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In reply to the discussion: Joseph Stiglitz to Greece’s Creditors: Abandon Austerity Or Face Global Fallout [View all]riderinthestorm
(23,272 posts)its hard to say exactly but those are rough estimates (and yes, one of my bachelors degrees is in Modern European History focusing on Russian studies).
About 14 million people were in the Gulag labor camps from 1929 to 1953 (the estimates for the period 1918-1929 are difficult to calculate because of lack of accurate archival records.) A further 67 million were deported and exiled to remote areas of the USSR, and 45 million passed through labor colonies, plus 3.5 million already in, or sent to, 'labor settlements'. According to some estimates, the total population of the camps varied from 510,307 in 1934 to about 14 million people who were in the Gulag labor camps from 1929 to 1953 (the estimates for the period 1918-1929 are even more difficult to calculate).
According to a 1993 study of archival Soviet data, a total of 1,053,829 people died in the Gulag from 193453 (there is no archival data for the period 1918-1934). However, taking into account frequently dubious record keeping, and the fact that it was common practice to release prisoners who were either suffering from incurable diseases or on the point of death, independent estimates of the actual Gulag death toll are usually higher. Some estimates are as low as 1.6 million deaths during the whole period from 1929 to 1953, while other estimates go beyond 10 million.
Solzhenitsyn is an impeccable source and won a Nobel for his books and research on the gulags. This isn't anti-Soviet propaganda, it's the facts as substantiated by independent scholarship as well as Solzhenitsyn.