I agree, such whataboutism is not necessary. But my point remains. The 100 million killed by communism is an incorrect figure created by anticommunists with an agenda.
Well, I am not qualified to judge historical research. As a personal heuristic, I assume things were more likely towards the worse end of the scale. Not only because of Soviet official propaganda, but also because many “experts” in the West publishing about Soviet Union were shamelessly bribed. Thus I believe that the consensus of experts will be biased towards denying atrocities.
To explain why I consider the Western “experts” unreliable, remember that Soviet Union was a totalitarian state, and only people approved by the regime were allowed to enter the country. So, as a first step of selection, only those Western journalists and historians who already demonstrated pro-communist sympathies were allowed to enter the country. As a second step, those who afterwards wrote anything negative, were not allowed to return. (So if you wanted to build a career as an “expert on Soviet Union”, you had a strong incentive to only write what they wanted you to write. If you didn’t, you lost access, and then your colleagues attacked you as “he writes as if he has reliable and up-to-date information about Soviet Union, but he didn’t visit the country for the last X years, and all his research is only based on guesses and rumors and outdated information—but we all know the bad things only happened in the past, and it is completely different now”.) Lastly, foreigners visiting Soviet Union were only allow to visit specified places, and the important ones were often accompanied by police all the time. So they only saw the Potemkin villages the regime wanted to show them, and they only heard good news from local people, because the local people knew that if they something improper, they will be shot along with their families afterwards. This makes me view Western left-wing intellectuals writing positively about life in Soviet Union with deep suspicion.
There is a story in The Gulag Archipelago when Solzhenitsyn was in a death camp where inmates survived 6 months on average… and one day the guards told them that an important American journalist will visit them, so they have to behave nicely. The prisoners were taken to a place outside the camp, where the journalist interviewed them. That is, the journalist spent 99% of time talking to the guards who explained him the enlightened principles of Soviet government that wants to give the second chance even to the hardest criminals (note: many inmates got their sentences for made-up crimes, because the police had to fill the quota of criminals sent to death camps), and then he just asked the prisoners: “so, is it true that you are treated nicely here?”… and the prisoners, with the guards standing right behind them, said “yeah”, not being suicidal. Returning to the camp, Solzhenitsyn thought that the journalist of course cannot be stupid enough to take this all at face value. But a few years later, he had an opportunity to read the article, and… yes, the journalist accepted the story hook, line, and sinker, and wrote a passionate article about how the Russian penal system is so much better and more humane than American.
So, of course there is a chance the survivors would exaggerate, but I still trust their estimates more. To discuss the expert opinion, I would need to know more about the background of these experts (as a rule of thumb, anyone who personally visited Soviet Union before the fall of communism is absolutely untrustworthy in my eyes—they wouldn’t be allowed in otherwise).
I agree. Some intellectuals in the West could not even condemn the execution of Lenin’s comrades by Stalin on trumped up charges. I will trust no Sovietologist who tries to show that Stalin was a good person.
I agree, such whataboutism is not necessary. But my point remains. The 100 million killed by communism is an incorrect figure created by anticommunists with an agenda.
Well, I am not qualified to judge historical research. As a personal heuristic, I assume things were more likely towards the worse end of the scale. Not only because of Soviet official propaganda, but also because many “experts” in the West publishing about Soviet Union were shamelessly bribed. Thus I believe that the consensus of experts will be biased towards denying atrocities.
To explain why I consider the Western “experts” unreliable, remember that Soviet Union was a totalitarian state, and only people approved by the regime were allowed to enter the country. So, as a first step of selection, only those Western journalists and historians who already demonstrated pro-communist sympathies were allowed to enter the country. As a second step, those who afterwards wrote anything negative, were not allowed to return. (So if you wanted to build a career as an “expert on Soviet Union”, you had a strong incentive to only write what they wanted you to write. If you didn’t, you lost access, and then your colleagues attacked you as “he writes as if he has reliable and up-to-date information about Soviet Union, but he didn’t visit the country for the last X years, and all his research is only based on guesses and rumors and outdated information—but we all know the bad things only happened in the past, and it is completely different now”.) Lastly, foreigners visiting Soviet Union were only allow to visit specified places, and the important ones were often accompanied by police all the time. So they only saw the Potemkin villages the regime wanted to show them, and they only heard good news from local people, because the local people knew that if they something improper, they will be shot along with their families afterwards. This makes me view Western left-wing intellectuals writing positively about life in Soviet Union with deep suspicion.
There is a story in The Gulag Archipelago when Solzhenitsyn was in a death camp where inmates survived 6 months on average… and one day the guards told them that an important American journalist will visit them, so they have to behave nicely. The prisoners were taken to a place outside the camp, where the journalist interviewed them. That is, the journalist spent 99% of time talking to the guards who explained him the enlightened principles of Soviet government that wants to give the second chance even to the hardest criminals (note: many inmates got their sentences for made-up crimes, because the police had to fill the quota of criminals sent to death camps), and then he just asked the prisoners: “so, is it true that you are treated nicely here?”… and the prisoners, with the guards standing right behind them, said “yeah”, not being suicidal. Returning to the camp, Solzhenitsyn thought that the journalist of course cannot be stupid enough to take this all at face value. But a few years later, he had an opportunity to read the article, and… yes, the journalist accepted the story hook, line, and sinker, and wrote a passionate article about how the Russian penal system is so much better and more humane than American.
So, of course there is a chance the survivors would exaggerate, but I still trust their estimates more. To discuss the expert opinion, I would need to know more about the background of these experts (as a rule of thumb, anyone who personally visited Soviet Union before the fall of communism is absolutely untrustworthy in my eyes—they wouldn’t be allowed in otherwise).
I agree. Some intellectuals in the West could not even condemn the execution of Lenin’s comrades by Stalin on trumped up charges. I will trust no Sovietologist who tries to show that Stalin was a good person.