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Crimes of Communism in Russia: My decision to compare the crimes of democracy with persecution during Stalin’s era in Russia is not to apologize for Stalin’s atrocities, but to have a good standard of comparison.
Body count as a rate of the crimes of communism is an old democratic tradition. It most likely started immediately after the Bolshevik revolution in Russia in 1917. There were more innocent deaths as a result of socialism, communism, Stalinism, more evidence against Marx, Marxism, communism, communists, socialism, and more evidence against planned economy and collective property.
After WWII, leaders of the body count claimed there to be more than 100 million victims of Communism in Russia. The number of the victims gradually decreased over time and in 2006, according to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, it was somehow only about 20 million deaths.
According to my knowledge, the first scientific body count of the persecution during Stalin’s era, according to archived evidence of the Soviet secret police and judiciary was published in 1993 [1-28]. The obtained data were significantly lower than what had generally been presented for 60 years. The authors [1-28] concluded, “Mainstream published estimates of the total numbers of ‘victims of repression‘ in the late 1930s have ranged from Dmitrii Volkogonov's 3.5 million to Ol'ga Shatunovskaia's nearly 20 million. The basis for these assessments are unclear in most cases and seem to have come from guesses, rumors, or extrapolations from isolated local observations. As the table shows, the documental numbers of victims are much smaller”. They also found that the secret police were not involved in the persecution as was generally presented. The author concluded: “we can conclude that, on the whole, only about 8.4 percent of the sentences of courts and extra-judicial bodies were rendered ‘on cases of the secret police‘ and for alleged political reasons between 1933 and 1953”. The generally presented opinion that the prisoners in GULAG were mostly political was also not true. According to a publication, “offenses of GULAG population sentenced for ‘Counterrevolutionary offenses’ were in 1934 - 26.5%, 1936 - 12.6%, and in 1940-33.1%.” Unfortunately, the authors of this publication could not find information about how many of the counterrevolutionary offenses were really counterrevolutionary, i.e. the same as terrorists in recent understanding and how many were really innocent political opponents.
According to the scientific publication [1-28] between 1930 and 1952-1953, 786,098 were executed in the USSR (i.e. an average of 34,178 per year). However, the scientific publication did not clearly distinguish how many were real political prisoners, how many were real counterrevolutionaries, and how many were criminals. The total number of victims was 2.3 million (again I do not know how many real criminals are included in the number and how many were really political prisoners). Between 1934 and 1953, 1,053,829 people died in the camps of GULAG. I do not know the rate of mortality in GULAG in comparison to the mortality in the civil sector. I may assume that the mortality in the civil sector was also very high (maybe even higher that in GULAG?). Anyway, I will use this data and consider all of the deaths of the prisoners at GULAG as the deaths of innocent people.
Crimes of the capitalistic democracy in Russia after 1990:
According to leading Russian economist Vladimir Popov [2-19]: “death rates increased (after introduction of capitalism and democracy in Russia)... and stayed at this high level thereafter, which was equivalent to over 700,000 additional deaths annually”. Comparing this with the number of communist atrocities, the execution of on average 34,178 “counter-revolutionaries” per year,, the democracy in Russia is killing people 20 times more efficiently than Stalin’s execution guards. However, the killing efficiency of democracy is even higher, since I do not think that all “counter-revolutionaries” were political prisoners.
According to HDR 2005, there are 7 million “missing” men since 1990 in democratic Russia. Comparing this number with the communist execution of the “counter-revolutionaries”, democracy is killing people 15 times more efficiently than Stalin’s execution guards.
According to HDR 2005, the number of additional deaths during 1992–2001 is estimated at 2.5–3 million. Comparing this number with the communist execution of the “counter-revolutionaries”, democracy is killing people 8 times more efficiently than Stalin’s execution guards.
Similarly, the total number of GULAG victims of Stalin’s communism was 2.3 million people over 33 years with an average of 70,000 victims per year. The rate of Stalin’s killing was 10 times less than the rate of the recent capitalistic democracy. It was 7 times less than “missing” men in Russia due to the crimes of recent democracy. It was 4 times less than the additional deaths during 1992–2001 in Russia (I repeat again, I do not know how many people of the 2.3 million were innocent).
The comparisons clearly show that it does not matter what kind of comparison one uses, the conclusion is the same: the recent capitalistic democracy in Russia is killing innocent people significantly more efficiently than communists did.
Of course, the crimes of democracy would be more pronounced if we compared the 15 years of democracy in the former socialist countries after 1990 and 15 years of totalitarian communism before 1990. This comparison would be more real. The crimes of democracy would be even more pronounced if we compared the crimes of communism for 15 years before 1990 and the crimes of democracy during The First World War and WWII.
When I normalized the number of the “contra-revolutionaries” [1-28] who died in GULAG to the recent Slovak population, I came to about 500 dead “counter-revolutionaries” per year in GULAG, per 5 million people. This number is similar to the number of innocent people, who were recently murdered, lost, or found dead in the street per year in Slovakia (I did not include suicides). Can I say that the recent capitalistic democracy in Slovakia is killing innocent people at a similar rate as Stalin at GULAG?
The mystery
Why is the real killing rate by Stalin in GULAG and by recent capitalistic democracy overlooked by respected scholars? Why are the data of the crimes of democracy and the conclusions from the data not presented in textbooks? Many times I have heard that Pope John Paul II contributed he most to the break-up of the communist regime in the FSC and that he fought against poverty.
According to the UN report [3-17], the break-up of the communist regime in the FSC caused millions of deaths and significantly increased poverty. I wonder whether somebody in the Vatican connected these two pieces of information. Why are people, including democratic politicians, head of state, and artists, who contributed to 700,000 innocent victims per year in Russia, which is significantly more than Stalin’s crimes, celebrated as liberators, humanists, democrats and fighters for freedom? Who decides whom to celebrate and whom to burn to death? This decision is probably made by anyone who can influence our mental decisions based on the rules of the recent capitalistic democracy.
Why have the respected democratic humanists and political leaders who are convincing us of the crimes of communism not lodged a claim about it to the international courts? If they did, why were communists not judged or sentenced?
What kind of rules guarantied that, after establishing capitalist democracy in the FSC, it only took 1-5 years for a few to get extremely rich and for very many to become extremely poor? Why are these rules celebrated by humanists, democrats and fighters for human rights?
For the last million years if somebody wanted to become rich quickly, he or she had to take wealth from another. Mostly, they had to rob or even kill many people. The result of this practice was that a very few became rich and many were miserable. This is similar to the result of the recent capitalistic democracy in the FSC. The only difference is that the robbery in the FSC was supported by all united humanists and democrats as a fight for freedom and democracy, whereas robbery in the long past was simply supported by looters. During those long past times looting was not necessary presented as a fight for democracy and freedom.
[1-28] J. Arch Getty, Gabor Rittersporn, Victor Zemskov: Victims of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-War Years: A First Approach on the Basis of Archival Evidence (American Historical Review, 98, October 1993, 1017-1049)
[2-19] G. A. Cornia, V. Popov (eds.): Where do we Stand a Decade After the Collapse of the USSR? Transition and Institutions: The Experience of Late Reformers (Oxford University Press, 2001). http://www.wider.unu.edu/pressrelease/press-release-2001-4.pdf
[3-17] UNDP: TRANSITION 1999: Human Development Report for Central and Eastern Europe and the CIS
Karol Ondrias: Crimes of Democracy versus Crimes of Communism: http://www.trafford.com/4dcgi/view-item?item=19932
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