Victims of Stalinism and the Soviet secret police: The comparability and reliability of the archival data - Not the last word

Europe - Asia Studies

Volumn 51, Issue 2, 1999, Pages 315-345

  Wheatcroft, Stephen G ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 0039724817     PISSN: 09668136     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09668139999056     Document Type: Article

References (90)

1. Robert Conquest, 'Victims of Stalinism: A Comment', Europe-Asia Studies, 49, 7, November 1997, pp. 1317-1319, in response to Stephen Wheatcroft, 'The Scale and Nature of German and Soviet Repression and Mass Killings, 1930-45', Europe-Asia Studies, 48, 8, December 1996, pp. 1319-1353. Unfortunately I only became aware of this article in early August 1998.
2. Robert Conquest, 'Victims of Stalinism: A Comment', Europe-Asia Studies, 49, 7, November 1997, pp. 1317-1319, in response to Stephen Wheatcroft, 'The Scale and Nature of German and Soviet Repression and Mass Killings, 1930-45', Europe-Asia Studies, 48, 8, December 1996, pp. 1319-1353. Unfortunately I only became aware of this article in early August 1998.
3. R. Conquest, 'Forced Labour Statistics: Some Comments', Soviet Studies, 34, 3, 1982, p. 438, in response to my article 'On Assessing the Size of Forced Concentration Camp Labour in the Soviet Union, 1929-56', Soviet Studies, 33, 2, 1981, pp. 265-295.
4. R. Conquest, 'Forced Labour Statistics: Some Comments', Soviet Studies, 34, 3, 1982, p. 438, in response to my article 'On Assessing the Size of Forced Concentration Camp Labour in the Soviet Union, 1929-56', Soviet Studies, 33, 2, 1981, pp. 265-295.
5. The argument would have justified a conclusion of no more than three to four million, but at a moment of excessive caution I wrote four to five million; see ibid., p. 286.
6. See the recent work of Norman Davies, which will be discussed in Appendix 3.
7. Conquest demonstrates a rather simplistic as well as partisan view on what he expects from the data. No one should expect the data to be perfectly compatible. In fact one should be suspicious if they were. Below I will argue that the scale of the incompatibility is far, far less than Conquest claims, and that this small level of understandable incompatibility should be taken as grounds for even greater faith in these data, and as evidence that they have not been doctored or prepared especially for us.
8. R. Conquest, The Great Terror (Harmondsworth, 1968), Preface, p. 14., 'But the most important consideration remains the mere extent of the Terror'.
9. See S. G. Wheatcroft, 'Population dynamics and factors affecting them in the USSR', Birmingham University, CREES, Soviet Industrialization Project Series, SIPS, no. 1.
10. D. J. Dallin & B. I. Nicolaevsky, Forced Labour in Soviet Russia (London, Hollis and Carter, 1948), pp. 52-86.
11. N. S. Timasheff, 'The Post-war population of the Soviet Union', The American Journal of Sociology, 54, 1948, pp. 148-155.
12. N. Jasny, 'Labour and output in Soviet Concentration Camps', The Journal of Political Economy, 59, 1952, pp. 415-416, and 'Comments', 60, 1952, p. 340.
13. N. Jasny, 'Labour and output in Soviet Concentration Camps', The Journal of Political Economy, 59, 1952, pp. 415-416, and 'Comments', 60, 1952, p. 340.
14. I find it bizarre that Conquest is described by Norman Davies as 'courageous' even though he is providing figures that supported the popularly accepted Cold War stereotype favoured at the time. Those who are courageous are those who act against the popular stereotypes of their time, e.g. Jasny in America in 1952 and Danilov in Moscow in 1989.
15. A. Bergson, The Real National Income of Soviet Russia since 1928 (Harvard UP, 1961), p. 433.
16. S. Swianiewicz, Forced Labour and Economic Development: An enquiry into the experience of Soviet Industrialization (Oxford, 1965), p. 38 and Appendix A, pp. 699-713.
17. Conquest, The Great Terror, p. 708. He estimated five million in jail or camp in January 1937 and eight million by late 1938.
18. I will explain this point in more detail below.
19. Conquest, The Great Terror, pp. 699-702. The Casualty Figures Appendix was removed from the new edition in 1990, but, as we shall see below, Conquest continues to adhere to these conclusions.
20. Conquest, ibid., p. 705.
21. Ibid., p. 710. 'Taking the conservative figures of an average over the period 1936-50 inclusive of 8 million population of the camps and a 10% death rate per annum, we get a total casualty figure of 12 million dead.
22. S. Rosefielde, 'An Assessment of the Sources and Uses of Gulag Forced Labour, 1929-56', Soviet Studies, 33, 1, 1981, pp. 51-87.
23. R. W. Davies & S. G. Wheatcroft, 'Rosefielde's Kliukva', Slavic Review, December 1980, pp. 593-602, and S. G. Wheatcroft, 'On Assessing the Size of Forced Concentration Camp Labour in the Soviet Union, 1929-56', Soviet Studies, 33, 2, 1981, pp. 265-295.
24. R. W. Davies & S. G. Wheatcroft, 'Rosefielde's Kliukva', Slavic Review, December 1980, pp. 593-602, and S. G. Wheatcroft, 'On Assessing the Size of Forced Concentration Camp Labour in the Soviet Union, 1929-56', Soviet Studies, 33, 2, 1981, pp. 265-295.
25. Wheatcroft, Soviet Studies, 33, 2, 1981; 35, 2, 1983; and 48, 8, 1996.
26. Wheatcroft, Soviet Studies, 33, 2, 1981; 35, 2, 1983; and 48, 8, 1996.
27. Wheatcroft, Soviet Studies, 33, 2, 1981; 35, 2, 1983; and 48, 8, 1996.
28. R. Conquest, 'Forced Labour Statistics; Some Comments', Soviet Studies, 34, 3, 1982, p. 438.
29. One of the sources that Conquest accused me of not checking was a calculation by S. Voronitsyn in a Radio Liberty Research Report to the effect that the disenfranchised population in 1938 was 17.6 million and not the 4.7 million that I claimed. However, on closer investigation Keith Bush from Radio Liberty wrote to me to apologise for Voronitsyn's error in comparing the number of voters in 1939 in the pre-1939 territory of the USSR with the total eligible to vote in 1939 in the post-1945 territory of the Soviet Union. When this was eventually pointed out to Conquest, he wrote to the editors of this journal with an interesting retraction, which included the claim that the difference between 17.7 million and 4.7 million did not materially affect his arguments. See Robert Conquest, 'Letter to the Editor', Soviet Studies, 35, 1, 1983, pp. 133-134.
30. At the height of this discussion I was able to prevail on David Ransel, the editor of Slavic Review, to commission two demographers to look into this question. The debate sorely needed a professional input. When they subsequently argued that excess mortality was a complex phenomen on highly dependent upon what was considered 'normal' their views were dismissed by Conquest, who seemed to doubt that demographers had anything to add to this debate. See Slavic Review, Fall 1985.
31. See the forthcoming publication by Robert Johnson, based on the 1996 Toronto Conference on Stalinist demographic data.
32. See Zemskov in conversation with S. Cholak, in Argumenty i fakty, 1989, 45, p. 7.
33. S. G. Wheatcroft, 'More light on the scale of repression and excess mortality in the Soviet Union in the 1930s', Soviet Studies, 42, 2, 1990. Alec Nove also wrote about these materials in Soviet Studies, 42, 2 and 42, 4, 1990.
34. S. G. Wheatcroft, 'More light on the scale of repression and excess mortality in the Soviet Union in the 1930s', Soviet Studies, 42, 2, 1990. Alec Nove also wrote about these materials in Soviet Studies, 42, 2 and 42, 4, 1990.
35. S. G. Wheatcroft, 'More light on the scale of repression and excess mortality in the Soviet Union in the 1930s', Soviet Studies, 42, 2, 1990. Alec Nove also wrote about these materials in Soviet Studies, 42, 2 and 42, 4, 1990.
36. Perhaps the worst example of this was in his interview with K. van den Heuvel, 'Testimonies of a non-witness', Moscow News, 26 March 1989.
37. See Danilov, 'Letter to the Editor', Voprosy istorii, 1988, 3, pp. 116-121 and Conquest's reply in Voprosy istorii and the attack on Danilov in Moscow News.
38. See Danilov, 'Letter to the Editor', Voprosy istorii, 1988, 3, pp. 116-121 and Conquest's reply in Voprosy istorii and the attack on Danilov in Moscow News.
39. See Danilov, 'Letter to the Editor', Voprosy istorii, 1988, 3, pp. 116-121 and Conquest's reply in Voprosy istorii and the attack on Danilov in Moscow News.
40. R. Conquest, The Great Terror: A Reassessment (1990), p. 311.
41. Ibid., p. 486.
42. R. Conquest, 'Excess Deaths and Camp Numbers: Some Comments', Soviet Studies, 43, 5, 1991, p. 951.
43. See V. N. Zemskov, 'Ob uchete spetskontingenta NKVD vo vsesoyuznykh perepisyakh naseleniya 1937 i 1939gg.', Solsiologicheskie issledovaniya, 1991, 2, pp. 74-75.
44. R. Conquest, Letter to the editor, American Historical Review, June 1994, p. 1039.
45. Getty & Rittersporn, 'Letter to the Editor', American Historical Review, June 1994. Of course, several of the named figures were not post-Soviet officials, but with that minor qualification, this statement seems to me to be valid.
46. Norman Davies, Europe: A History (Oxford, 1996), republished as a best-seller by Pimlico in 1997. See Appendix.
47. These were published first in 1989 in the mass circulation newspaper Argumenty i fakty, and from 1991 in the sociological journal Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya, and more recently, in English in a joint publication with Arch Getty & Gabor Rittersporn, 'Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-war Years: A first approach on the Basis of Archival Evidence', American Historical Review, October 1993, pp. 1017-1048.
48. When Zemskov first cited these materials in his articles in 1989-91 they had still not yet been formally declassified and so Zemskov was forced to adhere to the curious rules of the time that did not allow archival citation to be given to un-declassified materials when published. Subsequently these materials have been declassified and his 1996 article, V. N. Zemskov, 'Zaklyuchennye v 30-e gody (demograficheskii aspekt)', Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya, 1996, 7, pp. 3-14 gives full archival references.
49. This point will be discussed further below.
50. The convention for most of the 1930s was to include labour colonies (ITK) with prisons in the category 'places of detention', but to exclude the labour camps (ITL).
51. For Moscow, Rasstrel'nye spiski, vyp. 1, 'Donskoe kladbishche, 1934-1940' (Moscow, 1993), vyp. 2, 'Vagan'kovskoe kladbishche, 1926-1936' (Moscow, 1995), and for Leningrad, Leningradskii Martirolog, 1937-1938, vol. 1, August-September 1937 (St Petersburg, 1995), vol. 2 October 1937 (St Petersburg, 1996).
52. For Moscow, Rasstrel'nye spiski, vyp. 1, 'Donskoe kladbishche, 1934-1940' (Moscow, 1993), vyp. 2, 'Vagan'kovskoe kladbishche, 1926-1936' (Moscow, 1995), and for Leningrad, Leningradskii Martirolog, 1937-1938, vol. 1, August-September 1937 (St Petersburg, 1995), vol. 2 October 1937 (St Petersburg, 1996).
53. For Moscow, Rasstrel'nye spiski, vyp. 1, 'Donskoe kladbishche, 1934-1940' (Moscow, 1993), vyp. 2, 'Vagan'kovskoe kladbishche, 1926-1936' (Moscow, 1995), and for Leningrad, Leningradskii Martirolog, 1937-1938, vol. 1, August-September 1937 (St Petersburg, 1995), vol. 2 October 1937 (St Petersburg, 1996).
54. Given our explanation of how the series of data were calculated at the local camp level, it is clear that the Gulag authorities would have needed to do something to remove the double counting to arrive at a net inflow figure. Their tables clearly have not done this. This is not conscious distortion, simply statistical practicability.
55. CR (or K-R in Russian) refers to Counter-Revolutionary. This was the description of crimes charged under article 58 of the 1926 Criminal Code.
56. I.e. all charges in the criminal code apart from article 58.
57. Conquest states 25700 Poles as being shot. This figure actually refers to the 14700 Polish officers and others in POW camps and the 11 000 CRs held in Western Ukraine and Belorussia, whom Beria asked the Politburo for permission to try in an extra-ordinary manner and shoot. The Politburo did grant permission for this to be done, but as Shelepin later informed Khrushchev, 21 857 were actually shot. All the documents concerning this matter have been reproduced by the olish Academy of Sciences in W. Materski (ed.), Katyn: Documents of Genocide: Documents and materials from the Soviet archives turned over to Poland on October 14, 1992 (Warsaw, 1993), pp. 11-25 and 26-29.
58. Wheatcroft, 'The scale and nature ...', p. 1331.
59. Krivoshein, Grif Sekretnosti Snyat, p. 140.
60. See 'Les Annees 30: Nouvelles directions de la recherche', Cahiers du Monde russe, 39, 1-2, 1998, pp. 197-208.
61. Khlevnyuk, p. 205.
62. Wheatcroft, 'The Scale and Nature ...', p. 1351, footnote 37.
63. See ibid., pp. 1327, footnote 19. Let me immediately say that the reduction of the Auschwitz mortality figures does not at all invalidate the overall figures.
64. Getty & Rittersporn, 'Letter to the Editor'.
65. See Edwin Bacon, The Gulag at War: Stalin's Forced Labour System in the Light of the Archives (London, Macmillan, 1994), pp. 36-38.
66. The case of the late Dmitrii Volkogonov is perhaps most instructive on this matter. In his latest posthumously published book, D. Volkogonov, The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire (Harper-Collins, 1998), Volkogonov had ample opportunity to repeat these figures, if he really thought them correct. But he failed to do so. On p. 153 he cited the Andreev, Darsky & Kharkova results that between 1929 and 1953 'Stalin deprived 21.5 million Soviet citizens of their lives'. But he cited Kruglov's report to Stalin of 2 188 355 prisoners in ITL and ITK in March 1947 (p. 150), and appears to cite approvingly from the Kruglov 1953 report on p. 185, the special board of the NKVD which had condemned 442 531 people to death and long-term imprisonment, for which he provides an archival reference (APRF, f 3, op. 24, d. 435, 1. 41). Why would Volkogonov cite this figure in a serious work if he really believed that over seven million had been executed overall, and that 1.75 million had been executed on political charges in 1937 alone?
67. See Voennye kadry Sovetskogo gosudarstva v Velikoi Otechestvennoi Voine, 1941-1945gg., Tsifrovoi sbornik (Moscow, Voenizdat, 1963), p. 11.
68. Conquest, The Great Terror, pp. 228, 485.
69. G. A. Kumanev, Pravda, 22 July 1989, cited here from A. T. Ukolov, Deputy President of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court, and V. I. Ivkin, Humanitarian Academy of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, 'O masshtab repressii v krasnoi armii v predvoennye gody', Voenno-istoricheskii zhurnal, 1993, 1, p. 56.
70. G. A. Kumanev, Pravda, 22 July 1989, cited here from A. T. Ukolov, Deputy President of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court, and V. I. Ivkin, Humanitarian Academy of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, 'O masshtab repressii v krasnoi armii v predvoennye gody', Voenno-istoricheskii zhurnal, 1993, 1, p. 56.
71. These Shchadenko report figures were first published in Izvestiya TsK KPSS, 1990, 1, p. 188, and have been discussed widely in the West by Roger R. Reese, 'The Impact of the Great Purge on the Red Army: Wrestling with hard numbers', The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review, 19, 1-3, 1992, pp. 71-90, and 'The Red Army and the Great Purge', in J. Arch Getty & Roberta T. Manning (eds), Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 198-214, and in Russia by Ukolov & Ivkin, Voenno-istoricheskii zhurnal, 1993, 1, pp. 56-59.
72. These Shchadenko report figures were first published in Izvestiya TsK KPSS, 1990, 1, p. 188, and have been discussed widely in the West by Roger R. Reese, 'The Impact of the Great Purge on the Red Army: Wrestling with hard numbers', The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review, 19, 1-3, 1992, pp. 71-90, and 'The Red Army and the Great Purge', in J. Arch Getty & Roberta T. Manning (eds), Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 198-214, and in Russia by Ukolov & Ivkin, Voenno-istoricheskii zhurnal, 1993, 1, pp. 56-59.
73. These Shchadenko report figures were first published in Izvestiya TsK KPSS, 1990, 1, p. 188, and have been discussed widely in the West by Roger R. Reese, 'The Impact of the Great Purge on the Red Army: Wrestling with hard numbers', The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review, 19, 1-3, 1992, pp. 71-90, and 'The Red Army and the Great Purge', in J. Arch Getty & Roberta T. Manning (eds), Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 198-214, and in Russia by Ukolov & Ivkin, Voenno-istoricheskii zhurnal, 1993, 1, pp. 56-59.
74. These Shchadenko report figures were first published in Izvestiya TsK KPSS, 1990, 1, p. 188, and have been discussed widely in the West by Roger R. Reese, 'The Impact of the Great Purge on the Red Army: Wrestling with hard numbers', The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review, 19, 1-3, 1992, pp. 71-90, and 'The Red Army and the Great Purge', in J. Arch Getty & Roberta T. Manning (eds), Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 198-214, and in Russia by Ukolov & Ivkin, Voenno-istoricheskii zhurnal, 1993, 1, pp. 56-59.
75. See R. W. Davies, M. Tauger & S. G. Wheatcroft, 'Stalin, Grain Stocks and the Famine of 1932-1933', Slavic Review, Fall 1995, pp. 642-57. Danilov is now himself aware of this error. But since he never put this preliminary finding into print he has nothing to withdraw.
76. See S. G. Wheatcroft & R. W. Davies, The agricultural crisis of 1931-3', forthcoming (in Russian) in Otechestvennaya istoriya, and in English in S. G. Wheatcroft (ed.), Challenging the Traditional Views of Russian History, forthcoming (Macmillan).
77. See S. G. Wheatcroft & R. W. Davies, The agricultural crisis of 1931-3', forthcoming (in Russian) in Otechestvennaya istoriya, and in English in S. G. Wheatcroft (ed.), Challenging the Traditional Views of Russian History, forthcoming (Macmillan).
78. See Davies, Tauger & Wheatcroft, p. 642.
79. As I was completing this article my attention was drawn to the first of a series of detailed volumes on different aspects of the Soviet repression produced by Arsenii Roginsky and his team in Memorial, Repressii protiv Polyakov i Pol'skikh grazhdan. Istoricheskie Sborniki "Memoriala", vyp. 1 (Moscow, 1997). Although this volume only concerns repression against Poles in 1937-38 it indicates the wealth of data which the Roginsky team has in its possession. Several sentences are devoted to placing the arrests of the Poles in comparative perspective with all arrests at this time. These sentences indicate that Roginsky and Petrov accept the general level of accuracy of the official arrest figures, which are comparable with their detailed data. See N. V. Petrov & A. B. Roginskii, ' "Pol'skaya operatsiya" NKVD 1937-1938gg.', Repressii protiv Polyakov i Pol'skikh grazhdan, pp. 32-33. We look forward to seeing more of their material.
80. As I was completing this article my attention was drawn to the first of a series of detailed volumes on different aspects of the Soviet repression produced by Arsenii Roginsky and his team in Memorial, Repressii protiv Polyakov i Pol'skikh grazhdan. Istoricheskie Sborniki "Memoriala", vyp. 1 (Moscow, 1997). Although this volume only concerns repression against Poles in 1937-38 it indicates the wealth of data which the Roginsky team has in its possession. Several sentences are devoted to placing the arrests of the Poles in comparative perspective with all arrests at this time. These sentences indicate that Roginsky and Petrov accept the general level of accuracy of the official arrest figures, which are comparable with their detailed data. See N. V. Petrov & A. B. Roginskii, ' "Pol'skaya operatsiya" NKVD 1937-1938gg.', Repressii protiv Polyakov i Pol'skikh grazhdan, pp. 32-33. We look forward to seeing more of their material.
81. Davies, Europe: A History. It has generally been given rave reviews. According to the TLS, 'No history of Europe in the English Language has been so even-handed in its treatment of East and West'. Felipe Fernandez-Armesto in The Sunday Times claimed that, 'It brims with learning, crackles with common sense, coruscates with wit and abounds in good judgement'. Jan Moris in The Independent described it as 'A noble monument of scholarship' and claimed that 'There are superb assessments of vastly daunting subjects'. Only in distant Australia did an occasional discerning academic challenge some of his judgements. See Peter McPhee, 'Europe on the brink', The Age (Melbourne), 5 April 1997.
82. Davies, Europe: A History. It has generally been given rave reviews. According to the TLS, 'No history of Europe in the English Language has been so even-handed in its treatment of East and West'. Felipe Fernandez-Armesto in The Sunday Times claimed that, 'It brims with learning, crackles with common sense, coruscates with wit and abounds in good judgement'. Jan Moris in The Independent described it as 'A noble monument of scholarship' and claimed that 'There are superb assessments of vastly daunting subjects'. Only in distant Australia did an occasional discerning academic challenge some of his judgements. See Peter McPhee, 'Europe on the brink', The Age (Melbourne), 5 April 1997.
83. Davies, Europe: A History. It has generally been given rave reviews. According to the TLS, 'No history of Europe in the English Language has been so even-handed in its treatment of East and West'. Felipe Fernandez-Armesto in The Sunday Times claimed that, 'It brims with learning, crackles with common sense, coruscates with wit and abounds in good judgement'. Jan Moris in The Independent described it as 'A noble monument of scholarship' and claimed that 'There are superb assessments of vastly daunting subjects'. Only in distant Australia did an occasional discerning academic challenge some of his judgements. See Peter McPhee, 'Europe on the brink', The Age (Melbourne), 5 April 1997.
84. Sentences in italics are sentences in the original text which are correct.
85. Far from being 'semi-repentant', one of their contributors found their introduction a little excessive on the triumphalism. See introduction p. 13, footnote 23, The archives thus show that Wheatcroft's previously published estimates of 4 to 5 million prisoners maximum were amazingly accurate'.
86. See Moscow News, 27 November 1988, p. 8-9, Argumenty i fakty, 1989, 5, pp. 5-6.
87. See Moscow News, 27 November 1988, p. 8-9, Argumenty i fakty, 1989, 5, pp. 5-6.
88. See above.
89. See estimates of Lorimer, Maksudov and Andreev, Darsky & Kharkova as summarised in S. G. Wheatcroft & R. W. Davies, 'Population', in R. W. Davies, Mark Harrison & S. G. Wheatcroft (eds), The Economic Transformation of the Soviet Union, 1923-1945 (Cambridge), pp. 72-77.
90. For a further discussion of this and an attempt to place the Soviet mortality crisis in the perspective of long-term secular mortality decline see S. G. Wheatcroft 'The Great Leap Upwards', Slavic Review, forthcoming, 1999.