J_CERNY@UNHH (02/12/90)
This is in response to the questions: >1) How many people did Stalin have killed during his purges? >2) How many Armenians were killed inm Turkey earlier in this century? >I hear wildly different numbers and I am a Social Studies teacher and would >appreciate the info, and any commentary anyone could give. In fact no one will ever know how many people were killed in each of these mass murders. Estimates range widely and you will probably want to go by the conservative estimates of respected scholars, realizing (as these scholars usu. note) that the true figures could be as much as 50% higher. For Stalin, there are issues of definition as to what counts as a purge and what counts as some other form of death sentence (I'm thinking of the estimated 7 million Ukranians starved to death in 1932-33 by deliberately removing all food and sealing the borders -- not really a purge). Anyway, probably the most basic single source is Robert Conquest, 1968, The Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Thirties. For details on the northern death camps see Robert Conquest, 1978, Kolyma: The Arctic Death Camps. For the Armenian genocide it is more difficult to identify one single scholarly source. I highly recommend the non-scholarly, but very readable and reflective Michael J. Arlen, 1982, Passage to Ararat. (avail. in Penguin paperback) esp. since Arlen quotes extensively from the eyewitness accounts. I regard 1 million as probably the best estimate we will ever have, but you will see estimates as high as 1.5 to 2 million. Regarding the Armenian genocide consider these interesting points: (1) The Turkish government has consistently denied there was a genocide right to this day, despite overwhelming other evidence and the USA has quietly acquiesed because of the Realpolitik of our having listening posts on the Soviet Union in Turkey. (2) The parallels between the Armenian genocide and The Holocaust are striking and have been developed by some authors (there are important differences, too). (3) The fact that the US Ambassador, Henry Morganthau, Jr., was in Turkey during the genocide and impotently tried to interceded with the top government officials (he was told not to worry about it, after all, the Turks were not bothering the Jews) and published a book on it immediately afterwards. (4) Germans were important advisers to the Turkish government and some of these Germans are recorded as making some statements that foreshadow The Holocaust. (5) Richard Hovannisian, Armenian scholar at UCLA, has been conducting a program to videotape eyewitness testimony from the very few eyewitnesses still alive. (an analogous program to record the eyewitness testimony of Holocaust survivors is underway at Yale, conducted by Professor Langer) I can supply a lot more bibliographic information, with my own annotations, if there is interest on HISTORY. Jim Cerny, University of New Hampshire (non-historian and not of either Soviet or Armenian background!!!)
jack@CS.GLASGOW.AC.UK (Jack Campin) (02/13/90)
>> How many people did Stalin have killed during his purges? >> I hear wildly different numbers and I am a Social Studies teacher and would >> appreciate the info, and any commentary anyone could give. > In fact no one will ever know how many people were killed in each > of these mass murders. Estimates range widely and you will probably > want to go by the conservative estimates of respected scholars, > realizing (as these scholars usu. note) that the true figures could > be as much as 50% higher. > For Stalin, there are issues of definition as to what counts as > a purge and what counts as some other form of death sentence (I'm > thinking of the estimated 7 million Ukranians starved to death > in 1932-33 by deliberately removing all food and sealing the > borders -- not really a purge). Anyway, probably the most basic > single source is > Robert Conquest, 1968, The Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Thirties. > For details on the northern death camps see > Robert Conquest, 1978, Kolyma: The Arctic Death Camps. Conquest's figures are the most extreme, which is not surprising given his fanatical Cold Warrior ideology. There is a short article about the way he and Medvedev inflated the Stalinist death toll by Alexander Cockburn in New Statesman and Society, 3 March 1989 (it was also published in The Nation at around the same time). Cockburn cites the following: Frank Lorimer: The Population of the Soviet Union (1946) Jerry Hough & Merle Fainsod: How the Soviet Union is Governed (1979) articles by Steven Rosefielde (pro-Conquest) and Stephen Wheatcroft (anti) in Slavic Review in the mid-80s article by Barbara Anderson and Brian Silver, Slavic Review 1985 conversations with Sheila Fitzpatrick (professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin) The upshot seems to be that the total death toll from famine and purges together cannot have been above 6 million and was probably around 4 million, that Medvedev was unbelievably slapdash and Conquest indulging in sick wishful thinking. Jack Campin * Computing Science Department, Glasgow University, 17 Lilybank Gardens, Glasgow G12 8QQ, SCOTLAND. 041 339 8855 x6044 wk 041 556 1878 ho INTERNET: jack%cs.glasgow.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk USENET: jack@glasgow.uucp JANET: jack@uk.ac.glasgow.cs PLINGnet: ...mcvax!ukc!cs.glasgow.ac.uk!jack