The final numbers of victims of Stalin's repressions. Family archive
Due to the fact that the world Once again a memo to Khrushchev surfaced about the number of people convicted from 1921 to 1953, I can’t ignore the topic of repression.
The memorandum itself and, most importantly, the information it contains, became known to many people interested in politics for quite a long time. The note contains absolutely accurate numbers of repressed citizens. Of course, these numbers are not small and they will frighten and terrify a person who knows the topic. But as you know, everything is learned by comparison. This is what we will do, we will compare.
Those who have not yet managed to remember the exact numbers of repressions by heart - you now have such an opportunity.
So, from 1921 to 1953, 642,980 people were executed; 765,180 people were exiled
Placed in detention - 2,369,220 people.
Total - 3,777,380
Anyone who dares to say a figure even somewhat large about the scale of repression is blatantly and shamelessly lying. Many people have questions: why are the numbers so large? Well, let's figure it out.
Amnesty of the Provisional Government.
One of the reasons why so many people were repressed by the Soviet government was the general amnesty of the provisional government. And to be more precise, Kerensky. You don’t have to go far to find this data, you don’t have to rummage through the archives, just open Wikipedia and type “Provisional Government”:
A general political amnesty has been declared in Russia, and the prison terms of persons held in custody under court sentences for general criminal offenses have been reduced by half. About 90 thousand prisoners were released, among whom were thousands of thieves and raiders, popularly nicknamed “Kerensky’s chicks” (Wiki).
On March 6, the Provisional Government adopted a Decree on political amnesty. In total, as a result of the amnesty, more than 88 thousand prisoners were released, of which 67.8 thousand were convicted of criminal offenses. As a result of the amnesty, the total number of prisoners from March 1 to April 1, 1917 was reduced by 75%.
On March 17, 1917, the Provisional Government issued a Resolution “On easing the fate of persons who have committed criminal offenses,” i.e. on amnesty for those convicted of ordinary crimes. However, only those convicts who expressed their readiness to serve their Motherland on the battlefield were subject to amnesty.
The Provisional Government's hopes of recruiting prisoners into the army did not materialize, and many of those released fled from their units when possible. - Source
Thus, it turned out to be free great amount criminals, thieves, murderers and other antisocial elements who will have to be dealt with directly in the future Soviet power. What can we say about the fact that all the exiled people who were not in prison quickly fled all over Russia after the amnesty.
Civil War.
There is nothing more terrible in the History of people and civilization than civil war.
A war in which brother goes against brother and son against father. When citizens of one country, subjects of one state kill each other on the basis of political and ideological differences.
We still haven't recovered from this civil war, let alone the state of society right after the civil war ended. And the realities of such events are such that after a civil war, in any, even the most democratic country in the world, the winning side will repress the losing side.
For the simple reason that in order for society to continue to develop, it must be holistic, unified, it must look forward to a bright future, and not engage in self-destruction. It is for this reason that those who did not accept defeat, those who did not accept new order, those who continue direct or hidden confrontation, those who continue to incite hatred and encourage people to fight, are subject to destruction.
Here you have political repression and persecution of the church. But not because pluralism of opinions is impermissible, but because these people actively participated in the civil war and did not stop their “struggle” after its end. This is another reason why so many people ended up in the Gulags.
Relative numbers.
And now we come to the most interesting thing, to comparison and the transition from absolute numbers to relative numbers.
Population of the USSR in 1920 - 137,727,000 people Population of the USSR in 1951 - 182,321,000 people
An increase of 44,594,000 people despite the civil war and the Second World War, which took far more lives than repression.
On average, we get that the population of the USSR in the period from 1921 to 1951 was 160 million people.
In total, 3,777,380 people were convicted in the USSR, which is two percent (2%) of the total average population of the country, 2% - in 30 years!!! Divide 2 by 30, it turns out that per year, 0.06% of the total population was repressed. This is despite the civil war and the fight against fascist collaborators (collaborators, traitors and traitors who sided with Hitler) after the Great Patriotic War.
This means that every year 99.94% of law-abiding citizens of our Motherland quietly worked, worked, studied, received treatment, gave birth to children, invented, rested, and so on. In general, we lived the most normal human life.
Half the country was sitting. Half the country was guarded.
Well, the last and most important thing. Many people like to say that we supposedly sat half a third of the country, guarded a third of the country, and knocked on a third of the country. And the fact that in the memo only counter-revolutionary fighters are indicated, but if you add up the number of those who were imprisoned for political reasons and those who were imprisoned for criminal reasons, the numbers will be generally terrible.
Yes, the numbers are scary until you compare them with anything. Here is a table that shows the total number of prisoners, both repressed and criminals, both in prisons and in camps. And their comparison with the total number of prisoners in other countries
According to this table, it turns out that on average, in the Stalinist USSR there were 583 prisoners (both criminal and repressive) per 100,000 free people.
In the early 90s, at the height of crime in our country, only in criminal cases, without political repression, there were 647 prisoners per 100,000 free people.
The table shows the United States during the Clinton era. Quite calm years even before the global financial crisis, and even then, it turned out that in the United States there were 626 people imprisoned per 100 available.
I decided to do a little digging into modern figures. According to WikiNews, there are currently 2,085,620 prisoners in the United States, which is 714 prisoners per 100,000.
And in Putin’s stable Russia, the number of prisoners has sharply decreased compared to the dashing 90s, and now we have 532 prisoners per 100,000.
Ours with D.R. Khapaeva’s article on the collective ideas of post-Soviet people about Soviet history prompted a number of letters to the editor demanding that the following phrase contained in it be refuted:
“73% of respondents are in a hurry to take their place in the military-patriotic epic, indicating that their families included those who died during the war. And although the Soviet terror suffered twice more people what died in time of war, 67% deny the presence of victims of repression in their families.”
Some readers a) considered the comparison of quantities incorrect victims from repressions with numbers dead during the war, b) found the very concept of victims of repression blurred and c) were outraged by the extremely inflated, in their opinion, estimate of the number of repressed people. If we assume that 27 million people died during the war, then the number of victims of repression, if it were twice as large, would have to be 54 million, which contradicts the data given in the famous article by V.N. Zemskov “GULAG (historical and sociological aspect)”, published in the magazine “ Sociological research"(No. 6 and 7 of 1991), which says:
“...In fact, the number of people convicted for political reasons (for “counter-revolutionary crimes”) in the USSR for the period from 1921 to 1953, i.e. for 33 years, there were about 3.8 million people... Statement... of the Chairman of the KGB of the USSR V.A. Kryuchkov that in 1937-1938. no more than a million people were arrested, which is quite consistent with the current Gulag statistics we studied for the second half of the 30s.
In February 1954, addressed to N.S. Khrushchev, a certificate was prepared signed by the Prosecutor General of the USSR R. Rudenko, the Minister of Internal Affairs of the USSR S. Kruglov and the Minister of Justice of the USSR K. Gorshenin, which indicated the number of people convicted of counter-revolutionary crimes for the period from 1921 to February 1, 1954. In total this period was condemned by the Collegium of the OGPU, the troikas of the NKVD, the Special Conference, the Military Collegium, courts and military tribunals of 3,777,380 people, including to the highest degree punishment - 642,980, for detention in camps and prisons for a term of 25 years and below - 2,369,220, for exile and deportation - 765,180 people.”
In the article by V.N. Zemskov also provides other data based on archival documents (primarily on the number and composition of Gulag prisoners), which in no way confirms the estimates of the victims of terror by R. Conquest and A. Solzhenitsyn (about 60 million). So how many victims were there? This is worth understanding, and not only for the sake of evaluating our article. Let's start in order.
1.Is the quantity comparison correct? victims from repressions with numbers dead during the war?
It is clear that the injured and the dead are different things, but whether they can be compared depends on the context. What we were interested in was not that to the Soviet people it cost more - repression or war - but how today the memory of the war is more intense than the memory of repression. Let's address a possible objection in advance - the intensity of memory is determined by the strength of the shock, and the shock from mass death is stronger than from mass arrests. Firstly, the intensity of the shock is difficult to measure, and it is not known what the relatives of the victims suffered more from - the “shameful” fact of arrest, which poses a very real threat to them loved one or from his glorious death. Secondly, memory of the past is a complex phenomenon, and it depends only partly on the past itself. It depends no less on the conditions of its own functioning in the present. I believe that the question in our questionnaire was formulated quite correctly.
The concept of “victims of repression” is indeed blurred. Sometimes you can use it without comment, and sometimes you can’t. We could not specify it for the same reason that we could compare the killed with the injured - we were interested in whether compatriots remembered the victims of terror in their families, and not at all in what percentage of them had injured relatives. But when it comes to how many “actually” were injured, who is considered injured, it is necessary to stipulate.
Hardly anyone will argue that those shot and imprisoned in prisons and camps were victims. But what about those who were arrested, subjected to “biased interrogation”, but by a happy coincidence were released? Contrary to popular belief, there were many of them. They were not always re-arrested and convicted (in this case they are included in the statistics of those convicted), but they, as well as their families, certainly retained the impressions of the arrest for a long time. Of course, one can see the fact of the release of some of those arrested as a triumph of justice, but perhaps it is more appropriate to say that they were only touched, but not crushed, by the machine of terror.
It is also appropriate to ask the question whether those convicted under criminal charges should be included in the statistics of repression. One of the readers said that he was not ready to consider criminals as victims of the regime. But not everyone who was convicted by ordinary courts on criminal charges were criminals. In the Soviet kingdom of distorting mirrors, almost all criteria were shifted. Looking ahead, let's say that V.N. Zemskov in the passage quoted above concerns only those convicted under political charges and is therefore obviously underestimated (the quantitative aspect will be discussed below). During rehabilitation, especially during the perestroika period, some people convicted of criminal charges were rehabilitated as actually victims of political repression. Of course, in many cases it is possible to understand this only individually, however, as is known, numerous “nonsense” who picked up ears of corn on a collective farm field or took home a pack of nails from a factory were also classified as criminals. During the campaigns to protect socialist property at the end of collectivization (the famous Decree of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of August 7, 1932) and in the post-war period (Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of June 4, 1947), as well as during the struggle for increased labor discipline in the pre-war and war years (the so-called wartime decrees), millions were convicted of criminal charges. True, the majority of those convicted under the Decree of June 26, 1940, which introduced serfdom at enterprises and prohibiting unauthorized departure from work, received minor sentences of corrective labor (ITR) or were given suspended sentences, but a fairly significant minority (22.9% or 4,113 thousand people for 1940-1956, judging by the statistical report Supreme Court of the USSR in 1958) was sentenced to imprisonment. Everything is clear with these latter ones, but what about the former? Some readers feel that they were simply treated a little harshly, and not repressed. But repression means going beyond the limits of generally accepted severity, and the sentences of technical and technical personnel for absenteeism, of course, were such an excess. Finally, in some cases, the number of which is impossible to estimate, those sentenced to technical labor force due to a misunderstanding or due to the excessive zeal of the guardians of the law ended up in camps.
A special issue concerns war crimes, including desertion. It is known that the Red Army was largely held together by methods of intimidation, and the concept of desertion was interpreted extremely broadly, so that it is quite appropriate to consider some, but it is not known what, part of those convicted under the relevant articles as victims of the repressive regime. The same victims, undoubtedly, can be considered those who fought their way out of encirclement, escaped or were released from captivity, who usually immediately, due to the prevailing spy mania and for “educational purposes” - so that others would be discouraged from surrendering into captivity - ended up in NKVD filtration camps, and often further into the Gulag.
Further. Victims of deportations, of course, can also be classified as repressed, as well as those administratively expelled. But what about those who, without waiting for dispossession or deportation, hurriedly packed up what they could carry overnight and fled until dawn, and then wandered, sometimes being caught and convicted, and sometimes starting a new life? Again, everything is clear with those who were caught and convicted, but with those who were not? In the broadest sense, they also suffered, but here again we must look individually. If, for example, a doctor from Omsk, warned of arrest by his former patient, an NKVD officer, took refuge in Moscow, where it was quite possible to get lost if the authorities announced only a regional search (as happened with the author’s grandfather), then perhaps it would be more correct to say about him that he miraculously escaped repression. There were apparently many such miracles, but it is impossible to say exactly how many. But if – and this is just a well-known figure – two or three million peasants flee to the cities to escape dispossession, then this is rather repression. After all, they were not just deprived of property, which in best case scenario they were sold in a hurry, for as much as they could, but they were also forcibly torn out of their usual habitat (we know what it means for the peasant) and often actually declassed.
A special question concerns “members of the families of traitors to the motherland.” Some of them were “definitely repressed”, others – a lot of children – were exiled to colonies or imprisoned in orphanages. Where to count such children? Where to count people, most often wives and mothers of convicted persons, who not only lost loved ones, but were also evicted from apartments, deprived of work and registration, were under surveillance and awaiting arrest? Shall we say that terror - that is, the policy of intimidation - did not touch them? On the other hand, it is difficult to include them in statistics - their numbers simply cannot be taken into account.
It is fundamentally important that different shapes repressions were elements of a single system, and this is how they were perceived (or, more precisely, experienced) by their contemporaries. For example, local punitive authorities often received orders to tighten the fight against enemies of the people from among those exiled to the districts under their jurisdiction, condemning such and such a number of them “in the first category” (that is, to death) and such and such a number in the second (to imprisonment). ). No one knew which rung of the ladder leading from “working through” at the meeting labor collective to the Lubyanka basement, he is destined to stay - and for how long. Propaganda introduced into the mass consciousness the idea of the inevitability of the beginning of the fall, since the bitterness of the defeated enemy was inevitable. Only by virtue of this law could the class struggle intensify as socialism was built. Colleagues, friends, and sometimes even relatives recoiled from those who stepped on the first step of the stairs leading down. Dismissal from work or even just “working” under conditions of terror had a completely different, much more menacing meaning than they might have in ordinary life.
3. How can you assess the scale of repression?
3.1. What do we know and how do we know it?
To begin with, let’s talk about the state of the sources. Many documents of the punitive departments were lost or purposefully destroyed, but many secrets are still kept in the archives. Of course, after the fall of communism, many archives were declassified, and many facts were made public. Many - but not all. Moreover, for last years a reverse process has emerged - the re-classification of archives. With the noble goal of protecting the sensitivity of the descendants of the executioners from exposing the glorious deeds of their fathers and mothers (and now, rather, grandfathers and grandmothers), the timing of declassification of many archives has been pushed into the future. It is amazing that a country with a history similar to ours carefully preserves the secrets of its past. Probably because it is still the same country.
In particular, the result of this situation is the dependence of historians on statistics collected by the “relevant bodies”, which are verified on the basis of primary documents in the rarest cases (although when it is possible, verification often gives a rather positive result). These statistics were presented in different years different departments, and bringing it together is not easy. In addition, it concerns only the “officially” repressed and is therefore fundamentally incomplete. For example, the number of people repressed under criminal charges, but for actual political reasons, in principle could not be indicated in it, since it was based on the categories of understanding of reality by the above authorities. Finally, there are difficult to explain discrepancies between different “certificates”. Estimates of the scale of repression based on available sources can be very rough and cautious.
Now about the historiographical context of V.N.’s work. Zemskova. The cited article, as well as the even more famous joint article written on its basis by the same author with the American historian A. Getty and the French historian G. Rittersporn, are characteristic of the formation that took shape in the 80s. the so-called “revisionist” trend in the study of Soviet history. Young (then) left-wing Western historians tried not so much to whitewash the Soviet regime as to show that the “right-wing” “anti-Soviet” historians of the older generation (such as R. Conquest and R. Pipes) wrote unscientific history, since they were not allowed into the Soviet archives. Therefore, if the “right” exaggerated the scale of repression, the “left”, partly out of dubious youth, having found much more modest figures in the archives, hastened to make them public and did not always ask themselves whether everything was reflected - and could be reflected - in the archives. Such “archival fetishism” is generally characteristic of the “tribe of historians,” including the most qualified. It is not surprising that the data of V.N. Zemskov, who reproduced the figures cited in the documents he found, in the light of a more careful analysis turn out to be underestimated indicators of the scale of repression.
By now, new publications of documents and studies have appeared that provide, of course, far from complete, but still a more detailed idea of the scale of repression. These are, first of all, books by O.V. Khlevnyuk (it still exists, as far as I know, only in English), E. Applebaum, E. Bacon and J. Paul, as well as the multi-volume “ History of Stalin's Gulag"and a number of other publications. Let's try to understand the data presented in them.
3.2. Sentence statistics
Statistics were kept by different departments, and today it is not easy to make ends meet. Thus, the Certificate of the Special Department of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs on the number of those arrested and convicted by the Cheka-OGPU-NKVD-MGB of the USSR, compiled by Colonel Pavlov on December 11, 1953 (hereinafter referred to as Pavlov’s certificate), gives the following figures: for the period 1937-1938. These bodies arrested 1,575 thousand people, of which 1,372 thousand were for counter-revolutionary crimes, and 1,345 thousand were convicted, including 682 thousand sentenced to capital punishment. Similar indicators for 1930-1936. amounted to 2,256 thousand, 1,379 thousand, 1,391 thousand and 40 thousand people. In total, for the period from 1921 to 1938. 4,836 thousand people were arrested, of which 3,342 thousand were for counter-revolutionary crimes, and 2,945 thousand were convicted, including 745 thousand people sentenced to death. From 1939 to mid-1953, 1,115 thousand people were convicted of counter-revolutionary crimes, of which 54 thousand were sentenced to death. Total in 1921-1953. 4,060 thousand were convicted on political charges, including 799 thousand sentenced to death.
However, these data concern only those convicted by the system of “extraordinary” bodies, and not by the entire repressive apparatus as a whole. Thus, this does not include those convicted by ordinary courts and military tribunals of various kinds (not only the army, navy and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but also railway and water transport, as well as camp ships). For example, the very significant discrepancy between the number of arrested and the number of convicted is explained not only by the fact that some of those arrested were released, but also by the fact that some of them died under torture, while others were referred to ordinary courts. As far as I know, there is no data to judge the relationship between these categories. The NKVD kept better statistics on arrests than statistics on sentences.
Let us also draw attention to the fact that in the “Rudenko certificate” quoted by V.N. Zemskov, data on the number of those convicted and executed by sentences of all types of courts are lower than the data from Pavlov’s certificate only for “emergency” justice, although presumably Pavlov’s certificate was only one of the documents used in Rudenko’s certificate. The reasons for such discrepancies are unknown. However, on the original of Pavlov’s certificate, stored in the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF), a note was made in pencil by an unknown hand to the figure 2,945 thousand (the number of those convicted for 1921-1938): “30% angle. = 1,062.” "Corner." - these are, of course, criminals. Why 30% of 2,945 thousand amounted to 1,062 thousand, one can only guess. Probably, the postscript reflected some stage of “data processing”, and in the direction of underestimation. Obviously, the figure of 30% was not derived empirically based on a generalization of the initial data, but represents either a given by a high-ranking “ expert assessment”, or an estimated “by eye” equivalent of the figure (1,062 thousand) by which the specified rank considered it necessary to reduce the certificate data. It is unknown where such expert assessment could come from. Perhaps it reflected the ideologeme widespread among high officials, according to which criminals were actually condemned “for politics.”
As for the reliability of statistical materials, the number of people convicted by “extraordinary” authorities in 1937-1938. is generally confirmed by the research conducted by Memorial. However, there are cases when regional departments of the NKVD exceeded the “limits” allocated to them by Moscow for convictions and executions, sometimes managing to receive a sanction, and sometimes not having time. In the latter case, they risked getting into trouble and therefore could not show the results of excessive zeal in their reports. According to a rough estimate, such “unshown” cases could be 10-12% of the total number of convicts. However, it should be taken into account that statistics do not reflect repeated convictions, so these factors could well be approximately balanced.
In addition to the bodies of the Cheka-GPU-NKVD-MGB, the number of those repressed can be judged by statistics collected by the Department for the preparation of petitions for pardon under the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the USSR for 1940 - the first half of 1955. (“Babukhin’s certificate”). According to this document, 35,830 thousand people were convicted by ordinary courts, as well as military tribunals, transport and camp courts during the specified period, including 256 thousand people sentenced to death, 15,109 thousand to imprisonment and 20,465 thousand. person to forced labor and other types of punishment. Here, of course, we are talking about all types of crimes. 1,074 thousand people (3.1%) were sentenced for counter-revolutionary crimes - slightly less than for hooliganism (3.5%), and twice as many as for serious criminal offenses (banditry, murder, robbery, robbery, rape together give 1.5%). Those convicted of military crimes amounted to almost the same number as those convicted of political offenses (1,074 thousand or 3%), and some of them can probably be considered politically repressed. Thefts of socialist and personal property - including an unknown number of "nonsense" - accounted for 16.9% of those convicted, or 6,028 thousand. 28.1% were accounted for by "other crimes." Punishments for some of them could well have been in the nature of repression - for the unauthorized seizure of collective farm lands (from 18 to 48 thousand cases per year between 1945 and 1955), resistance to power (several thousand cases per year), violation of the serfdom passport regime (from 9 to 50 thousand cases per year), failure to meet the minimum workdays (from 50 to 200 thousand per year), etc. The largest group included penalties for leaving work without permission - 15,746 thousand or 43.9%. At the same time, the statistical collection of the Supreme Court of 1958 speaks of 17,961 thousand sentenced under wartime decrees, of which 22.9% or 4,113 thousand were sentenced to imprisonment, and the rest to fines or technical technical regulations. However, not all those sentenced to short terms actually made it to the camps.
So, 1,074 thousand were convicted of counter-revolutionary crimes by military tribunals and ordinary courts. True, if we add up the figures of the Department of Judicial Statistics of the Supreme Court of the USSR (“Khlebnikov’s certificate”) and the Office of Military Tribunals (“Maksimov’s certificate”) for the same period, we get 1,104 thousand (952 thousand convicted by military tribunals and 152 thousand – ordinary courts), but this, of course, is not a very significant discrepancy. In addition, Khlebnikov’s certificate contains an indication of another 23 thousand convicted in 1937-1939. Taking this into account, the cumulative total of the certificates of Khlebnikov and Maksimov gives 1,127 thousand. True, the materials of the statistical collection of the Supreme Court of the USSR allow us to say (if we summarize different tables) either about 199 thousand, or about 211 thousand convicted by ordinary courts for counter-revolutionary crimes in 1940–1955. and, accordingly, about 325 or 337 thousand for 1937-1955, but this does not change the order of the numbers.
The available data does not allow us to determine exactly how many of them were sentenced to death. Ordinary courts in all categories of cases handed down death sentences relatively rarely (usually several hundred cases a year, only for 1941 and 1942 we are talking about several thousand). Even long-term imprisonment in large numbers (an average of 40-50 thousand per year) appeared only after 1947, when the death penalty was briefly abolished and penalties for theft of socialist property were tightened. There is no data on military tribunals, but presumably they were more likely to impose harsh punishments in political cases.
These data show that to 4,060 thousand were convicted of counter-revolutionary crimes by the Cheka-GPU-NKVD-MGB for 1921-1953. one should add either 1,074 thousand convicted by ordinary courts and military tribunals for 1940-1955. according to Babukhin’s certificate, either 1,127 thousand convicted by military tribunals and ordinary courts (the cumulative total of the certificates of Khlebnikov and Maksimov), or 952 thousand convicted of these crimes by military tribunals for 1940-1956. plus 325 (or 337) thousand convicted by ordinary courts for 1937-1956. (according to the statistical collection of the Supreme Court). This gives, respectively, 5,134 thousand, 5,187 thousand, 5,277 thousand or 5,290 thousand.
However, ordinary courts and military tribunals did not sit idly by until 1937 and 1940, respectively. Thus, there were mass arrests, for example, during the period of collectivization. Given in " Stories of Stalin's Gulag" (vol. 1, pp. 608-645) and in " Gulag stories» O.V. Khlevnyuk (pp. 288-291 and 307-319) statistical data collected in the mid-50s. do not concern (with the exception of data on those repressed by the Cheka-GPU-NKVD-MGB) of this period. Meanwhile, O.V. Khlevnyuk refers to a document stored in the GARF, which indicates (with the caveat that the data is incomplete) the number of people convicted by ordinary courts of the RSFSR in 1930-1932. – 3,400 thousand people. For the USSR as a whole, according to Khlevnyuk (p. 303), the corresponding figure could be at least 5 million. This gives approximately 1.7 million per year, which is in no way inferior to the average annual result of courts of general jurisdiction of the 40s - early 50s gg. (2 million per year - but population growth should be taken into account).
Probably, the number of people convicted of counter-revolutionary crimes for the entire period from 1921 to 1956 was hardly much less than 6 million, of which hardly much less than 1 million (and most likely more) were sentenced to death.
But along with 6 million “repressed in the narrow sense of the word” there was a considerable number of “repressed in the broad sense of the word” - primarily, those convicted on non-political charges. It is impossible to say how many of the 6 million “nonsuns” were convicted under the decrees of 1932 and 1947, and how many of the approximately 2-3 million deserters, “invaders” of collective farm lands who did not fulfill the workday quota, etc. should be considered victims of repression, i.e. punished unfairly or disproportionately to the gravity of the crime due to the terrorist nature of the regime. But 18 million were convicted under serfdom decrees of 1940-1942. all were repressed, even if “only” 4.1 million of them were sentenced to imprisonment and ended up, if not in a colony or camp, then in prison.
3.2. Population of Gulag
Estimating the number of repressed people can be approached in another way - through an analysis of the “population” of the Gulag. It is generally accepted that in the 20s. prisoners for political reasons were more likely to number in the thousands or a few tens of thousands. There were about the same number of exiles. The year the “real” Gulag was created was 1929. After this, the number of prisoners quickly exceeded one hundred thousand and by 1937 had grown to approximately a million. Published data show that from 1938 to 1947. it was, with some fluctuations, about 1.5 million, and then exceeded 2 million in the early 1950s. amounted to about 2.5 million (including colonies). However, the turnover of the camp population (caused by many reasons, including high mortality) was very high. Based on an analysis of data on the admission and departure of prisoners, E. Bacon suggested that between 1929 and 1953. About 18 million prisoners passed through the Gulag (including colonies). To this we must add those kept in prisons, of which at any given moment there were about 200-300-400 thousand (minimum 155 thousand in January 1944, maximum 488 thousand in January 1941). A significant portion of them probably ended up in the Gulag, but not all. Some were released, but others may have received minor sentences (for example, most of the 4.1 million people sentenced to imprisonment under wartime decrees), so there was no point in sending them to camps and perhaps even to colonies. Therefore, the figure of 18 million should probably be increased slightly (but hardly by more than 1-2 million).
How reliable are Gulag statistics? Most likely, it is quite reliable, although it was not maintained carefully. The factors that could lead to gross distortions, either in the direction of exaggeration or understatement, roughly balanced each other, not to mention the fact that, with the partial exception of the period of the Great Terror, Moscow took the economic role of the forced labor system seriously and monitored statistics and demanded a reduction in the very high mortality rate among prisoners. Camp commanders had to be prepared for reporting checks. Their interest, on the one hand, was to underestimate mortality and escape rates, and on the other, not to overinflate the total contingent so as not to obtain unrealistic production plans.
What percentage of prisoners can be considered “political”, both de jure and de facto? E. Applebaum writes about this: “Although it is true that millions of people were convicted under criminal charges, I do not believe that any significant part of the total number were criminals in any normal sense of the word” (p. 539). Therefore, she considers it possible to talk about all 18 million as victims of repression. But the picture was probably more complex.
Table of data on the number of Gulag prisoners, given by V.N. Zemskov, gives a wide variety of percentages of “political” prisoners from the total number of prisoners in the camps. The minimum figures (12.6 and 12.8%) occurred in 1936 and 1937, when the wave of victims of the Great Terror simply did not have time to reach the camps. By 1939, this figure had increased to 34.5%, then decreased slightly, and from 1943 began to grow again, to reach its apogee in 1946 (59.2%) and decrease again to 26.9% in 1953 The percentage of political prisoners in the colonies also fluctuated quite significantly. Noteworthy is the fact that the highest percentage of “political” ones occurred during the war and especially the first post-war years, when the Gulag was somewhat depopulated due to the particularly high mortality rate of prisoners, their sending to the front and some temporary “liberalization” of the regime. In the “full-blooded” Gulag of the early 50s. the share of “political” ones ranged from a quarter to a third.
If we move on to absolute figures, then usually there were about 400-450 thousand political prisoners in the camps, plus several tens of thousands in the colonies. This was the case in the late 30s and early 40s. and again in the late 40s. In the early 50s, the number of political ones was more like 450-500 thousand in the camps plus 50-100 thousand in the colonies. In the mid-30s. in the Gulag, which had not yet gained strength, there were about 100 thousand political prisoners a year in the mid-40s. – about 300 thousand. According to V.N. Zemskova, as of January 1, 1951, there were 2,528 thousand prisoners in the Gulag (including 1,524 thousand in camps and 994 thousand in colonies). There were 580 thousand of them “political” and 1,948 thousand “criminal”. If we extrapolate this proportion, then out of 18 million Gulag prisoners, hardly more than 5 million were political.
But this conclusion would be a simplification: after all, some of the criminals were de facto political. Thus, among 1,948 thousand prisoners convicted under criminal charges, 778 thousand were convicted of theft of socialist property (in the vast majority - 637 thousand - according to the Decree of June 4, 1947, plus 72 thousand - according to the Decree of 7 August 1932), as well as for violations of the passport regime (41 thousand), desertion (39 thousand), illegal border crossing (2 thousand) and unauthorized departure from work (26.5 thousand). In addition to this, in the late 30s and early 40s. usually there were about one percent of “family members of traitors to the motherland” (by the 50s there were only a few hundred people left in the Gulag) and from 8% (in 1934) to 21.7% (in 1939) “socially harmful and socially dangerous elements” (by the 50s there were almost none left). All of them were not officially included in the number of those repressed for political reasons. One and a half to two percent of prisoners served camp sentences for violating the passport regime. Those convicted for theft of socialist property, whose share in the Gulag population was 18.3% in 1934 and 14.2% in 1936, decreased to 2-3% by the end of the 30s, which is appropriate to associate with the special role persecution of the “nonsuns” in the mid-30s. If we assume that the absolute number of thefts during the 30s. has not changed dramatically, and if we consider that the total number of prisoners by the end of the 30s. increased approximately threefold compared to 1934 and one and a half times compared to 1936, then perhaps there is reason to assume that at least two-thirds of the victims of repression were among the plunderers of socialist property.
If we add up the number of de jure political prisoners, members of their families, socially harmful and socially dangerous elements, violators of the passport regime and two-thirds of the plunderers of socialist property, it turns out that at least a third, and sometimes over half of the population of the Gulag were actually political prisoners. E. Applebaum is right that there were not so many “real criminals”, namely those convicted of serious criminal offenses such as robbery and murder (in different years 2-3%), but still, in general, hardly less than half of prisoners cannot be considered political.
So, the rough proportion of political and non-political prisoners in the Gulag is approximately fifty to fifty, and of the political ones, about half or a little more (that is, approximately a quarter or a little more of the total number of prisoners) were de jure political, and half or a little less were political prisoners. political de facto.
3.3. How do the statistics of sentences and the statistics of the population of the Gulag agree?
A rough calculation gives approximately the following result. Of the approximately 18 million prisoners, about half (approximately 9 million) were de jure and de facto political, and about a quarter or slightly more were de jure political. It would seem that this quite accurately coincides with the data on the number of people sentenced to imprisonment for political offenses (about 5 million). However, the situation is more complicated.
Despite the fact that the average number of de facto political people in the camps at a particular moment was approximately equal to the number of de jure political ones, in general, for the entire period of repression, de facto political ones should have been significantly greater than de jure political ones, because usually the sentences in criminal cases were significantly Briefly speaking. Thus, about a quarter of those convicted on political charges were sentenced to terms of imprisonment of 10 years or more, and another half - from 5 to 10 years, while in criminal cases the majority of terms were less than 5 years. It is clear that various forms of prisoner turnover (primarily mortality, including executions) could somewhat smooth out this difference. Nevertheless, de facto there should have been more than 5 million political ones.
How does this compare with a rough estimate of the number of people sentenced to imprisonment under criminal charges for actually political reasons? Most of the 4.1 million people convicted under wartime decrees probably did not make it to the camps, but some of them could well have made it to the colonies. But of the 8-9 million convicted of military and economic crimes, as well as for various forms of disobedience to authorities, the majority made it to the Gulag (the death rate during transit was supposedly quite high, but there are no accurate estimates of it). If it is true that about two-thirds of these 8-9 million were actually political prisoners, then together with those convicted under wartime decrees who reached the Gulag, this probably gives no less than 6-8 million.
If this figure was closer to 8 million, which is better consistent with our ideas about the comparative length of terms of imprisonment under political and criminal articles, then it should be assumed that either the estimate of the total population of the Gulag for the period of repression at 18 million is somewhat underestimated, or the estimate the total number of de jure political prisoners of 5 million is somewhat overestimated (perhaps both of these assumptions are correct to some extent). However, the figure of 5 million political prisoners would seem to exactly coincide with the result of our calculations of the total number of those sentenced to imprisonment on political charges. If in reality there were fewer than 5 million de jure political prisoners, then this most likely means that many more death sentences were handed down for war crimes than we assumed, and also that death in transit was a particularly common fate namely de jure political prisoners.
Probably, such doubts can be resolved only on the basis of further archival research and at least a selective study of “primary” documents, and not just statistical sources. Be that as it may, the order of magnitude is obvious - we are talking about 10-12 million people convicted under political articles and under criminal articles, but for political reasons. To this must be added approximately a million (and possibly more) executed. This gives 11-13 million victims of repression.
3.4. In total there were repressed...
To the 11-13 million executed and imprisoned in prisons and camps should be added:
About 6-7 million special settlers, including more than 2 million “kulaks,” as well as “suspicious” ethnic groups and entire nations (Germans, Crimean Tatars, Chechens, Ingush, etc.), as well as hundreds of thousands of “socially aliens”, expelled from those captured in 1939-1940. territories, etc. ;
About 6-7 million peasants who died as a result of an artificially organized famine in the early 30s;
About 2-3 million peasants who left their villages in anticipation of dispossession, often declassed or, at best, actively involved in the “building of communism”; the number of deaths among them is unknown (O.V. Khlevniuk. P.304);
The 14 million who received sentences of ITR and fines under wartime decrees, as well as the majority of those 4 million who received short prison sentences under these decrees, presumably served them in prisons and therefore were not counted in the Gulag population statistics; Overall, this category probably adds at least 17 million victims of repression;
Several hundred thousand were arrested on political charges, but various reasons acquitted and not subsequently arrested;
Up to half a million military personnel who were captured and, after liberation, passed through NKVD filtration camps (but not convicted);
Several hundred thousand administrative exiles, some of whom were subsequently arrested, but not all (O.V. Khlevniuk. P.306).
If the last three categories taken together are estimated at approximately 1 million people, then the total number of victims of terror at least approximately taken into account will be for the period 1921-1955. 43-48 million people. However, that's not all.
The Red Terror did not begin in 1921, and it did not end in 1955. True, after 1955 it was relatively sluggish (by Soviet standards), but still the number of victims of political repression (suppression of riots, fight against dissidents and etc.) after the 20th Congress amounts to a five-digit figure. The most significant wave of post-Stalinist repressions took place in 1956-69. The period of revolution and civil war was less “vegetarian”. There are no exact figures here, but it is assumed that we can hardly talk about less than one million victims - counting those killed and repressed during the suppression of numerous popular uprisings against Soviet power, but not counting, of course, forced emigrants. Forced emigration, however, also occurred after World War II, and in each case it amounted to seven figures.
But that's not all. It is impossible to accurately estimate the number of people who lost their jobs and became outcasts, but who happily escaped a worse fate, as well as people whose world collapsed on the day (or more often the night) of the arrest of a loved one. But “cannot be counted” does not mean that there were none. Moreover, regarding last category Some thoughts can be expressed. If the number of people repressed for political reasons is estimated at 6 million people and if we assume that only in a minority of families more than one person was shot or imprisoned (thus, the share of “family members of traitors to the motherland” in the Gulag population, as we have already noted, did not exceed 1%, while we approximately estimated the share of the “traitors” themselves at 25%), then we should be talking about several million more victims.
In connection with assessing the number of victims of repression, we should also dwell on the question of those killed during the Second World War. The fact is that these categories partially overlap: we are primarily talking about people who died during hostilities as a result of the terrorist policies of the Soviet regime. Those who were convicted by the military justice authorities are already taken into account in our statistics, but there were also those whom commanders of all ranks ordered to be shot without trial or even personally shot, based on their understanding of military discipline. Examples are probably known to everyone, but quantitative estimates do not exist here. We are not touching here on the problem of justification for purely military losses - senseless frontal attacks, which many famous commanders of Stalin’s ilk were eager for, were also, of course, a manifestation of the state’s complete disregard for the lives of citizens, but their consequences, naturally, have to be taken into account in the category of military losses.
The total number of victims of terror during the years of Soviet power can thus be approximately estimated at 50-55 million people. The vast majority of them occur, naturally, in the period before 1953. Therefore, if former chairman KGB USSR V.A. Kryuchkov, with whom V.N. Zemskov did not distort the data on the number of those arrested during the Great Terror too much (by only 30%, towards underestimation, of course), but in the general assessment of the scale of repressions A.I. Solzhenitsyn was, alas, closer to the truth.
By the way, I wonder why V.A. Kryuchkov spoke about a million, and not about one and a half million, repressed in 1937-1938? Perhaps he was not so much fighting to improve terror indicators in the light of perestroika as simply sharing the above-mentioned “expert assessment” of the anonymous reader of Pavlov’s certificate, convinced that 30% of the “political” are actually criminals?
We said above that the number of those executed was hardly less than a million people. However, if we talk about those killed as a result of terror, we will get a different figure: death in the camps (at least half a million in the 1930s alone - see O.V. Khlevniuk. P. 327) and in transit (which cannot be calculated), death under torture, suicides of those awaiting arrest, death of special settlers from hunger and disease both in settlement areas (where about 600 thousand kulaks died in the 1930s - see O.V. Khlevniuk, p. 327), and on the way to them, executions “alarmists” and “deserters” without trial or investigation, and finally, the death of millions of peasants as a result of a provoked famine - all this gives a figure hardly less than 10 million people. “Formal” repressions were only the tip of the iceberg of the terrorist policy of the Soviet regime.
Some readers - and, of course, historians - wonder what percentage of the population were victims of repression. O.V. Khlevnyuk in the above book (P.304) in relation to the 30s. suggests that one in six of the country's adult population was affected. However, he proceeds from an estimate of the total population according to the 1937 census, without taking into account the fact that the total number of people living in the country for ten years (and even more so throughout the almost thirty-five year period of mass repressions from 1917 to 1953 .) was greater than the number of people living in it at any given moment.
How can you estimate the total population of the country in 1917-1953? It is well known that Stalin's population censuses are not entirely reliable. Nevertheless, for our purpose - a rough estimate of the scale of repression - they serve as a sufficient guide. The 1937 census gives a figure of 160 million. Probably this figure can be taken as the “average” population of the country in 1917-1953. 20s – first half of 30s. were characterized by “natural” demographic growth, which significantly exceeded losses as a result of wars, famine and repression. After 1937, growth also took place, including due to the annexation in 1939-1940. territories with a population of 23 million people, but repression, mass emigration and military losses largely balanced it.
In order to move from the “average” number of people living in a country at one time to the total number of people living in it for a certain period, it is necessary to add to the first number the average annual birth rate multiplied by the number of years making up this period. The birth rate, understandably, varied quite significantly. Under the traditional demographic regime (characterized by the predominance of large families), it usually amounts to 4% per year of the total population. The majority of the population of the USSR (Central Asia, the Caucasus, and indeed the Russian village itself) still lived to a large extent under such a regime. However, in some periods (years of wars, collectivization, famine), even for these areas the birth rate should have been somewhat lower. During the war years it was about 2% on average throughout the country. If we estimate it at 3-3.5% on average over the period and multiply by the number of years (35), it turns out that the average “one-time” figure (160 million) must be doubled small times. This gives about 350 million. In other words, during the period of mass repressions from 1917 to 1953. Every seventh resident of the country, including minors (50 out of 350 million), suffered from terrorism. If adults made up less than two-thirds of the total population (100 out of 160 million, according to the 1937 census), and among the 50 million victims of repression we counted there were “only” several million, then it turns out that at least every fifth the adult was a victim of a terrorist regime.
4. What does all this mean today?
It cannot be said that fellow citizens are poorly informed about mass repressions in the USSR. The answers to the question in our questionnaire about how to estimate the number of repressed people were distributed as follows:
- less than 1 million people – 5.9%
- from 1 to 10 million people – 21.5%
- from 10 to 30 million people – 29.4%
- from 30 to 50 million people – 12.4%
- over 50 million people – 5.9%
- find it difficult to answer – 24.8%
As we can see, the majority of respondents have no doubt that the repressions were large-scale. True, every fourth respondent is inclined to look for objective reasons repression. This, of course, does not mean that such respondents are ready to absolve the executioners of any responsibility. But they are unlikely to be ready to unequivocally condemn these latter.
In modern Russian historical consciousness, the desire for an “objective” approach to the past is very noticeable. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is no coincidence that we put the word “objective” in quotation marks. The point is not that complete objectivity is hardly achievable in principle, but that a call for it can mean very different things - from the honest desire of a conscientious researcher - and any interested person - to understand the complex and contradictory process that we call history, to the irritated reaction of the average man stuck on the oil needle to any attempts to disturb his peace of mind and make him think that he inherited not only valuable minerals that ensure his - alas, fragile - well-being, but also unresolved political, cultural and psychological problems, generated by seventy years of experience of “endless terror”, his own soul, which he is afraid to look into - perhaps not without reason. And, finally, the call for objectivity may hide the sober calculation of the ruling elites, who are aware of their genetic connection with the Soviet elites and are not at all inclined to “allow the lower classes to engage in criticism.”
It is perhaps no coincidence that the phrase from our article that aroused the indignation of readers concerns not just an assessment of repression, but an assessment of repression in comparison with war. The myth of the “Great Patriotic War” in recent years, as it once did in the Brezhnev era, has again become the main unifying myth of the nation. However, in its genesis and functions, this myth is largely a “barrage myth”, trying to replace the tragic memory of repression with an equally tragic, but still partly heroic memory of a “national feat”. We will not go into a discussion of the memory of the war here. Let us only emphasize that the war was not least a link in the chain of crimes committed by the Soviet government against its own people, an aspect of the problem that is almost completely obscured today by the “unifying” role of the myth of the war.
Many historians believe that our society needs “cliotherapy”, which will rid it of its inferiority complex and convince it that “Russia is a normal country.” This experience of “normalizing history” is by no means a uniquely Russian attempt to create a “positive self-image” for the heirs of the terrorist regime. Thus, in Germany, attempts were made to prove that fascism should be considered “in its era” and in comparison with other totalitarian regimes in order to show the relativity of the “national guilt” of the Germans - as if the fact that there was more than one murderer justified them. In Germany, however, this position is held by a significant minority of public opinion, while in Russia it has become predominant in recent years. Only a few in Germany would dare to name Hitler among the sympathetic figures of the past, while in Russia, according to our survey, every tenth respondent names Stalin among those sympathetic to him historical characters, and 34.7% believe that he played a positive or rather positive role in the history of the country (and another 23.7% find that “today it is difficult to give an unambiguous assessment”). Other recent polls indicate similar – and even more positive – assessments of Stalin’s role by compatriots.
Russian historical memory today turns away from repressions - but this, alas, does not mean at all that “the past has passed.” The structures of Russian everyday life to a large extent reproduce forms of social relations, behavior and consciousness that came from the imperial and Soviet past. This does not seem to be to the liking of the majority of respondents: increasingly imbued with pride in their past, they perceive the present quite critically. So, to the question of our questionnaire, is it inferior modern Russia The West in terms of culture level or surpasses it, the second answer option was chosen by only 9.4%, while the same figure for all previous historical eras (including Moscow Rus' during the Soviet period) ranges from 20 to 40%. Fellow citizens probably do not bother to think that the “golden age of Stalinism,” as well as the subsequent, albeit somewhat more faded period of Soviet history, may have something to do with what they are not happy with in our society today. Turning to the Soviet past in order to overcome it is possible only on the condition that we are ready to see the traces of this past in ourselves and recognize ourselves as heirs not only of glorious deeds, but also of the crimes of our ancestors.
Stalin's repressions occupy one of the central places in the study of the history of the Soviet period.
Briefly characterizing 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 government authorities against people trying to “shatter” the established regime. To a greater extent, this 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 displeasing to the ruler were punished.
Lists of those repressed in the 30s
The period of 1937-1938 was the peak of repression. Historians called it the “Great Terror.” Regardless of origin, field 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 particular “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 complete information on the number of people repressed and executed. But then the period of perestroika began, and this is the time when everything secret became clear. After the lists were declassified, after historians great job in the archives and data calculations, truthful information was provided to the public - the numbers were simply terrifying.
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 this did the relatives find out where their loved one was and what happened to him. But for the most part, they did not find anything comforting, since almost every life of a repressed person ended in execution.
If you need to clarify information about a repressed relative, you can use the website http://lists.memo.ru/index2.htm. On it you can find all the information you need by name. Almost all of those repressed were rehabilitated posthumously; this has always been a great joy for their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
The number of victims of Stalin's repressions according to official data
On February 1, 1954, a memo was prepared addressed to N.S. Khrushchev, which contained the exact data of the dead and injured. The number is simply shocking - 3,777,380 people.
The number of those repressed and executed is striking in its scale. So there are officially confirmed data that were announced during the “ Khrushchev's thaw». Article 58 was political, and under it alone about 700 thousand people were sentenced to death.
And how many people died in the Gulag camps, where not only political prisoners were exiled, but also everyone who was not pleasing to the Stalin 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 subjected to repression:
- Peasants. Those who were participants in the “green movement” were especially punished. Kulaks who did not want to join collective farms and who wanted to achieve everything on their own farm on their own were sent into exile, and all their acquired property was confiscated from them in full. And now wealthy peasants became poor.
- Military – separate layer 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 protecting himself and his regime. But, despite the fact that he protected himself, Stalin quickly reduced the country's defense capability, depriving it of talented military personnel.
- All sentences were carried out by NKVD officers. But their repressions were not spared either. Among the workers of the People's Commissariat who followed all the instructions were those who were shot. Such people's commissars as Yezhov and Yagoda became some of the victims of Stalin's instructions.
- Even those who had something to do with religion were subjected to repression. There was no God at that time and faith in him “shaken” 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 dropped off in one place, the mother in another, and the children in a third. No one knew about their family and their whereabouts.
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 repression are considered to be:
- To save money on a national scale, it was necessary to force the population to work for free. There was a lot of work, but there was nothing to pay for it.
- After Lenin was killed, the leader's place was vacant. The people needed a leader whom the population would follow unquestioningly.
- 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 did the repressions take place in the USSR?
Stalin's repressions were a terrible time when everyone was ready to testify against their neighbor, even fictitiously, if only nothing happened to his family.
The entire horror of the process is captured in Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s work “The Gulag Archipelago”: “A sharp night call, a knock on the door, and several operatives enter the apartment. And behind them stands a frightened neighbor who had to become a witness. He sits all night, and only in the morning puts his signature on terrible and untruthful testimony.”
The procedure is terrible, treacherous, but by doing so, he will probably save his family, but no, the next person they will come to on the new night is him.
Most often, all testimony given by political prisoners was falsified. People were brutally beaten, thereby obtaining the information that was necessary. Moreover, torture was sanctioned personally 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 proposed using foreign equipment in order to capture a natural phenomenon. As a result, all members of the Pulkovo Observatory were accused of having connections with foreigners. Until now, information about the victims and repressed people is classified.
- The case of the industrial party - the Soviet bourgeoisie received the accusation. They were accused of disrupting industrialization processes.
- It's the doctors' business. Doctors who allegedly killed Soviet leaders received charges.
The actions taken by the authorities were brutal. Nobody understood the guilt. If a person was on the list, then he was guilty and no proof was required.
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 repression lasted 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.
Stalin's repressions did not benefit society, but only helped the authorities establish a totalitarian regime, from which for a long time our country could not get rid of it. And residents were afraid to express their opinions. There were no people who didn't like anything. I liked everything - even working for the good of the country for practically nothing.
The totalitarian regime made it possible to build such objects as: BAM, the construction of which was carried out by the GULAG forces.
A terrible time, but it cannot be erased from history, since it was during these years that the country survived the Second World War and was able to restore the destroyed cities.
When I die, a lot of rubbish will be placed on my grave, but the wind of time will mercilessly sweep it away.
Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich
Brief summary of the myth:
Stalin was the greatest tyrant of all times. Stalin destroyed his people on an unimaginable scale - from 10 to 100 million people were thrown into camps, where they were shot or died in inhumane conditions.
Reality:
What was the scale of the “Stalinist repressions”?
Almost all publications addressing the issue of the number of repressed people can be classified into two groups. The first of them includes works by denouncers of the “totalitarian regime”, citing astronomical multi-million dollar figures of those executed and imprisoned. At the same time, “truth seekers” persistently try not to notice archival data, including published ones, pretending that they do not exist. To justify their figures, they either refer to each other, or simply limit themselves to phrases like: “according to my calculations,” “I am convinced,” etc.
However, any conscientious researcher who begins to study this problem quickly discovers that in addition to “eyewitness memories” there are a lot of documentary sources: “Several thousand items of storage of documents related to the activities of the Gulag have been identified in the funds of the Central State Archive of the October Revolution, the highest bodies of state power and government bodies of the USSR (TsGAOR USSR)”
Having studied archival documents, such a researcher is surprised to see that the scale of repression that we “know” about thanks to the media is not only at odds with reality, but is inflated tenfold. After this, he finds himself in a painful dilemma: professional ethics demands to publish the data found, on the other hand, so as not to be branded as a defender of Stalin. The result is usually some kind of “compromise” publication, containing both a standard set of anti-Stalin epithets and curtsies addressed to Solzhenitsyn and Co., as well as information about the number of repressed people, which, unlike publications from the first group, is not taken out of thin air and not pulled out of thin air , and are confirmed by documents from the archives.
How much has been repressed?
February 1, 1954
To the Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, Comrade N. S. Khrushchev.
In connection with signals received by the Central Committee of the CPSU from a number of persons about illegal convictions for counter-revolutionary crimes in past years by the OGPU Collegium, NKVD troikas, the Special Meeting, the Military Collegium, courts and military tribunals and in accordance with your instructions on the need to review the cases of persons convicted for counter-revolutionary crimes and currently held in camps and prisons, we report: from 1921 to the present time, 3,777,380 people were sentenced for counter-revolutionary crimes, including 642,980 people to VMN, to detention in camps and prisons for a term of 25 years and below - 2,369,220, into exile and deportation - 765,180 people.Of the total number of convicts, approximately, 2,900,000 people were convicted by the OGPU Collegium, NKVD troikas and the Special Conference, and 877,000 people were convicted by courts, military tribunals, the Special Collegium and the Military Collegium.
... It should be noted that, created on the basis of the Resolution of the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR of November 5, 1934, by the Special Meeting of the NKVD of the USSR, which existed until September 1, 1953, 442,531 people were sentenced, including 10,101 people to VMN, to imprisonment - 360,921 people, to exile and deportation (within the country) - 57,539 people and to other measures of punishment (counting the time spent in custody, deportation abroad, compulsory treatment) - 3,970 people...
Prosecutor General R. Rudenko
Minister of Internal Affairs S. Kruglov
Minister of Justice K. Gorshenin
So, as is clear from the above document, in total from 1921 to the beginning of 1954, people were sentenced to death on political charges. 642.980 person, to imprisonment - 2.369.220 , to link – 765.180 . It should also be borne in mind that not all sentences were carried out. For example, from July 15, 1939 to April 20, 1940, 201 prisoners were sentenced to capital punishment for disorganizing camp life and production, but then for some of them the death penalty was replaced by imprisonment for terms of 10 to 15 years. In 1934, the camps housed 3,849 prisoners sentenced to capital punishment with a substitute for imprisonment, in 1935 - 5,671, in 1936 - 7,303, in 1937 - 6,239, in 1938 - 5,926, in 1939 - 3,425, in 1940 - 4,037.
Number of prisoners
« Are you sure that the information in this memo is true?“, - a skeptical reader will exclaim, who, thanks to many years of brainwashing, firmly “knows” about millions of people shot and tens of millions sent to camps. Well, let's turn to more detailed statistics, especially since, contrary to the assurances of dedicated “fighters against totalitarianism,” such data is not only available in the archives, but has also been published several times.
Let's start with data on the number of prisoners in the Gulag camps. Let me remind you that those sentenced to a term of more than 3 years, as a rule, served their sentences in correctional labor camps (ITL), and those sentenced to short terms - in correctional labor colonies (CPT).
| Year | Prisoners |
|---|---|
| 1930 | 179.000 |
| 1931 | 212.000 |
| 1932 | 268.700 |
| 1933 | 334.300 |
| 1934 | 510.307 |
| 1935 | 725.483 |
| 1936 | 839.406 |
| 1937 | 820.881 |
| 1938 | 996.367 |
| 1939 | 1.317.195 |
| 1940 | 1.344.408 |
| 1941 | 1.500.524 |
| 1942 | 1.415.596 |
| 1943 | 983.974 |
| 1944 | 663.594 |
| 1945 | 715.505 |
| 1946 | 746.871 |
| 1947 | 808.839 |
| 1948 | 1.108.057 |
| 1949 | 1.216.361 |
| 1950 | 1.416.300 |
| 1951 | 1.533.767 |
| 1952 | 1.711.202 |
| 1953 | 1.727.970 |
However, those who are accustomed to accepting the opuses of Solzhenitsyn and others like him as Holy Scripture are often not convinced even by direct references to archival documents. " These are NKVD documents, and therefore they are falsified.- they declare. – Where did the numbers given in them come from?».
Well, especially for these incredulous gentlemen, I will give a couple of specific examples of where “these numbers” come from. So, the year is 1935:
NKVD camps, their economic specialization and number of prisoners
as of January 11, 1935
| Camp | Economic specialization | Number conclusion |
| Dmitrovlag | Construction of the Moscow-Volga Canal | 192.649|
| Bamlag | Construction of the second tracks of the Trans-Baikal and Ussuri railways and the Baikal-Amur Mainline | 153.547|
| Belomoro-Baltic- ski plant | Construction of the White Sea-Baltic Canal | 66.444|
| Siblag | Construction of Gorno-Shorskaya railway; coal mining in the mines of Kuzbass; construction of the Chuisky and Usinsky tracts; provision of labor to the Kuznetsk Metallurgical Plant, Novsibles, etc.; own pig farms | 61.251|
| Dallag (later Vladivostoklag) | Construction of the Volochaevka-Komsomolsk railway; coal mining at the Artem and Raichikha mines; construction of the Sedan water pipeline and oil storage tanks of Benzostroy; construction works"Dalpromstroy", "Reserves Committee", aircraft building No. 126; fisheries | 60.417|
| Svirlag | Harvesting firewood and commercial timber for Leningrad | 40.032|
| Sevvostlag | Trust "Dalstroy", work in Kolyma | 36.010|
| Temlag, Mordov- Russian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic | Harvesting firewood and industrial timber for Moscow | 33.048|
| Central Asian camp (Sazlag) | Providing labor to Tekstilstroy, Chirchikstroy, Shakhrudstroy, Khazarbakhstroy, Chuisky Novlubtrest, and the Pakhta-Aral state farm; own cotton farms | 26.829|
| Karaganda camp (Karlag) | Livestock farms | 25.109|
| Ukhtpechlag | Works of the Ukhto-Pechora Trust: mining of coal, oil, asphalt, radium, etc. | 20.656|
| Prorvlag (later - Astrakhanlag) | Fishing industry | 10.583|
| Sarovsky NKVD camp | Logging and sawmilling | 3.337|
| Vaygach | Mining of zinc, lead, platinum spar | 1.209|
| Okhunlag | Road construction | 722|
| on the way to the camps | 9.756 | |
| Total | 741.599 |
Four years later:
| Camp | Conclusion |
| Bamlag (BAM route) | 262.194 |
| Sevvostlag (Magadan) | 138.170 |
| Belbaltlag (Karelian ASSR) | 86.567 |
| Volgolag (Uglich-Rybinsk region) | 74.576 |
| Dallag (Primorsky Territory) | 64.249 |
| Siblag (Novosibirsk region) | 46.382 |
| Ushosdorlag ( Far East) | 36.948 |
| Samarlag (Kuibyshev region) | 36.761 |
| Karlag (Karaganda region) | 35.072 |
| Sazlag (Uzbek SSR) | 34.240 |
| Usollag (Molotov region) | 32.714 |
| Kargopollag (Arkhangelsk region) | 30.069 |
| Sevzheldorlag (Komi ASSR and Arkhangelsk region) | 29.405 |
| Yagrinlag (Arkhangelsk region) | 27.680 |
| Vyazemlag (Smolensk region) | 27.470 |
| Ukhtimlag (Komi ASSR) | 27.006 |
| Sevurallag (Sverdlovsk region) | 26.963 |
| Lokchimlag (Komi Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic) | 26.242 |
| Temlag (Mordovian ASSR) | 22.821 |
| Ivdellag (Sverdlovsk region) | 20.162 |
| Vorkutlag (Komi Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic) | 17.923 |
| Soroklag (Arkhangelsk region) | 17.458 |
| Vyatlag (Kirov region) | 16.854 |
| Oneglag (Arkhangelsk region) | 16.733 |
| Unjlag (Gorky region) | 16.469 |
| Kraslag (Krasnoyarsk region) | 15.233 |
| Taishetlag (Irkutsk region) | 14.365 |
| Ustvymlag (Komi Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic) | 11.974 |
| Thomasinlag (Novosibirsk region) | 11.890 |
| Gorno-Shorsky ITL (Altai Territory) | 11.670 |
| Norillag (Krasnoyarsk Territory) | 11.560 |
| Kuloylag (Arkhangelsk region) | 10.642 |
| Raichichlag (Khabarovsk Territory) | 8.711 |
| Arkhbumlag (Arkhangelsk region) | 7.900 |
| Luga camp (Leningrad region) | 6.174 |
| Bukachachlag (Chita region) | 5.945 |
| Prorvlag (Lower Volga) | 4.877 |
| Likovlag (Moscow region) | 4.556 |
| South Harbor (Moscow region) | 4.376 |
| Stalin station (Moscow region) | 2.727 |
| Dmitrovsky Mechanical Plant (Moscow region) | 2.273 |
| Construction No. 211 (Ukrainian SSR) | 1.911 |
| Transit prisoners | 9.283 |
| Total | 1.317.195 |
However, as I already wrote above, in addition to the ITL there were also ITKs - corrective labor colonies. Until the fall of 1938, they, together with the prisons, were subordinate to the Department of Places of Detention (OMP) of the NKVD. Therefore, for the years 1935–1938 we have so far been able to find only joint statistics:
Since 1939, penitentiary colonies were under the jurisdiction of the Gulag, and prisons were under the jurisdiction of the Main Prison Directorate (GTU) of the NKVD.
Number of prisoners in prisons
| Year | 1st of January | January | March | May | July | September | December |
| 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 | 352.508 186.278 470.693 268.532 237.534 151.296 275.510 245.146 293.135 280.374 | 350.538 178.258 401.146 229.217 201.547 170.767 267.885 191.930 259.078 349.035 228.258 | 186.278 434.871 247.404 221.669 171.708 272.486 235.092 290.984 284.642 230.614 |
The information in the table is given for the middle of each month. In addition, again for particularly stubborn anti-Stalinists, a separate column provides information for January 1 of each year (highlighted in red), taken from an article by A. Kokurin posted on the Memorial website. This article, among other things, contains links to specific archival documents. In addition, those interested can read an article by the same author in the magazine “Military Historical Archive”.
Now we can compile a summary table of the number of prisoners in the USSR under Stalin:
It cannot be said that these figures are some kind of revelation. Since 1990, this type of data has been presented in a number of publications. Thus, in an article by L. Ivashov and A. Emelin, published in 1991, it is stated that the total number of prisoners in camps and colonies is 1.03. 1940 was 1.668.200 people, as of June 22, 1941 – 2.3 million; as of July 1, 1944 – 1.2 million .
V. Nekrasov in his book “Thirteen “Iron” People’s Commissars” reports that “in places of deprivation of liberty” in 1933 there were 334 thousand prisoners, in 1934 - 510 thousand, in 1935 - 991 thousand, in 1936 - 1296 thousand; on December 21, 1944 in camps and colonies - 1.450.000 ; on March 24, 1953 in the same place - 2.526.402 .
According to A. Kokurin and N. Petrov (especially significant, since both authors are associated with the Memorial society, and N. Petrov is even an employee of Memorial), as of 1.07. 1944 in the camps and colonies of the NKVD there were about 1.2 million prisoners, and in NKVD prisons on the same date - 204.290 . As of 12/30. 1945 in the NKVD forced labor camps there were about 640 thousand prisoners, in correctional labor colonies - about 730 thousand, in prisons - about 250 thousand, in the bullpen – about 38 thousand, in juvenile colonies - about 21 thousand, in special camps and NKVD prisons in Germany - about 84 thousand .
Finally, here are data on the number of prisoners in places of deprivation of liberty subordinate to the territorial bodies of the Gulag, taken directly from the already mentioned Memorial website:
| January 1935 January 1937 1.01.1939 1.01.1941 1.01.1945 1.01.1949 1.01.1953 | 307.093 375.376 381.581 434.624 745.171 1.139.874 741.643 |
So, let's summarize - during the entire period of Stalin's reign, the number of prisoners simultaneously in prison never exceeded 2 million 760 thousand (naturally, not counting German, Japanese and other prisoners of war). Thus, there can be no talk of any “tens of millions of Gulag prisoners.”
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 was 2,400,422 people. The exact population of the USSR at this time is unknown, but is usually estimated at 190–195 million. Thus we get from 1230 to 1260 prisoners for every 100 thousand population. In January 1950, the number of prisoners in the USSR was 2,760,095 people - the maximum figure for the entire period of Stalin's reign. The population of the USSR at this time numbered 178 million 547 thousand. We get 1546
Now let's calculate a similar indicator for the modern United States. Currently, there are two types of prisons: jail- an approximate analogue of our temporary detention facilities, in jail those under investigation are held, and those sentenced to short terms are also serving their sentences, and prison- the prison itself. So, at the end of 1999 in prisons 1,366,721 people were held in jails– 687,973 (see: Bureau of Legal Statistics website), which gives a total of 2,054,694. The population of the United States at the end of 1999 was approximately 275 million (see: US population), therefore, we get 747 prisoners per 100 thousand population.
Yes, half as much as Stalin, but not ten times. It’s somehow undignified for a power that has taken upon itself to “protect human rights” on a global scale. And if we take into account the growth rate of this indicator - when this article was first published, it was (as of mid-1998) 693 prisoners per 100 thousand American population, 1990–1998. average annual increase in the number of inhabitants jails – 4,9%, prisons- 6.9%, then, you see, in ten years the overseas friends of our domestic Stalin-haters will catch up and overtake the Stalinist USSR.
By the way, in one Internet discussion an objection was raised - they say that these figures include all arrested Americans, including those who were detained for several days. Let me emphasize once again: by the end of 1999, there were more than 2 million prisoners who are serving time or are in pre-trial detention. As for the arrests, they were made in 1998 14.5 million(see: FBI report).
Now a few words about the total number of people who were imprisoned under Stalin. Of course, if you take the table above and add up the rows, the result will be incorrect, since most of the Gulag prisoners were sentenced to more than a year. However, to a certain extent, the following note allows us to estimate the number of those who went through the Gulag:
To the head of the Gulag of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, Major General Egorov S.E.
In total, 11 million units of archival materials are stored in the Gulag units, of which 9.5 million are the personal files of prisoners.
Head of the Gulag Secretariat of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs
Major Podymov
How many of the prisoners were “political”
It is fundamentally wrong to believe that the majority of those imprisoned under Stalin were “victims of political repression”:
Number of people convicted of counter-revolutionary and other especially dangerous state crimes
| Year | highest measure | camps, colonies and prisons | link and expulsion | other measures | Total convicted |
| 1921 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 | 9701 1962 414 2550 2433 990 2363 869 2109 20201 10651 2728 2154 2056 1229 1118 353074 328618 2552 1649 8011 23278 3579 3029 4252 2896 1105 – 8 475 1609 1612 198 | 21724||||
| Total | 799455 | 2634397 413512 215942 4060306
By “other measures” we mean credit for time spent in custody, forced treatment and deportation abroad. For 1953, information is provided only for the first half of the year.
From this table it follows that there were slightly more “repressed” than indicated in the above report addressed to Khrushchev - 799,455 sentenced to capital punishment instead of 642,980 and 2,634,397 sentenced to imprisonment instead of 2,369,220. However, this difference is relatively small - the numbers are of the same order.
In addition, there is one more point - it is very possible that a fair number of criminals have been squeezed into the table above. The fact is that on one of the certificates stored in the archives, on the basis of which this table was compiled, there is a pencil note: “Total convicts for 1921–1938. – 2944879 people, of which 30% (1062 thousand) are criminals". In this case, the total number of “repressed” does not exceed 3 million. However, to finally clarify this issue, additional work with sources is necessary.
Let's now see what percentage the “repressed” made up of the total number of inhabitants of the Gulag:
Composition of the NKVD Gulag camps for
| Year | quantity | % to all composition of the camps |
| 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 | 135.190 118.256 105.849 104.826 185.324 454.432 444.999 420.293 407.988 345.397 268.861 289.351 333.883 427.653 416.156 420.696 578.912* 475.976 480.766 465.256 | 26.5 16.3 12.6 12.6 18.6 34.5 33.1 28.7 29.6 35.6 40.7 41.2 59.2 54.3 38.0 34.9 22.7 31.0 28.1 26.9 |
* In camps and colonies.
Let us now consider in more detail the composition of the inhabitants of the Gulag at some moments of its existence.
Composition of prisoners in correctional labor camps for the crimes charged
(as of April 1, 1940)
| Charged crimes | Number | % |
| Counter-revolutionary crimes including: Trotskyists, Zinovievites, rightists treason terror sabotage espionage sabotage leaders of counter-revolutionary organizations anti-Soviet agitation other counter-revolutionary crimes family members of traitors to the Motherland without instructions | 417381
17621 | 32,87
|
| Particularly dangerous crimes against the order of government including: banditry and robbery defectors other crimes | 46374
29514 | 3,65
|
| Other crimes against management order including: hooliganism speculation violation of the passport law other crimes | 182421
90291 | 14,37
|
| Theft of social property (law of August 7, 1932) Crimes against the person Property crimes Socially harmful and socially dangerous element Military crimes Other crimes No instructions | 23549 96193 66708 152096 220835 11067 41706 11455 | 1,85|
| Total | 1269785 | 100,00
REFERENCE
on the number of people convicted of counter-revolutionary crimes and banditry,
held in camps and colonies of the Ministry of Internal Affairs as of July 1, 1946.
| By the nature of the crime | In the camps | % | In the colonies | % | Total | % |
| Total presence of convicts | 616.731 | 100 755.255 100 1.371.986100 | ||||
| Of these, for criminal offenses, including: Treason to the Motherland (Article 58-1) Espionage (58-6) Terrorism Sabotage (58-7) Sabotage (58-9) Kr sabotage (58-14) Participation in a/c conspiracy (58–2, 3, 4, 5, 11) Anti-Soviet agitation (58-10) Polit. bandit. (58–2, 5, 9) Illegal border crossing Smuggling Family members of traitors to the Motherland Socially dangerous elements | 354.568
137.463 | 57,5
37,6
14,8 |
Head of the Gulag Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR
Aleshinsky
Pom. Head of the Gulag Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR
Yatsevich
Composition of Gulag prisoners by nature of crimes
(as of January 1, 1951)
| Crimes | Total | incl. in the camps | incl. in the colonies |
| Counter-revolutionary crimes Treason to the Motherland (Article 58-1a, b) Espionage (Art. 58-1a, b, 6; Art. 193-24) Terror (v.58-8) Terrorist intent Sabotage (v.58-9) Sabotage (vv.58-7) Counter-revolutionary sabotage (except for convicted for refusing to work in the camps and running away) (Article 58-14) Counter-revolutionary sabotage (for refusal from work in the camp) (vv.58-14) Counter-revolutionary sabotage (for escaping from places of detention) (Article 58-14) Participation in anti-Soviet conspiracies, anti-Soviet organizations and groups (Article 58, paragraphs 2, 3, 4, 5, 11) Anti-Soviet agitation (Articles 58–10, 59-7) Insurgency and political banditry (Article 58, paragraph 2; 59, paragraphs 2, 3, 3 b) Members of the families of traitors to the Motherland (Article 58-1c) Socially dangerous element Other counter-revolutionary crimes Total number of people convicted of counter-revolutionary crimes | 334538 18337 7515 2329 3250 1165 46582 | ||
| Criminal offenses Theft of social property (Decree of August 7, 1932) According to the Decree of June 4, 1947 “On strengthening security personal property of citizens" According to the Decree of June 4, 1947 “On criminal liability for theft of state and public property" Speculation committed outside of prison Banditry and armed robbery (Articles 59–3, 167), committed while serving a sentence not in places of detention Intentional murders (Articles 136, 137, 138) committed in places of detention Illegal border crossing (Articles 59–10, 84) Smuggling activities (Articles 59–9, 83) Cattle theft (Article 166) Repeat offenders (Article 162-c) Property crimes (Articles 162-178) Hooliganism (Article 74 and Decree of August 10, 1940) Violation of the law on passporting (Article 192-a) For escapes from places of detention, exile and deportation (Article 82) For unauthorized departure (escape) from places of mandatory settlements (Decree of November 26, 1948) For harboring evicted people who fled from places compulsory settlement, or complicity Socially harmful element Desertion (Article 193-7) Self-mutilation (art. 193-12) Looting (v.193-27) Other military crimes (Article 193, except paragraphs 7, 12, 17, 24, 27) Illegal possession of weapons (Article 182) Official and economic crimes (Article 59-3c, 109–121, 193 paragraphs 17, 18) According to the Decree of June 26, 1940 (unauthorized departure from enterprises and institutions and absenteeism) According to the Decrees of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (except those listed above) Other criminal offenses Total criminal convictions | 72293 637055 3635 1021 19648 35518 | ||
| Total: | 2528146 | 1533767 994379
Thus, among the prisoners held in the Gulag camps, the majority were criminals, and the “repressed”, as a rule, were less than 1/3. The exception is the years 1944–1948, when this category received worthy additions in the form of Vlasovites, policemen, elders and other “fighters against communist tyranny.” The percentage of “political” ones in correctional labor colonies was even smaller.
Mortality among prisoners
Available archival documents make it possible to illuminate this issue.
Mortality of prisoners in Gulag camps
| Year | Average quantity prisoners | Died | % |
| 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1949 1950 1951 1952 | 240.350 301.500 422.304 617.895 782.445 830.144 908.624 1.156.781 1.330.802 1.422.466 1.458.060 1.199.785 823.784 689.550 658.202 704.868 958.448 1.316.331 1.475.034 1.622.485 1.719.586 | 7283
I have not yet found data for 1948.
Mortality of prisoners in prisons
| Year | Average quantity prisoners | Died | % |
| 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 | 269.393 328.486 369.613 253.033 194.415 213.403 260.328 269.141 286.755 255.711 214.896 181.712 158.647 | 7036
The average number of prisoners is taken as the arithmetic mean between the figures for January 1 and December 31.
Mortality in the colonies on the eve of the war was lower than in the camps. For example, in 1939 it was 2.30%
Mortality of prisoners in Gulag colonies
Thus, as the facts show, contrary to the assurances of the “accusers,” the mortality rate of prisoners under Stalin was kept at a very low level. However, during the war the situation of Gulag prisoners worsened. Nutritional standards were significantly reduced, which immediately led to a sharp increase in mortality. By 1944, the food standards for Gulag prisoners were slightly increased: for bread - by 12%, for cereals - 24%, for meat and fish - 40%, for fats - 28% and for vegetables - by 22%, after which the mortality rate began to decrease noticeably . But even after this, their calorie content remained approximately 30% lower than pre-war nutrition standards.
However, even in the most difficult years of 1942 and 1943, the mortality rate of prisoners was about 20% per year in camps and about 10% per year in prisons, and not 10% per month, as A. Solzhenitsyn, for example, claims. By the beginning of the 50s, in camps and colonies it fell below 1% per year, and in prisons - below 0.5%.
In conclusion, a few words should be said about the notorious Special camps (special camps), created in accordance with Resolution 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, terrorism, as well as Trotskyists, right-wingers, Mensheviks, Socialist Revolutionaries, anarchists, nationalists, white emigrants, members of anti-Soviet organizations and groups and “persons who pose a danger due to their anti-Soviet connections.” Prisoners of special guards were to be used for hard physical work.
Reference
on the presence of a special contingent held in special camps on January 1, 1952.
| №№ | Name special camps | Spi- they | Diver- santa | Ter- ror | Trots- cysts | Pra- high | Men- sheviks | Social Revolutionaries | Anar- hists | National nalists | White- emig- welts | Participant antisov. org. | Dangerous elem. | Total |
| 1 | Mineral | 4012 | 284 | 1020 | 347 | 7 | 36 | 63 | 23 | 11688 | 46 | 4398 | 8367 | 30292 |
| 2 | Mountain | 1884 | 237 | 606 | 84 | 6 | 5 | 4 | 1 | 9546 | 24 | 2542 | 5279 | 20218 |
| 3 | Dubravny | 1088 | 397 | 699 | 278 | 5 | 51 | 70 | 16 | 7068 | 223 | 4708 | 9632 | 24235 |
| 4 | Stepnoy | 1460 | 229 | 714 | 62 | – | 16 | 4 | 3 | 10682 | 42 | 3067 | 6209 | 22488 |
| 5 | Coastal | 2954 | 559 | 1266 | 109 | 6 | – | 5 | – | 13574 | 11 | 3142 | 10363 | 31989 |
| 6 | River | 2539 | 480 | 1429 | 164 | – | 2 | 2 | 8 | 14683 | 43 | 2292 | 13617 | 35459 |
| 7 | Ozerny | 2350 | 671 | 1527 | 198 | 12 | 6 | 2 | 8 | 7625 | 379 | 5105 | 14441 | 32342 |
| 8 | Sandy | 2008 | 688 | 1203 | 211 | 4 | 23 | 20 | 9 | 13987 | 116 | 8014 | 12571 | 38854 |
| 9 | Kamyshevy | 174 | 118 | 471 | 57 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 3973 | 5 | 558 | 2890 | 8251 |
| Total | 18475 | 3663 | 8935 | 1510 | 41 | 140 | 190 | 69 | 93026 | 884 | 33826 | 83369 | 244128 |
Deputy Head of the 2nd Department of the 2nd Directorate of the Gulag, Major Maslov
The mortality rate of prisoners in special prisons can be judged from the following document:
| №№ p.p. | Camp name | For cr. crime | For criminal crime | Total | Died in IV sq. 1950 | Released |
| 1 | Mineral | 30235 | 2678 | 32913 | 91 | 479 |
| 2 | Mountain | 15072 | 10 | 15082 | 26 | 1 |
| 3 | Dubravny | |||||
| 4 | Stepnoy | 18056 | 516 | 18572 | 124 | 131 |
| 5 | Coastal | 24676 | 194 | 24870 | No | No |
| 6 | River | 15653 | 301 | 15954 | 25 | No |
| 7 | Ozerny | 27432 | 2961 | 30393 | 162 | 206 |
| 8 | Sandy | 20988 | 182 | 21170 | 24 | 21 |
| 9 | Lugovoy | 9611 | 429 | 10040 | 35 | 15 |
As can be seen from the table, in the 8 special camps for which information is given, out of 168,994 prisoners in the fourth quarter of 1950, 487 (0.29%) died, which, in annual terms, corresponds to 1.15%. That is, only slightly more than in ordinary camps. Contrary to popular belief, the special camps were not “death camps” in which dissident intellectuals were supposedly exterminated, and the most numerous contingent of their inhabitants were “nationalists” - the forest brothers and their accomplices.
A. Dugin. Stalinism: legends and facts // Slovo. 1990, No. 7.° C.24.
3. V. N. Zemskov. GULAG (historical and sociological aspect) // Sociological studies. 1991, No. 6.° C.15.
4. V. N. Zemskov. Prisoners in the 1930s: socio-demographic problems // Domestic history. 1997, No. 4.° C.67.
5. A. Dugin. Stalinism: legends and facts // Slovo. 1990, No. 7.° C.23; archival
The development of disputes about the period of Stalin's rule is facilitated by the fact that many NKVD documents are still classified. There are different data on the number of victims of the political regime. That is why this period remains to be studied for a long time.
How many people did Stalin kill: years of rule, historical facts, repressions during the Stalin regime
Historical figures who built a dictatorial regime have distinctive psychological signs. Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili is no exception to this. Stalin is not a surname, but a pseudonym that clearly reflects his personality.
Could anyone imagine that a single mother-washer (later a milliner - a fairly popular profession at that time) from a Georgian village would raise a son who would defeat Nazi Germany, establish an industrial industry in a huge country and make millions of people shudder just with the sound of his name?
Now that our generation has access to knowledge from any field in a ready-made form, people know that a harsh childhood shapes unpredictably strong personalities. This happened not only with Stalin, but also with Ivan the Terrible, Genghis Khan and the same Hitler. What’s most interesting is that the two most odious figures in the history of the last century had similar childhoods: a tyrant father, an unhappy mother, their early death, studying in schools with a spiritual bias, love of art. Few people know about such facts, because basically everyone is looking for information about how many people Stalin killed.
The path to politics
The reins of government of the largest power in the hands of Dzhugashvili lasted from 1928 to 1953, until his death. Stalin announced what policy he intended to pursue in 1928 at an official speech. For the rest of the term he did not deviate from his own. Evidence of this is the facts about how many people Stalin killed.
When it comes to the number of victims of the system, part of the destructive decisions is attributed to his associates: N. Yezhov and L. Beria. But at the end of all documents there is Stalin’s signature. As a result, in 1940, N. Yezhov himself became a victim of repression and was shot.
Motives
The goals of Stalin's repressions were pursued by several motives, and each of them achieved them in full. They are as follows:
- Reprisals followed the leader's political opponents.
- Repression was a tool to intimidate citizens in order to strengthen Soviet power.
- A necessary measure to boost the economy of the state (repressions were carried out in this direction as well).
- Exploitation of free labor.
Terror at its peak
The years 1937-1938 are considered to be the peak of repression. Regarding how many people Stalin killed, statistics during this period provide impressive figures - more than 1.5 million. NKVD order number 00447 was distinguished by the fact that it chose its victims according to national and territorial characteristics. Representatives of nations different from the ethnic composition of the USSR were especially persecuted.
How many people did Stalin kill because of Nazism? The following figures are given: more than 25,000 Germans, 85,000 Poles, about 6,000 Romanians, 11,000 Greeks, 17,000 Latvians and 9,000 Finns. Those who were not killed were expelled from their territory of residence without the right to assistance. Their relatives were fired from their jobs, military personnel were expelled from the ranks of the army.
Numbers
Anti-Stalinists do not miss the opportunity to once again exaggerate the real data. For example:
- The dissident believes that there were 40 million of them.
- Another dissident A.V. Antonov-Ovseenko did not waste time on trifles and exaggerated the data by two times - 80 million.
- There is also a version belonging to the rehabilitators of victims of repression. According to their version, the number of those killed was more than 100 million.
- The audience was most surprised by Boris Nemtsov, who in 2003 announced on live television that there were 150 million victims.
In fact, only official documents can answer the question of how many people Stalin killed. One of them is a memo by N. S. Khrushchev from 1954. It provides data from 1921 to 1953. According to the document, more than 642,000 people received the death penalty, that is, a little more than half a million, and not 100 or 150 million. The total number of convicts was over 2 million 300 thousand. Of these, 765,180 were sent into exile.
Repressions during the Second World War
The Great Patriotic War forced the rate of extermination of the people of their country to slow down slightly, but the phenomenon as such was not stopped. Now the “culprits” were sent to the front lines. If you ask the question of how many people Stalin killed at the hands of the Nazis, then there is no exact data. There was no time to judge the culprits. The catchphrase about decisions “without trial or investigation” remains from this period. The legal basis now became the order of Lavrentiy Beria.
Even emigrants became victims of the system: they were returned en masse and sentenced. Almost all cases were qualified by Article 58. But this is conditional. In practice, the law was often ignored.
Characteristic features of the Stalin period
After the war, repressions acquired a new mass character. The “Doctors' Plot” testifies to how many people from among the intelligentsia died under Stalin. The culprits in this case were doctors who served at the front and many scientists. If we analyze the history of the development of science, then that period accounts for the vast majority of “mysterious” deaths of scientists. The large-scale campaign against the Jewish people is also the fruit of the politics of the time.
Degree of cruelty
Speaking about how many people died in Stalin’s repressions, it cannot be said that all the accused were shot. There were many ways to torture people, both physically and psychologically. For example, if the relatives of the accused are expelled from their place of residence, they are deprived of access to medical care and food products. Thousands of people died this way from cold, hunger or heat.
Prisoners were kept for long periods in cold rooms without food, drink or the right to sleep. Some were left handcuffed for months. None of them had the right to communicate with the outside world. Notifying loved ones about their fate was also not practiced. No one escaped the brutal beating with broken bones and spine. Another type of psychological torture is to be arrested and “forgotten” for years. There were people “forgotten” for 14 years.
Mass character
It is difficult to give specific figures for many reasons. Firstly, is it necessary to count the relatives of the prisoners? Should those who died even without arrest be considered “under mysterious circumstances”? Secondly, the previous population census was carried out before the start of the civil war, in 1917, and during the reign of Stalin - only after the Second World War. There is no exact information about the total population.
Politicization and anti-nationality
It was believed that repression would rid the people of spies, terrorists, saboteurs and those who did not support the ideology of the Soviet regime. However, in practice, completely different people became victims of the state machine: peasants, ordinary workers, public figures and entire nations who wished to preserve their national identity.
The first preparatory work for the creation of the Gulag began in 1929. Nowadays they are compared with German concentration camps, and quite fair. If you are interested in how many people died in them during Stalin’s time, then figures are given from 2 to 4 million.
Attack on the “cream of society”
The greatest damage was caused by an attack on the “cream of society.” According to experts, the repression of these people greatly delayed the development of science, medicine and other aspects of society. A simple example: publishing in foreign publications, collaborating with foreign colleagues, or conducting scientific experiments could easily end in arrest. Creative people published under pseudonyms.
By the middle of the Stalin period, the country was practically left without specialists. Most of those arrested and killed were graduates of monarchist educational institutions. They closed only about 10-15 years ago. There were no specialists with Soviet training. If Stalin led active struggle against classism, he practically achieved this: only poor peasants and an uneducated layer remained in the country.
The study of genetics was prohibited, as it was “too bourgeois in nature.” The attitude towards psychology was the same. And psychiatry was engaged in punitive activities, imprisoning thousands of bright minds in special hospitals.
Judicial system
How many people died in the camps under Stalin can be clearly imagined if we consider the judicial system. If at an early stage some investigations were carried out and cases were considered in court, then after 2-3 years of the start of repression a simplified system was introduced. This mechanism did not give the accused the right to have a defense present in court. The decision was made based on the testimony of the accusing party. The decision was not subject to appeal and was put into effect no later than the next day after it was made.
The repressions violated all the principles of human rights and freedoms, according to which other countries had already lived for several centuries at that time. Researchers note that the attitude towards those repressed was no different from how the Nazis treated captured military personnel.
Conclusion
Joseph Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili died in 1953. After his death, it became clear that the entire system was built around his personal ambitions. An example of this is the cessation of criminal cases and prosecutions in many cases. Lavrentiy Beria was also known by those around him as hot-tempered person with inappropriate behavior. But at the same time, he significantly changed the situation, prohibiting torture against the accused and recognizing the groundlessness of many cases.
Stalin is compared to the Italian dictator Benetto Mussolini. But a total of about 40,000 people became victims of Mussolini, as opposed to Stalin’s 4.5 million plus. In addition, those arrested in Italy retained the right to communication, protection, and even to write books behind bars.
It is impossible not to note the achievements of that time. Victory in the Second World War, of course, is beyond any discussion. But thanks to the labor of Gulag residents, a huge number of buildings, roads, canals, railways and other structures were built throughout the country. Despite the hardships of the post-war years, the country was able to restore an acceptable standard of living.