DOCUMENTED HOMICIDES AND EXCESS DEATHS - NEW INSIGHTS INTO THE SCALE OF KILLING IN THE USSR DURING THE 1930S

Getty, Rittersporn and Zemskov recently claimed that no more than 2 mi llion people could have perished from collectivization, famine, execut ion, terror, and forced labor in the USSR during the 1930s, Prior demo graphic confirmation of this estimate was provided by Anderson and Sil ver who contended that killings were unlikely to exceed a few million and could not be more than 4.8 million victims, This essay disproves b oth these contentions by introducing new demographic evidence proving that Stalin killed at least 5.2 million Soviet citizens 1927-1938, wit h a best estimate in the vicinity of 10 million. Copyright (C) 1997 Th e Regents of the University of California.