Did Stalin Really Execute Hundreds Of Thousands? (From www.maoists.

org)

In a feature by Robert Griffiths, General Secretary of the Communist Party of

Britain on the 90th Anniversary of the Russian Revolution- ‘The Day The World
Turned Upside Down’, unproven figures about the number of executions carried out
during Stalin's rule are presented as fact (Morning Star 23/10/2007).

Griffiths states: "The true number of executions in the late 1930s - in hundreds
of thousands - is shocking enough and requires explanation and condemnation, not
denial and concealment."

This is a figure regularly cited in the media and indeed in academia.

Griffiths cites evidence from the Soviet archives to support this figure. But are
the relevant documents trustworthy?

Historian JA Getty, in his book The Road To Terror, speaks of "secret high-level
government investigations" in 1962-3 and 1988, where documents allegedly from the
Soviet archives were used in inner-party struggles.

He writes: "On both occasions, the politburo sought the most damning figures
possible for use as political capital and commanded blue-ribbon politburo
commissions to comb KGB files for data.

"In 1963, Khruschov sought data condemning his current rivals Molotov and
Kaganovich, in 1988, Gorbachov wanted to discredit Stalinism generally as part of
his perestroika policy.

"In both cases, the results were recently published in the official Bulletin of
the Archive."

Most historians of the Stalin period tend to regard documents found in state
archives as authentic without much question.

There have been few attempts by anyone, regarded as ‘mainstream’ in the West, to
assess the authenticity or otherwise of the documents that are meant to prove that
Stalin presided over the execution of hundreds of thousands.

More recently (31/03/2009), the British Guardian newspaper published a story about
Lech Walesa’s alleged links with the Polish secret police. The story states a book
has been written, based on evidence from the communist era Polish archives that
alleges that Walesa had been a police informer. The story goes onto state that:

‘Historians caution that the secret services often falsified documents to

discredit opposition leaders. The SB security services forged documents in
Walesa’s file in a futile bid to prevent him receiving the Nobel Prize in 1983.’

If the security services forged documents about Walesa in Poland, then left them
in his file to be found by researchers twenty years later, it is hardly beyond
rational belief that something similar may have happened to Stalin.

I would suggest that socialists do not accept figures from the archives that
allege such a large number of deaths by execution under Stalin’s rule without
corroboration.