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EUROPE-ASIA STUDIES,

Vol. 54, No. 7, 2002, 1151–1172

Soviet Repression Statistics: Some

Comments

MICHAEL ELLMAN

… a debate is taking place between a historian who in his research bases himself on real

documents of the MVD, and those whose estimates are based on the evidence of witnesses

and scattered (often unreliable) data. This situation turns the question of the necessity for

academic criticism of the data which entered the of cial departmental statistics of the MVD,

Ministry of Justice and Procuracy, into a practical one.

V.P. Popov, ‘Gosudarstvennyi terror v sovetskoi Rossii,

1923–1953 gg. (istochniki i ikh interpretatsiya)’,

Otechestvennye arkhivy,

1992, 2, pp. 20–21.

… the of cial data are clearly better than earlier outside estimates, but are they

complete?

They need critical scrutiny. We do not yet know the answers to many important questions,

because the accounting system was chaotic and the gures lent themselves to manipulation.

Bureaucratic as well as political motives led to the separate registration of various categories

of prisoner … One has to … avoid leaping to conclusions. Scholars in this sensitive eld

need to be humble about the extent of current knowledge but ambitious in setting future

goals.

J. Keep, ‘Recent writing on Stalin’s Gulag: an overview’,

Crime, Histoire & Societes,

1997, 2, p. 110.

´´

Judging by the example of Turkmenistan, a task requiring time and labour, undertaken by

groups of historians, will be necessary to verify the data [on 1937–38 repression victims] and

ll in the gaps. Besides the accounts of the central NKVD apparatus, it is essential to take

account of documents from provincial archives which contain the data on the place and

concrete activities [which comprised the] repressive operations.

O. Hlevnjuk [Khlevnyuk], ‘Les mecanismes de la “Grande Terreur”

des annees 1937–38 au Turkmenistan’,

Cahiers du Monde russe,

39, January–June 1998, p. 205.

Recently a debate took place in this journal about the accuracy and meaning of Soviet

repression statistics.

The present article discusses ve aspects of these statistics:

releases from the Gulag, repression deaths in 1937–38,

ubyl’,

the relationship between

stocks and ows, and the total number of repression victims.

ISSN 0966-8136 print; ISSN 1465-342 7 online/02/071151-2 2

DOI: 10.1080/096681302200001717 7

2002 University of Glasgow

1152

MICHAEL ELLMAN

Releases from the Gulag

In their well known 1993 paper giving a preliminary presentation of archival

repression data,

Getty, Rittersporn & Zemskov surprised many readers by their

unexpectedly high gures for releases.

According to this paper, in 1934–52, 5.4

million people were freed from the Gulag. The largest annual gures (about 620,000

in 1941 and 510,000 in 1942) are obviously mainly explained by releases to the armed

forces. Getty, Rittersporn & Zemskov state that during the war about 975,000 Gulag

inmates were released to military service (in particular to punitive or ‘storm’ units,

which suffered the heaviest casualties).

Similarly, the large number (approximately

340,000) of prisoners released in 1945 was a consequence of the July 1945 amnesty.

Nevertheless, their data show 370,000 released in 1936, 317,000 in 1940 and about

330,000 in 1952.

Since these large gures for releases are for many people counter-intuitive, it is not

surprising that Conquest writes that, ‘as to the numbers “freed”: there is no reason to

accept this category simply because the MVD so listed them’.

In this connection it

is important to note the following: prisoners can be freed because they complete their

sentences, because the sentences are remitted, because of an amnesty or because they

are too ill to work and hence are a burden on the camps’ food supply and number of

guards and other personnel, and on their report gures for output, productivity,

mortality and nancial results. Whereas an amnesty (as in 1953) is a sign of

humanity, release to die indicates a callous attitude of camp bosses to their prisoners.

In 1930 the OGPU issued order no. 361/164 of 23 October ‘On the unloading from

the OGPU camps of the elderly, complete invalids and the very ill’. This provided a

procedure for the release of this ‘un t for work ballast’.

In January 1934 this order

was cancelled by OGPU order no. 501.

In November 1934 NKVD order no. 00141

once again provided a procedure for the release of ‘the ill, the elderly and invalids’.

Amongst other things it instructed the relevant bodies to draw up a list of illnesses

which would qualify the person concerned for release. In June 1939 a decree of the

Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet banned the practice of early release of

prisoners.

On 29 April 1942 Beriya and the USSR Procurator Bochkov signed a joint

directive banning ‘until the end of the war’ all releases from the camps (e.g. of people

who had completed their sentences) with the exception of ‘complete invalids, the un t

for work, the elderly and women with children’, who could be released ‘in the case

of complete impossibility of using them in the camps’.

In accordance with a decree of the USSR Supreme Court of 1 August 1942 and the

joint directive of the NKVD, Narkomyust and the Procuracy of 23 October 1942

resulting from it, prisoners suffering from incurable diseases were to be released from

their places of detention. In accordance with a list of incurable conditions, approved

by the head of the Gulag, people were to be freed if they suffered from ‘emaciation

as a result of avitaminosis’ (this was a bureaucratic expression for starvation),

‘alimentary distrophy’ (this was another bureaucratic expression for starvation),

leukaemia, malignant anaemia, decompressed tuberculosis of the lungs, open bacil-

liary tuberculosis of the lungs, acute amphysemna of the lungs etc. As Isupov sensibly

notes, ‘In other words, the prisoners were released to die’.

Conquest quotes two

cases of people being released when they were on the point of death and correctly

SOVIET REPRESSION STATISTICS

1153

points out that this shows that the categories used in Gulag statistics may be

misleading.

He seems to be unaware, however, that the release of prisoners on the

point of death was of cial policy and practised on a currently unknown scale over

many years.

The Gulag had two functions, punitive and economic. To implement the latter, its

inmates had to provide large amounts of hard physical labour. Prisoners who could

not do that and could not do any other kind of work were for many of its of cials

just an unwanted burden which worsened its economic success indicators.

The

policy of releasing ‘un t for work ballast’ was a cost-cutting measure which was

intended to save on food consumption and on guards and other personnel, and hence

reduce the de cit and improve productivity in the Gulag. It increased ‘ef ciency’ (i.e.

the ratio of output to inputs) while simultaneously improving the nancial results and

the mortality statistics. (Similarly, after the war, German POWs who were invalids or

very ill were released before the able-bodied. From an economic point of view this

was entirely rational and optimised the results of utilising the POWs.) Wheatcroft

correctly drew attention to the fact that senior of cials were concerned about high

mortality and that ‘incidents of high mortality were often investigated’.

This,

however, did not necessarily lead to an improvement in conditions, since camp bosses

could improve their mortality statistics by releasing those about to die. In fact, the

bosses of the Gulag as a whole were keen to improve the mortality statistics this way.

An instruction of 2 April 1943 by the head of the Gulag forbade including deaths of

released former prisoners in Gulag mortality statistics.

(This is not the only example

of the use of mortality data as success indicators leading to misleading mortality

statistics. The postwar ltration statistics, which purport to show that as of 1 March

1946, out of the 4.2 million people checked, 58% had been sent home, include those

who died in the ltration camps among those ‘sent home’.

)

The release of ‘un t for work ballast’ continued after the war. According to

Volkogonov , quoting archival sources, ‘In July 1946 Beriya reported to Stalin that the

MVD’s corrective labour camps during the war had “accumulated” more than

100,000 prisoners who were completely un t for work and whose upkeep required

substantial resources. The MVD recommended that the incurably ill, including the

mentally disturbed, be released. Stalin agreed …’.

At the present time there do not appear to be any data available on the number of

those who died within, say, 6 months of being freed from the Gulag.

Nevertheless,

two things are already clear. First, the large number of people recorded as being

‘freed’ are not necessarily a sign of the humaneness of the system but may simply

re ect—at least in part—its callous attitude to its prisoners. Second, the of cial Gulag

statistics on mortality

in the camps

understate mortality

caused by the camps,

since

they exclude deaths taking place shortly after release but which resulted from

conditions in the Gulag.

Repression deaths in 1937–38

There are two types of contemporary of cial documents from which one can derive

gures on repression deaths in 1937–38. They are the NKVD records and the

demographic statistics (the censuses of 1926, 1937 and 1939 and the population

1154

MICHAEL ELLMAN

registration data). The former have been presented and discussed by Wheatcroft in

this journal,

the latter were discussed by Wheatcroft & Davies.

In addition there

are a wide variety of estimates not based on contemporary of cial documents but

based on personal, rst-hand, unof cial, so-called literary sources.

Isupov, relying on the NKVD data, came to the conclusion that repression deaths

in 1937–38 were ‘about a million’.

This gure was based on the NKVD of cial

gures of 682,000 shot in 1937–38 following sentence on NKVD cases (po

delam

organov NKVD)

116,000 who died in the Gulag

non-article 58 arrestees who

were shot

an allowance for possible underestimation.

If one relies entirely on the

NKVD data, then about a million seems to be a reasonable estimate, and possibly

even an overestimate. For example, simply adding all those who died in detention to

those of cially recorded as being shot may result in some double counting, since it

seems that in some cases people who died during interrogation were registered as

having been condemned by a troika.

However, although the NKVD data are very

useful, they suffer from three limitations. First, the categories used may be mislead-

ing, as in the case of those recorded as ‘freed’, which was discussed above.

Second,

the NKVD data on killings are known to exclude some categories of victims.

Wheatcroft has explained that the NKVD data for 1939–41 exclude the Katyn

massacre, other killings of the population of the newly annexed areas, especially the

Poles, and the mass shooting of soldiers (deserters and so-called deserters) in 1941.

Third, there are apparent or real contradictions in the NKVD data. For example,

Ivanova has drawn attention to apparent signi cant discrepancies in the data on the

number of people sentenced by the

Osoboe soveshchanie

in 1940–52.

The data

given for this category in the much cited 1953 Pavlov report (‘Kruglov gures’)

appear to be contradicted by other data. In such cases it is necessary to examine the

data carefully to see whether the discrepancies are merely apparent (e.g. resulting

from de nitional differences) or real. If they are real, it is necessary to assess the

relative value of the different sources. These three limitations are common ground

amongst all the participants in the debate. They suggest that an estimate which takes

literally the currently available NKVD data may be too low.

In view of these limitations, it seems inappropriate to treat the NKVD statistics as

a point estimate and more appropriate to treat them as a range. The lower bound of

this range would be formed by taking the NKVD data and categories literally. In that

case the number of excess deaths would be 682,000 (the number of those reported as

shot on NKVD cases)

150,000 registered deaths in detention (the SANO/URO

average—see note 23)

2,000 excess non-article 58 shootings, which equals 834,000.

Since there is reason to think that the Pavlov report excludes some NKVD killings

(‘executions’), that the data for registered deaths in detention understate actual deaths

in detention, and that some of those released in 1937–38 died in 1937–38 as a result

of their treatment in the Gulag (see above), then a reasonable minimum estimate is

950,000. The upper bound of the range would be formed by estimating the actual

number of NKVD killings at, say, 850,000, the actual number of deaths in detention

in 1937–38 at, say, 200,000, the actual number of excess non-article 58 deaths at, say,

5,000 and treating all those recorded as released from the Gulag in 1937–38 (644,000)

as having died by 31 December 1938 as a result of their treatment in the Gulag. This

produces an upper bound of 1,699,000.

This gure, however, is much too high,

SOVIET REPRESSION STATISTICS

1155

since the assumption that all those released in 1937–38 were dead by 31 December

1938 is most implausible. In April 1937 Ezhov told Molotov that more than 60,000

prisoners a month were being released from camps and other places of detention and

requested the organisation of a programme to reintegrate released prisoners into the

labour force.

This implies that in the rst half of 1937 large numbers of able-bodied

prisoners were being released. Similarly, of the 54,000 prisoners recorded as having

been released from the Gulag in the rst quarter of 1940, 66.5% were released

because their sentence had expired and only 0.006% (three persons) on the grounds

of illness.

If one assumes that three-quarters of those recorded as released in

1937–38 were still alive on 31 December 1938, then that would reduce the upper

bound to 1,216,000 or, rounded to the nearest 50,000, 1.2 million.

The above means that in view of the uncertainties about their accuracy and the

meaning of the categories they use, it is too early to argue for a precise gure for

repression deaths in 1937–38 on the basis of the currently available NKVD account-

ing data. Rather, they can be used to support a range. It was argued above that the

most convincing estimate of this range, given current knowledge, is 950,000–1.2

million. This range includes the Isupov estimate. It also includes the Rose elde

estimate (1.075 million).

The two main areas of uncertainty are NKVD killings

(‘executions’), excluded from the Pavlov report, and the mortality experience of the

644,000 people recorded as being released from the Gulag in 1937–38. Further

research on these two topics would be most valuable.

In 1994 Wheatcroft & Davies, using both the demographic and NKVD data,

suggested that repression deaths in 1937–38 were ‘about 1–1

million’.

The range

was wide because of uncertainty about the accuracy of the NKVD statistics and the

dif culty of allocating victims among the various demographic disasters of the 1930s.

These include the famine of 1931–34, excess deaths among repressed peasants and

deportees, and the repression of 1937–38. The Wheatcroft–Davies estimate overlaps

with that suggested above on the basis of a consideration of the NKVD data alone,

but its upper bound is above that which a consideration of the NKVD data

alone would suggest. Since 1994 we have learned more about the NKVD data, their

meaning and limitations. It now seems more sensible to rely on the corrected NKVD

data. This reduces the upper bound of the Wheatcroft–Davies estimate by 300,000.

Conquest, on the other hand, suggests that repression deaths in 1937–38 were 2–3

million, i.e. more than double the above estimate based on NKVD records and double

the Wheatcroft–Davies estimate.

Conquest’s estimate raises three issues: the method

used in deriving it, its compatibility with the demographic data and the sources on

which it is based.

Method

Conquest’s method is the utilisation of a wide variety of personal, rst-hand,

unof cial, so-called literary sources. Before

glasnost’

this was the only source

available. As Wheatcroft has repeatedly acknowledged, its use enabled Conquest to

generate estimates of NKVD killings (‘executions’) in 1937–38 much more accurately

than the sceptics thought. They were also more accurate than the estimates of some

Western academics. However, as a result rst of

glasnost’

and then of the collapse of

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