SOVIET STUDIES, April 1990

How many victims in the 1930s?
ALEX NOVE

Numerous estimates of the demographic consequences of the collectivisation
and of the Terror have been made in the West, and in the most recent years 
also in the Soviet Union. Estimates vary widely. This journal has
published the dispute on this subject between Rosefielde and Wheatcroft.

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SOVIET STUDIES, April 1990
More light on the scale of repression and excess mortality in the Soviet
Union in the 1930s
S. G. WHEATCROFT

In recent months especially there have been tremendous breakthroughs in
the availability of archival material in the Soviet Union, and this new
material casts considerably more light on several important aspects of
Soviet demography in this period.

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SOVIET STUDIES, 1991

Excess Deaths and camp Numbers: Some Comments
ROBERT CONQUEST

I did not answer Stephen Wheatcroft's article in the April 1990 issue even 
though part of its declared purpose was to expose the errors of my 
'literary' evidence as compared with his own 'professional, objective' 
approach. This was because I had every hope that the Soviet material would 
fairly soon discredit his supposedly weighty set of tables and this has, 
indeed, largely happened.

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SOVIET STUDIES, 1991

A Note on the Number of 1933 Famine Victims
MICHAEL ELLMAN

In a recent paper in this journal Wheatcroft estimated the number of 
victims of the 1932-33 famine at 4 to 5 million. The purpose of this note 
is to draw attention to new data whioch imply that the number was actually 
substantially larger.

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SOVIET STUDIES, 1992

On Sources: a Note
MICHAEL ELLMAN

In 1990-91 a discussion took place in this journal between Wheatcroft and 
Conquest about the relative merits of 'statistical' and 'literary' sources
for the study of Soviet history. Of course Conquest was quite right in 
thinking that Soviet statistics were often very misleadning.

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SOVIET STUDIES, 1992

Glasnost' and the Gulag: New Information on Soviet Forced Labour around 
World War II
EDWIN BACON

In the past three years new information has been revealed by Russian 
scholars with regard to the Gulag system of forced labour. These data from 
the state archives concern the population of the Gulag, the demographic 
make-up of the inmates, conditions within the camps and the contribution 
to the Gulag to the economy of the USSR.

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AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW, October 1993

Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-war Years: A First Approach 
on the Basis of Archival Evidence
J. ARCH GETTY, GABOR T. RITTERSPORN, and VIKTOR N. ZEMSKOV

For the first time, Soviet secret police documents are available that 
permit us to narrow sharply the range of estimates of victims of the Great 
Purges. These materials are from the archival records of the Secretariat 
of GULAG, the Main Camp Administration of the NKVD/MVD. A few Moscow 
scholars (among them V. N. Zemskov) had access to some of them in the past 
but were not allowed to cite them properly. Now, according to the 
liberalized access regulations in Russian archives, scholars are able to 
consult these documents and to publish exact citations.

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SLAVIC REVIEW, Spring 1994

[Letter] To the Editor
ROBERT CONQUEST

Some material recently become available may serve to settle a controversy
over the 1933 famine. [...] Tauger held that the famine was not 
concentrated Ukraine and Kuban', and especially not by government action;
second he held that the government did not have the recources to prevent
the famine. On both points I argued the opposite, citing evidence: but he
rejected the evidence as not "official". [... Documents now available]
should settle the matter.

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AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW, June 1994

[Letter] To the Editor
ROBERT CONQUEST

In general, the material presented in [Victims of the Soviet...] is of 
interest and a partial contribution to our knowledge. But there is much 
to consider outside the contributors' limited documentation, and their 
work does not warrant the claims implied.

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EUROPE-ASIA STUDIES, 1994

Soviet Deaths in the Great Patriotic War: A Note
MICHAEL ELLMAN, S. MAKSUDOV

The number of Soviet Deaths in the Great Patriotic War was one of those
crucial historical numbers that were grossly distorted in the Soviet
historical writing prior to glasnost'.

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SLAVIC REVIEW, Autumn 1995

Stalin, Grain Stocks and the Famine of 1932-1933.
R. W. DAVIES, M.B. TAUGER AND S. G. WHEATCROFT

The impact of the first revelations about grain stocks has been dramatic.
On the basis of a preliminary, unpublished typescript by the eminent 
Russian historian V. P. Danilov, Robert Conquest has announced that the 
archives have revealed that in the famine year of 1932-1933 Stalin was
holding immense grain stocks, the existence of which was previously
completely unknown.

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EUROPE-ASIA STUDIES, September 1996

Stalinism in Post-Communist Perspective: New Evidence on Killings, Forced
Labour and Economic Growth in the 1930s
STEVEN ROSEFIELDE

Enhanced access to the Soviet and Russian archives under Gorbachev and
El'tsin has shed fresh light on the scale of repression in the USSR during
the 1930s. New evidence has been unearthed on NKVD sentences, prisoners in
jails, Gulag camps and colonies; exiles, executions, custodial deaths, the
1937 and 1939 census populations, the supressed mortality rate in the 
famine year 1933, and other missing vital statistics.

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EUROPE-ASIA STUDIES, December 1996

The Scale and Nature of German and Soviet Repression and Mass Killings,
1930-45
STEPHEN WHEATCROFT

One of the major questions facing the historians of both the Soviet Union 
and of Germany is to explain how the governments of these countries could 
engage in mass repression and mass killings that arose in both their 
countries at almost the same time. 

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EUROPE-ASIA STUDIES, May 1997

A Further Note of Clarification on the Famine, the Camps and Excess 
Mortality
STEPHEN G. WHEATCROFT

Fortunately scholars seldom have to worry about seeing their unpublished 
work extensively cited in publications of others. There is a convention 
that you do not plunder other people's unpublished conference papers 
without their consent. Steven Rosefielde does not follow such conventions, 
and his action in this case is particularly annoying.

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EUROPE-ASIA STUDIES, November 1997

Victims of Stalinism: A Comment
ROBERT CONQUEST

For all its impressive-looking tabulations, Wheatcroft's article, while 
making an occasional good point, is fundamentally flawed. His claim to 
present the true, 'archival' totals for the victims of Stalinism is 
fallacious. He has simply accepted Kruglov's report, for no apparent 
reason, and incorporated the Shvernik report, at the same time using the 
Zemskov figures for Gulag. These are in any case incompatible.

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EUROPE-ASIA STUDIES, March 1999

Victims of Stalinism and the Soviet Secret Police: The Comparability and 
Reliability of the Archival Data - Not the Last Word
STEPHEN G. WHEATCROFT

Conquest's comments on my latest article in this journal raises some 
important questions for our profession. Are we going to progress in our 
level of understanding? Are we going to respond positively to the new 
circumstances in which large amounts of detailed archival materials are 
available? Are we going to try to critically assess the reliability of 
these data? Are we going to try to provide credible indicators of the 
Soviet experience that we can compare with other societies?

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EUROPE-ASIA STUDIES, September 1999

Wheatcroft and Stalin’ s Victims: Comments
JOHN KEEP

Wheatcroft's latest article in this journal on the number of Stalin’ s 
victims reproduces some familiar statistics in an improved form but 
leaves one regretting that research into this difficult but essential 
question has not yet advanced far beyond the point reached in the early 
1990s, when these figures first appeared in print.

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EUROPE-ASIA STUDIES, December 1999

Comment on Wheatcroft
ROBERT CONQUEST

Wheatcroft seems to regard his recent intemperate, and not very coherent, 
piece as a massive refutation of Conquest. Massive, yes - if you include 
repeated imputations of motive and other matters the serious reader will 
have skipped... But refutation, no.

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EUROPE-ASIA STUDIES, September 2000

The Scale and Nature of Stalinist Repression and its Demographic 
Significance: On Comments by Keep and Conquest
S. G. WHEATCROFT

This journal has recently published two comments on my article on the 
comparability and reliability of the archival data on the victims of 
Stalinism and the Soviet secret police. The first comment, by John Keep, 
agreed on the importance of assessing the scale of Stalin’s repression 
and did make some important points regarding the available data on this 
topic. Keep’s comments deserve serious consideration and I will address 
them below. The second comment, by Robert Conquest, was very different. 
It did not add anything substantial concerning the question of the 
reliability of the archival data.

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EUROPE-ASIA STUDIES, November 2002

Soviet Repression Statistics: Some Comments
MICHAEL ELLMAN

Recently a debate took place in this journal about the accuracy and 
meaning of Soviet repression statistics. The present article discusses 
five aspects of these statistics: releases from the Gulag, repression 
deaths in 1937–38, ubyl’, the relationship between stocks and and flows, 
and the total number of repression victims.

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