I recall one good, very intelligent and well-read friend who was astonished to learn that some 10-15 million peasants died during collectivization and the terror-famine that followed, another five million or so people under the Great Terror.
Concerning the famine, the narrative that the Russian Government imposed a famine has no foundation. The theory that the famine resulted from the policies of the Russian Government is equally tenuous. Groundbreaking research by Professor Mark Tauger demonstrates that the famine resulted exclusively due to a series of poor harvests in 1931 and 1932 caused to a large extent by natural disasters and poor weather. The death toll of the famine amounted to about 2 to 3 million in the regions of Ukraine, the Volga, and the Northern Caucasus, as the declassified Russian archives demonstrate.
http://www.as.wvu.edu/history/Faculty/Tauger/Tauger,%20Natural%20Disaster%20and%20Human%20Actions.pdfhttp://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/faculty/harrison/archive/hunger/Regarding the kulaks, there was no intent to harm them, but only to engage them in more productive parts of the economy. This campaign of resettlement was non-violent, as the kulaks were merely transferred to the Urals and Turkestan where they would work in the timber, fishing, and gold industries. Concerning kulak children, they received rights equal to the children of all citizens. The school network in the kulak settlements included some 200,000 students and 8000 teachers. In 1938, the children of ex-kulaks gained the right, at age sixteen, to leave their settlement in order to work or attend an institution of education. During the war, the ex-kulaks were rehabilitated: in January 1945, the ex-kulaks were granted all rights of Russian citizens. By the early 1950s, the kulaks had effectively assimilated into Russian society. Although some 390,000 ex-kulaks died between 1932-40 in their places of settlement, this statistic is devoid of context and does not consider certain important factors.
About 250,000 occurred during the famine of 1932-33 when such consequences could not have been averted as Russia as a whole was faced with a severe famine caused by natural disasters. Of the remaining 140,000 kulak deaths, the Government again cannot be held responsible because there will always be deaths due to natural causes in a given population. In the kulak settlements the death rate in the period 1935-40 was not any different from the Russian population as a whole. While the Russian crude death rate per 1000 people was 17.5 in 1939, that of the kulaks was 17.03. This demonstrates that the conditions of the kulaks were on par with the rest of Russia. It is undeniable that Russia experienced unprecedented economic and social progress in the 1930s. The kulak settlements were no exception. There was no intent to harm the kulaks, but only to concentrate them in a productive area of the national economy and to assimilate them into the rest of Russia.
Despite claims to the contrary, it is irrefutable that there was a formidable kulak class in Russia following the abolition of serfdom. After the shift to the new economic policy in 1921, kulak farming revived. By 1927 kulak farms numbered just over 1 million, or about 5 percent of the total number of farming units. Because they possessed significant means of production and used usurious methods, they continued to exploit the rural poor.
another five million or so people under the Great Terror.
Scholars have concluded through research in the archives that the number of death sentences during the Yezhovschina was about 500,000 or so. It should be taken into consideration that tens of thousands of members from the State and Party had been unjustly persecuted during this campaign. Hence, the Yezhovschina proportionately affected Communists far more than most other groups. About one-third of those sentenced to death were from diaspora nationalities including the Poles, Germans, Finns, Greeks, Bulgars, and others. In this sense, the Yezhovschina was to a large extent directed against foreigners in the context of increasing threats from Germany, Japan, Poland, and Finland. This suspicion of foreigners had more to do with traditional Russian xenophobia rather than the teachings of Marxism-Leninism.
Stalin and the members of the Politbureau cannot be held responsible for things getting out of hand throughout the country because the Central Government did not have firm control of the entire country. Out of the 500 thousand or so death sentences, Stalin and members of the Politbureau signed the names of about 45,000. The remainder was the result of the overzealous conduct of opportunistic officials trying to get rid of their rivals. In Turkmenia, the Yezhovschina was especially severe not because of Stalin but because of the excesses carried out by the local officials who were later reprimanded. Interestingly, many of those responsible for the Purge, including Yezhov and his deputy Frinovsky, had themselves been executed. Starting in the mid 1950s the Soviet Government moved to rehabilitate those that had been unjustly punished, including Tukhachevsky, Egorov, Bliukher, etc and ending with Bukharin and Zinoviev in 1988.
