From: alewis@gibbs.oit.unc.edu (Andrew Lewis)
Subject: Re: Robert Conquest's _The Great Terror_
Organization: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 1993 05:58:53 GMT

In article <C16qqE.3wp@cs.columbia.edu> igor@cs.columbia.edu (Igor Pankevich) writes:
>In article <C14LGL.7B0@apollo.hp.com>, goykhman@apollo.hp.com (Red Herring) writes:
>> 
>>     Comparing the _late_ tsarist times with the _early_ revolutionary
>>     years is like comparing apples and oranges.
>> 
>>     How about comparing Stalin's purges with that of Ivan the Terrible's
>>     and/or Peter the Great's?
>> 
>>     _A Great Terror_ would be a more appropriate title for Mr.Conquest's book.
>
>OK, let's compare those. In short, Ivan the Terrible's "purges" were the first 
>of this kind that happened in Russia, and I wouldn't believe that they were nearly
>on teh same scale as those of Stalin, who, BTW, admired Groznyi very much.
>And Peter the Great only exterminated those who really were an obstacle to his
>plans to make Russia a great country, he did not purposely kill millions of
>people just to make others fear. I would agree that people who died building

The recent book by Anisimov makes precisely this argument, that Peter was
involved in trying to create enough fear to make people obey.  If you are
claiming here that Iosif the terrible was creating terror for the sake of
creating terror, like a boy pulling wings off flies, I suggest that this
be stated as an assumption; like most investigations of the psychological
why of history, it is unproven (and possibly unprovable).

>St. Petersburg could be compared to those who died building Belomorcanal, but
>there were only about 150000 of those, compared to millions in Soviet
>concentration camps. Even if you scale the figures according to the population 
>at the time, you would still get a very big difference. If you take the population
>of Russia by 1959, and compare it to 55M people killed from 1917 to 1959, 
>you will see that it is about 25%-30% of the population. Can you find anything 
>similar for Peter I or Groznyi?
>
>-Igor P.
>

Statistical jiggery-pojery here, Igor.  Sorry.  First, the proper
comparison is not with the population at some point, even the end point,
but the total population throughout the period.  Second, the number 55
million is NOT PROVEN NOT PROVEN.  No number is proven, and the guesses
range widely.  This is partly a result of how one counts deaths.  It is
also partly a reflection of political philosophy, unfortunately.  It used
to be that Soviet estimates were ridiculously low.  Current Russian
estimates tend to the other extreme.  There is a temptation to take modern
Russian exaggerations as the word of God--Robert Conquest, in fact, in his
argument over "excess mortality" with various others in the pages of
Slavic Review, is guilty of this, quoting a popular source (an interview
in Komsomolskaia pravda) that supported his claims.  Unfortunately, it is
fairly clear that the interviewee cited had simply picked up the
CIA/Conquest figures without checking the sources.  Actually going through
the documents is perhaps becoming possible finally--the 1937, 39 and 59
census materials are finally becoming available.  Until someone takes the
time to actually do the research, though, most of the number arguments
require more suspension of disbelief than I, personally, would feel
comfortable with in alleged nonfiction.

A.M.L.
alewis@gibbs.oit.unc.edu
 lewis@unc.oit.unc.edu
 lewis@unc  [Bitnet]
UNC-Chapel Hill.  They'd have to PAY me to speak for them.  I pay THEM.

Newsgroups: rec.arts.books