the average annual number), in 1932 - 13,197 (4.38%), in 1933 - 67,297 (15.94%), in 1934 - 26,295 prisoners (4.26%).

Data for 1953 are given for the first three months.

As we can see, the death rate in places of detention (especially in prisons) did not at all reach those fantastic values ​​that accusers like to talk about. But still, its level is quite high. It increases especially strongly in the first years of the war. As stated in the certificate of mortality according to the OITK of the NKVD for 1941, compiled by acting. Head of the Sanitary Department of the GULAG NKVD I. K. Zitserman:

Basically, mortality began to increase sharply from September 1941, mainly due to the transfer of conscripts from units located in the front-line areas: from the LBC and Vytegorlag to the OITK of the Vologda and Omsk regions, from the OITK of the Moldavian SSR, Ukrainian SSR and Leningrad region. in OITK Kirov, Molotov and Sverdlovsk regions. As a rule, the stages of a significant part of the journey, several hundred kilometers before loading into the wagons, were on foot. On the way, they were not provided with the minimum necessary food at all (they did not receive bread and even water completely), as a result of such transportation, s / c gave a sharp exhaustion, a very large%% of beriberi, in particular pellagra, which gave significant mortality along the way and along the way. arriving at the respective OITKs that were not prepared to receive a significant number of replenishments. At the same time, the introduction of reduced food allowances by 25–30% (orders No. 648 and 0437) with an increased working day up to 12 hours, often the absence of basic food products, even at reduced rates, could not but affect the increase in morbidity and mortality

However, since 1944, mortality has been significantly reduced. By the early 1950s, in the camps and colonies, it fell below 1%, and in prisons - below 0.5% per year.

Special Camps

Let's say a few words about the notorious Special Camps (special charges) created in accordance with the Decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR No. 416-159ss of February 21, 1948. These camps (as well as the Special Prisons that already existed by that time) were supposed to concentrate all those sentenced to imprisonment for espionage, sabotage, terror, as well as Trotskyists, rightists, Mensheviks, Social Revolutionaries, anarchists, nationalists, white émigrés, members of anti-Soviet organizations and groups and "individuals who pose a danger through their anti-Soviet connections." Prisoners of special services should be used for hard physical work.

As we can see, the death rate of prisoners in special camps was only slightly higher than the death rate in ordinary labor camps. Contrary to popular belief, special services were not "death camps" in which the color of dissident intelligentsia was supposedly destroyed, moreover, the most numerous contingent of their inhabitants were "nationalists" - forest brothers and their accomplices.

1937 "Stalinist repressions. Great lie of the XX century.

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Stalin's repressions occupy one of the central places in the study of the history of the Soviet period.

Briefly describing this period, we can say that it was a cruel time, accompanied by mass repressions and dispossession.

What is repression - definition

Repression is a punitive measure that was used by state authorities in relation to people trying to “undermine” the formed regime. To a greater extent, it is a method of political violence.

During the Stalinist repressions, even those who had nothing to do with politics or the political system were destroyed. All those who were objectionable to the ruler were punished.

Lists of the repressed in the 30s

The period of 1937-1938 was the peak of repression. Historians called it the "Great Terror". Regardless of their origin, sphere of activity, during the 1930s, a huge number of people were arrested, deported, shot, and their property was confiscated in favor of the state.

All instructions on a single “crime” were given personally to I.V. Stalin. It was he who decided where a person was going and what he could take with him.

Until 1991, in Russia there was no information on the number of repressed and executed in full. But then the period of perestroika began, and this is the time when everything secret became clear. After the lists were declassified, after the historians did a lot of work in the archives and counted the data, truthful information was provided to the public - the numbers were simply frightening.

Do you know that: according to official statistics, more than 3 million people were repressed.

Thanks to the help of volunteers, lists of victims in 1937 were prepared. Only after that did the relatives find out where their loved one was and what had happened to him. But to a greater extent, they did not find anything comforting, since almost every life of the repressed ended in execution.

If you need to clarify information about a repressed relative, you can use the site http://lists.memo.ru/index2.htm. On it by name you can find all the information of interest. Almost all the repressed were rehabilitated posthumously, which has always been a great joy for their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

The number of victims of Stalinist repressions according to official data

On February 1, 1954, a memorandum was prepared in the name of N. S. Khrushchev, in which the exact data of the dead and injured were spelled out. The number is simply shocking - 3,777,380 people.

The number of repressed and executed is striking in its scale. So there are officially confirmed data that were announced during the “Khrushchev thaw”. Article 58 was political, and about 700,000 people were sentenced to death under it alone.

And how many people died in the Gulag camps, where not only political prisoners were exiled, but also everyone who was not pleasing to Stalin's government.

In 1937-1938 alone, more than 1,200,000 people were sent to the Gulag (according to Academician Sakharov). And only about 50 thousand were able to return home during the “thaw”.

Victims of political repression - who are they?

Anyone could become a victim of political repression during Stalin's time.

The following categories of citizens were most often repressed:

• Peasants. Those who were members of the "green movement" were especially punished. The kulaks who did not want to join the collective farms and who wanted to achieve everything on their own farms were sent into exile, while all the acquired farming was confiscated from them in full. And now the wealthy peasants were becoming poor.
• The military is a separate layer of society. Ever since the Civil War, Stalin did not treat them very well. Fearing a military coup, the leader of the country repressed talented military leaders, thereby securing himself and his regime. But, despite the fact that he secured himself, Stalin quickly reduced the country's defense capability, depriving it of talented military personnel.
• All the sentences were turned into reality by the NKVD officers. But their repression was not bypassed. Among the employees of the people's commissariat who followed all the instructions, there were those who were shot. Such people's commissars as Yezhov, Yagoda became one of the victims of Stalin's instructions.
• Even those who had something to do with religion were subjected to repression. God did not exist at that time, and belief in him "shattered" the established regime.

In addition to the listed categories of citizens, residents living on the territory of the Union republics suffered. Entire nations were repressed. So, Chechens were simply put into freight cars and sent into exile. At the same time, no one thought about the safety of the family. The father could be planted in one place, the mother in another, and the children in a third. No one knew about his family and where they were.

Reasons for the repressions of the 30s

By the time Stalin came to power, a difficult economic situation had developed in the country.

The reasons for the start of repressions are considered to be:

1. Savings at the national level, it was required to force the population to work for free. There was a lot of work, and there was nothing to pay for it.
2. After Lenin was killed, the leader's seat was free. The people needed a leader, whom the population would follow unquestioningly.
3. It was necessary to create a totalitarian society in which the word of the leader should be law. At the same time, the measures used by the leader were cruel, but they did not allow organizing a new revolution.

How were the repressions in the USSR

Stalin's repressions were a terrible time when everyone was ready to testify against a neighbor, even fictitious, if only nothing happened to his family.

The whole horror of the process is captured in the work of Alexander Solzhenitsyn "The Gulag Archipelago": “A sharp night call, a knock on the door, and several operatives enter the apartment. And behind them is a frightened neighbor who had to become understood. He sits all night, and only in the morning puts his painting under terrible and untrue testimony.

The procedure is terrible, treacherous, but thus understood, perhaps, it will save his family, but no, it was he who became the next to whom they would come to a new night.

Most often, all the testimony given by political prisoners was falsified. People were brutally beaten, thereby obtaining the information that was needed. At the same time, torture was personally sanctioned by Stalin.

The most famous cases, about which there is a huge amount of information:

• Pulkovo case. In the summer of 1936, there was supposed to be a solar eclipse across the country. The observatory offered to use foreign equipment in order to capture the natural phenomenon. As a result, all members of the Pulkovo Observatory were accused of having links with foreigners. Until now, data on the victims and repressed are classified.
• The case of the industrial party - the Soviet bourgeoisie received the accusation. They were accused of disrupting industrialization processes.
• Doctors business. Charges were received by doctors who allegedly killed Soviet leaders.

The actions taken by the government were brutal. No one understood guilt. If a person was included in the list, then he was guilty and no evidence was required for this.

The results of Stalin's repressions

Stalinism and its repressions are probably one of the most terrible pages in the history of our state. The repressions lasted for almost 20 years, and during this time a huge number of innocent people suffered. Even after the Second World War, repressive measures did not stop.

Stalinist repressions did not benefit society, but only helped the authorities establish a totalitarian regime, from which our country could not get rid of for a long time. And the residents were afraid to express their opinion. There wasn't anyone who didn't like it. I liked everything - even to work for the good of the country practically for free.

The totalitarian regime made it possible to build such facilities as: BAM, the construction of which was carried out by the forces of the GULAG.

A terrible time, but it cannot be deleted from history, since it was during these years that the country withstood the Second World War and was able to restore the destroyed cities.

One of the blackest pages in the history of the entire post-Soviet space was the years from 1928 to 1952, when Stalin was in power. Biographers for a long time hushed up or tried to distort some facts from the tyrant's past, but it turned out to be quite possible to restore them. The fact is that the country was ruled by a recidivist convict who was in prison 7 times. Violence and terror, forceful methods of solving the problem were well known to him from early youth. They are also reflected in his policies.

Officially, the course was taken in July 1928 by the Plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. It was there that Stalin spoke, who declared that the further advancement of communism would meet with increasing resistance from hostile, anti-Soviet elements, and they must be fought hard. Many researchers believe that the repressions of the 30s were a continuation of the policy of the Red Terror, adopted as early as 1918. It is worth noting that no one includes those who suffered during the Civil War from 1917 to 1922 among the victims of repression, because no census was conducted after the First World War. And it is not clear how to establish the cause of death.

The beginning of Stalin's repressions was aimed at political opponents, officially - at saboteurs, terrorists, spies engaged in subversive activities, at anti-Soviet elements. However, in practice there was a struggle with prosperous peasants and entrepreneurs, as well as with certain peoples who did not want to sacrifice their national identity for the sake of dubious ideas. A lot of people dispossessed themselves of the kulak and were forced to resettle, but usually this meant not only the loss of their homes, but also the threat of death.

The fact is that such settlers were not provided with food and medicine. The authorities did not take into account the time of year, so if it happened in winter, people often froze and died of hunger. The exact number of victims is still being established. In society, and now there are disputes about this. Some defenders of the Stalinist regime believe that we are talking about hundreds of thousands of "all". Others point to millions of forcibly displaced, and of them died due to the complete absence of any conditions for life, from about 1/5 to a half.

In 1929, the authorities decided to abandon the usual forms of imprisonment and move on to new ones, reform the system in this direction, and introduce corrective labor. Preparations began for the creation of the Gulag, which many rightly compare with the German death camps. Characteristically, the Soviet authorities often used various events, for example, the assassination of Voikov's plenipotentiary representative in Poland, to crack down on political opponents and simply objectionable ones. In particular, Stalin reacted to this by demanding the immediate liquidation of the monarchists by any means. At the same time, no connection was even established between the victim and those to whom such measures were applied. As a result, 20 representatives of the former Russian nobility were shot, about 9 thousand people were arrested and subjected to repression. The exact number of victims has not yet been established.

Sabotage

It should be noted that the Soviet regime was completely dependent on specialists trained in the Russian Empire. Firstly, not much time had passed at the time of the 1930s, and in fact, our own specialists were absent or were too young and inexperienced. And without exception, all scientists received training in monarchical educational institutions. Secondly, very often science frankly contradicted what the Soviet government was doing. The latter, for example, denied genetics as such, considering it too bourgeois. There was no study of the human psyche, psychiatry had a punitive function, that is, in fact, it did not fulfill its main task.

As a result, the Soviet authorities began to accuse many specialists of sabotage. The USSR did not recognize such concepts as incompetence, including those that arose due to poor training or incorrect appointment, mistake, miscalculation. The real physical condition of the employees of a number of enterprises was ignored, due to which common mistakes were sometimes made. In addition, mass repressions could arise on the basis of suspiciously frequent, according to the authorities, contacts with foreigners, the publication of works in the Western press. A vivid example is the Pulkovo case, when a huge number of astronomers, mathematicians, engineers and other scientists suffered. And in the end, only a small number were rehabilitated: many were shot, some died during interrogations or in prison.

The Pulkovo case very clearly demonstrates another terrible moment of Stalinist repressions: the threat to loved ones, as well as slandering others under torture. Not only scientists suffered, but also the wives who supported them.

Grain procurement

Constant pressure on the peasants, a half-starved existence, weaning of grain, a shortage of labor negatively affected the pace of grain procurement. However, Stalin did not know how to admit mistakes, which became official state policy. By the way, it is for this reason that any rehabilitation, even of those who were convicted by accident, by mistake or instead of a namesake, took place after the death of the tyrant.

But back to the topic of grain procurement. For objective reasons, it was far from always and not always possible to fulfill the norm. And in connection with this, the “guilty” were punished. Moreover, in some places, completely entire villages were repressed. Soviet power also fell on the heads of those who simply allowed the peasants to keep grain for themselves as an insurance fund or for sowing the next year.

Cases were for almost every taste. The affairs of the Geological Committee and the Academy of Sciences, Vesna, the Siberian Brigade ... A complete and detailed description can take many volumes. And this despite the fact that all the details have not yet been disclosed, many documents of the NKVD continue to remain classified.

Some relaxation that came in 1933 - 1934, historians attribute primarily to the fact that the prisons were overcrowded. In addition, it was necessary to reform the punitive system, which was not aimed at such mass character. This is how the Gulag was born.

Great terror

The main terror occurred in 1937-1938, when, according to various sources, up to 1.5 million people suffered, and more than 800 thousand of them were shot or killed in some other way. However, the exact number is still being established, there are quite active disputes on this matter.

Characteristic was the order of the NKVD No. 00447, which officially launched the mechanism of mass repression against former kulaks, socialist-revolutionaries, monarchists, re-emigrants, and so on. At the same time, everyone was divided into 2 categories: more and less dangerous. Both groups were subject to arrest, the first had to be shot, the second was given a term of 8 to 10 years on average.

Among the victims of Stalin's repressions there were quite a few relatives taken into custody. Even if family members could not be convicted of anything, they were still automatically registered, and sometimes forcibly relocated. If the father and (or) mother were declared "enemies of the people", then this put an end to the opportunity to make a career, often - to get an education. Such people often found themselves surrounded by an atmosphere of horror, they were subjected to a boycott.

The Soviet authorities could also persecute on the basis of nationality and the presence, at least in the past, of the citizenship of certain countries. So, only in 1937, 25 thousand Germans, 84.5 thousand Poles, almost 5.5 thousand Romanians, 16.5 thousand Latvians, 10.5 thousand Greeks, 9 thousand 735 Estonians, 9 thousand Finns, 2 thousand Iranians were shot, 400 Afghans. At the same time, people of the nationality against which the repressions were carried out were dismissed from the industry. And from the army - persons belonging to a nationality not represented on the territory of the USSR. All this happened under the leadership of Yezhov, but, which does not even require separate evidence, no doubt, it was directly related to Stalin, constantly personally controlled by him. Many of the hit lists are signed by him. And we are talking about, in total, hundreds of thousands of people.

Ironically, recent stalkers have often been the victim. So, one of the leaders of the described repressions Yezhov was shot in 1940. The verdict was put into effect the very next day after the trial. Beria became the head of the NKVD.

Stalinist repressions spread to new territories along with the Soviet government itself. Purges were going on constantly, they were an obligatory element of control. And with the onset of the 40s, they did not stop.

Repressive mechanism during the Great Patriotic War

Even the Great Patriotic War could not stop the repressive machine, although it partially extinguished the scale, because the USSR needed people at the front. However, now there is a great way to get rid of objectionable - sending to the front line. It is not known exactly how many died following such orders.

At the same time, the military situation became much tougher. Just a suspicion was enough to shoot even without the appearance of a trial. This practice was called "unloading prisons." It was especially widely used in Karelia, in the Baltic States, in Western Ukraine.

The arbitrariness of the NKVD intensified. So, the execution became possible not even by the verdict of the court or some extrajudicial body, but simply by order of Beria, whose powers began to increase. They do not like to cover this moment widely, but the NKVD did not stop its activities even in Leningrad during the blockade. Then they arrested up to 300 students of higher educational institutions on trumped-up charges. 4 were shot, many died in isolation wards or in prisons.

Everyone is able to say unequivocally whether detachments can be considered a form of repression, but they definitely made it possible to get rid of unwanted people, and quite effectively. However, the authorities continued to persecute in more traditional forms. All those who were in captivity were waiting for the filtration detachments. Moreover, if an ordinary soldier could still prove his innocence, especially if he was captured wounded, unconscious, sick or frostbitten, then the officers, as a rule, were waiting for the Gulag. Some were shot.

As Soviet power spread across Europe, intelligence was engaged there, returning and judging emigrants by force. Only in Czechoslovakia, according to some sources, 400 people suffered from its actions. Quite serious damage in this regard was caused to Poland. Often, the repressive mechanism affected not only Russian citizens, but also Poles, some of whom were shot extrajudicially for resisting Soviet power. Thus, the USSR violated the promises that it gave to the allies.

Post-war developments

After the war, the repressive apparatus turned around again. Too influential military men, especially those close to Zhukov, doctors who were in contact with the allies (and scientists) were under threat. The NKVD could also arrest Germans in the Soviet zone of responsibility for trying to contact residents of other regions that were under the control of Western countries. The unfolding campaign against persons of Jewish nationality looks like a black irony. The last high-profile trial was the so-called "Doctors' Case", which fell apart only in connection with the death of Stalin.

Use of torture

Later, during the Khrushchev thaw, the Soviet prosecutor's office itself was engaged in the study of cases. The facts of mass falsification and obtaining confessions under torture were recognized, which were used very widely. Marshal Blucher was killed as a result of numerous beatings, and in the process of extracting evidence from Eikhe, his spine was broken. There are cases when Stalin personally demanded that certain prisoners be beaten.

In addition to beatings, sleep deprivation, placement in a too cold or, conversely, excessively hot room without clothes, and a hunger strike were also practiced. The handcuffs were periodically not removed for days, and sometimes for months. Forbidden correspondence, any contact with the outside world. Some were “forgotten”, that is, they were arrested, and then they did not consider the cases and did not make any specific decision until Stalin's death. This, in particular, is indicated by the order signed by Beria, which ordered amnesty for those who were arrested before 1938, and for whom no decision has yet been made. We are talking about people who have been waiting for the decision of their fate for at least 14 years! This can also be considered a kind of torture.

Stalinist statements

Understanding the very essence of Stalinist repressions in the present is of fundamental importance, if only because some people still consider Stalin an impressive leader who saved the country and the world from fascism, without which the USSR would have been doomed. Many try to justify his actions by saying that in this way he raised the economy, ensured industrialization or defended the country. In addition, some try to downplay the number of victims. In general, the exact number of victims is one of the most contested points today.

However, in reality, to assess the personality of this person, as well as all those who carried out his criminal orders, even the recognized minimum of those convicted and shot is enough. During the fascist regime of Mussolini in Italy, a total of 4.5 thousand people were repressed. His political enemies were either expelled from the country or placed in prisons where they were given the opportunity to write books. Of course, no one says that Mussolini is getting better from this. Fascism cannot be justified.

But what assessment at the same time can be given to Stalinism? And taking into account the repressions that were carried out on a national basis, he, at least, has one of the signs of fascism - racism.

Characteristic signs of repression

Stalinist repressions have several characteristic features that only emphasize what they were. This is:

1. mass character. Accurate figures depend heavily on estimates, whether relatives are taken into account or not, internally displaced persons or not. Depending on the method of counting, we are talking about 5 to 40 million.
2. Cruelty. The repressive mechanism did not spare anyone, people were subjected to cruel, inhuman treatment, starved, tortured, their relatives were killed before their eyes, loved ones were threatened, forced to abandon family members.
3. Orientation to protect the power of the party and against the interests of the people. In fact, we can talk about genocide. Neither Stalin nor his other henchmen were at all interested in how the constantly decreasing peasantry should provide everyone with bread, which is actually beneficial to the production sector, how science will move forward with the arrest and execution of prominent figures. This clearly demonstrates that the real interests of the people were ignored.
4. Injustice. People could suffer simply because they had property in the past. Wealthy peasants and the poor, who took their side, supported, somehow protected. Persons of "suspicious" nationality. Relatives who returned from abroad. Sometimes academics, prominent scientists, who contacted their foreign colleagues to publish data on invented drugs after they received official permission from the authorities, could be punished.
5. Connection with Stalin. The extent to which everything was tied to this figure is eloquently evident even from the termination of a number of cases immediately after his death. Lavrenty Beria was rightfully accused by many of cruelty and inappropriate behavior, but even he, by his actions, recognized the false nature of many cases, the unjustified cruelty used by the NKVD. And it was he who forbade physical measures against prisoners. Again, as with Mussolini, this is not about justification. It's just about underlining.
6. illegality. Some executions were carried out not only without a trial, but also without the participation of the judiciary as such. But even when there was a trial, it was only about the so-called "simplified" mechanism. This meant that the consideration was carried out without defense, only with the hearing of the prosecution and the accused. There was no practice of reviewing cases, the court decision was final, often carried out the next day. At the same time, widespread violations of even the legislation of the USSR itself, which was in force at that time, were observed.
7. inhumanity. The repressive apparatus violated the basic human rights and freedoms proclaimed in the civilized world at that time for several centuries. Researchers do not see a difference between the treatment of prisoners in the dungeons of the NKVD and how the Nazis behaved towards the prisoners.
8. groundlessness. Despite the attempts of the Stalinists to demonstrate the existence of some underlying reason, there is not the slightest reason to believe that anything was directed to any good goal or helped to achieve it. Indeed, a lot was built by the forces of the prisoners of the Gulag, but it was the forced labor of people who were greatly weakened due to the conditions of detention and the constant lack of food. Consequently, production errors, defects and a generally very low level of quality - all this inevitably arose. This situation also could not but affect the pace of construction. Given the costs that the Soviet government incurred for the creation of the Gulag, its maintenance, as well as for such a large-scale apparatus in general, it would be much more rational to simply pay for the same work.

The assessment of Stalin's repressions has not yet been finally made. However, beyond any doubt it is clear that this is one of the worst pages of world history.