Who knows? According to what source would that be, and who does that include?
Well, according to mainstream media, more than Hitler.
That is the reason I am asking. You hear this all the time, but no one ever brings up any numbers.
That’s a rather meaningless question. He probably did not kill anyone personally - at least after he was done with his bank robbing in early 1900s top raise money for the cause.
A better question would be - how many people did Stalin cause to be killed on the margin? For all we know, if Trotskly and/or Bukharin got the power, the death toll would have likely been much greater.
Do we count the “old revolutionaries” that Stalin exterminated as counting against him, or for him? Did the murderers that inflicted communism and collectivication on the country deserve anything better?
Do we count the people killed directly, like those polish officers, and those who expired in jails and camps? Probably a few million. Do we count the starved Ukrainians? Few more million.
If we believe that Stalin was instrumental and indisplensable in preparing WWII, do we count all the victims?
The answer may be from a lot of lives saved to a dozen million to 100+ million. Whatever you prefer.
Yea and if Mother Theresa gained power the toll would have been considerably less.
So the margin is exactly the number he killed.
There are the numbers on the article 
I’m not sure that HE killed anyone…
I don’t know how many people Stalin killed, but I was flipping through cable TV propaganda the other day and came across Stalin: Man of Steel on the History Channel. It was actually a pretty good analysis of how power corrupts and collectivism is mass murder. Throughout the whole documentary Stalin is ordering his subordinates executed, rounding up intellectuals to be executed, sending his armies on suicide missions, and basically doing what communists do. Then at the end some historian says, “Oh well, that was just Stalin being Stalin and he made Russia a superpower so it was all worth it.” Incredible.
If you think that documentary is incredible:
Secret police founder Dzerzhinsky statue almost got put back up. Who known, maybe we’ll seeing Stalin statues popping up.
See Adler, Nanci. December 2005. The Future of the Soviet Past…Graves. Europe-Asia Studies (Soviet Studies) 57(8),1093-1119.
BTW, Stalin made Kruschev and friends gather at night during the war to eat drink and sing while signing lists of people to be executed or sent to die in disposable regiments sent prior to the regular infantry.
Then at the end some historian says, “Oh well, that was just Stalin being Stalin and he made Russia a superpower so it was all worth it.”
That’s pretty much official Russian history now under Putin.
He no doubt kept a stock of catamites on hand for this express purpose.
Contrary what people have claimed here, Stalin did kill personally a lot of people in the 1890s and 1900s while as a terrorist bandit he was collecting money for the arising bolshevik party and making bank robberies and exploding bombs. Whether he shot his second wife Nadezha Alliluyeva in 1932 is debatable but academic consensus seems to be against it, although inconclusively.
Maybe I can narrow it down for you, he killed more than Lincoln but less than Mao.
Indeed there are. So does this strike anyone as “more than Hitler”?
That article is so lame. They throw around “capitalist” as if free association and mercantilism are the same thing. Good job leftists. Good job.
thelion - that article looks really interesting. Is there a way to get it other than paying for the journal, or through JSTOR?
A quote from the wikipedia article:
“Critics have argued that capitalist countries could be held responsible for a similar number of deaths. Noam Chomsky, for example, writes that Amartya Sen in the early 1980s estimated “the excess of mortality” in India over China due to the latter’s “relatively equitable distribution of healthcare resources” at close to 4 million a year. Chomsky therefore argues that, “suppos[ing] we now apply the methodology of the Black Book and its reviewers” to India alone, the “democratic capitalist experiment” since 1947 has caused more deaths than in the entire history of Communism everywhere.”
Someone needs to explain to Noam Chomsky that “democratic capitalist” is an oxymoron. I haven’t studied the history of healthcare in India, but I am 100% sure that its failures, like all failures in healthcare, were due to government intervention not capitalism. Aren’t we lucky in America that Obama is making sure we have “relatively equitable distribution of healthcare resources.”
Political repressions about 1,5 mil
Famine 1932-1932: in Ukraine 4-9 mln, in other parts of USSR – about 2 mil
Famine 1946-1947: about 1 mln in Ukraine, about 0.5mln in other parts of USSR
Plus unknown number of indirect victims of deportations (people were dying in trains or because of cold climate)
Plus a lot of victims of murderousmilitary tactics during WWII (many people were sent to the front without any weapons)
Plus victims of interventions: Poland, Baltic countries, Finland
Any examples? Or if you have a source?
Vladimir Rezun i.e. Victor Suvorov: Inside the Soviet Army
Read it.
It won’t give number’s, but you’ll get the idea of a forward army of “penal” battalions, followed by the military police, and then the regular army. Very few people surivived the penal battalions, and if they did, something else was found to get rid of most of them.