Paris Shootings and Explosions Kill Over 100, Police Say

As horrific and scary as terrorist acts are to civil societies (and impactful to our politics), Stalin's rule was far more devastating. "In February 1989, two years before the fall of the Soviet Union, a research paper by Georgian historian Roy Aleksandrovich Medvedev published in the weekly tabloid Argumenti i Fakti estimated that the death toll directly attributable to Stalin’s rule amounted to some 20 million lives (on top of the estimated 20 million Soviet troops and civilians who perished in the Second World War), for a total tally of 40 million." http://www.ibtimes.com/how-many-people-did-joseph-stalin-kil...

The article you mentioned has no explanation of where he got those figures, as far as I know there is no official data on this and estimates range from 3Mln to 60Mln [1], which as you can see is quite bizarre estimate. According to official documents there were 799,455 people executed in a period from 1921 to 1953 [2] and keep in mind that's a total number of execution, not only those that were executed for political reasons, and that's over a span of 30+ years, so thats around 72 person a day across a whole soviet union territory (around 160+Mln people)

> on top of the estimated 20 million Soviet troops and civilians who perished in the Second World War

What does it have to do with Stalin? It was a war and people perish during a War.

> estimated that the death toll directly attributable to Stalin’s rule amounted to some 20 million lives

Just think about it, Stalin was in power for 30 years, so he had to "directly attribute" to a death of 2000 people every single day? Sounds quite bizarre to me. No official data of the 20Mln of "dead by Stalin's attributing", if you want to down vote me - at least show me official data.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin#Calculating_the_...

[2] - http://www.theguardian.com/education/2002/sep/12/highereduca...

It looks like you're not quite as naive as you'd sounded at first...

Remember, Stalin didn't go in for executions; he preferred slave labor. Deaths in the GULAG -- which could be as high as in the non-death-camp Nazi concentration camps, or higher -- should be counted as well as executions. (Remember how part of Stalin's price for peace with Japan was 300,000 Japanese slaves, none of whom ever returned to Japan after the war.)

Also, some deaths in the war should be attributed to Stalin -- at the very least, deaths in the punishment brigades. If you force someone to march through a minefield, and he hits a mine and dies, it's your fault.

> If you force someone to march through a minefield, and he hits a mine and dies, it's your fault

That's a war, Nazi Germany attacked USSR, people had to fight them, Stalin is not a field officer to force solders to march through a minefield, people die in a war, I don't think you are right here equating people who died fighting for their country with those who were executed for whatever reason.

Let’s start with the Holodomor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor

Since we are talking about man-made hunger at large scale I thought Churchill deserved a mention - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943

> Remember how part of Stalin's price for peace with Japan was 300,000 Japanese slaves, none of whom ever returned to Japan after the war.

Most of those Japanese POWs who survived the winter of 1945 / 46 had been repatriated by 1956, with mediation by the Red Cross.

Furthermore:

In 2005, the Russian government provided the Japanese Ministry of Health and Welfare microfilms of personal information of 40,940 Japanese POWs who had died during their detention.

Still horrific but less than 10% of the total number.

There is a fascinating history of those who returned to Japan but couldn't fit-in again due to Soviet indoctrination.

Really! I hadn't known that -- I'm delighted to learn that most came back alive!!! Thank you!