Cordell Hull saw Aliens in Glass Containers

Cordell Hull saw Aliens in Glass Containers

William E. Jones writes, "I thought your readers should be aware of the Cordell Hull story that alien artifacts were in our hands in 1939." 

 Cordell Hull

 

In early December of 1999 the Center of UFO Studies received a letter from the daughter of the Reverend Turner Hamilton Holt: 

 

"Today I want to share some knowledge that has been, by request, kept secret in our family since sometime in World War II. This concerns something my father was shown by his cousin Cordell Hull, the Secretary of State under Franklin Roosevelt. Snip, my father, who was young, brilliant, and sound of mind, told us this story because he didn't want the information to be lost.

 

One day when my father was in D.C,. Cordell swore him to secrecy and took him to a sub-basement in the U.S. Capitol building, and showed him an amazing sight: (1) Four large glass jars holding 4 creatures unknown to my father or Cordell [and],
(2) A wrecked round craft of some kind nearby.

"My father wanted my sister and I to make this information known long after he and Cordell were dead, because he felt it was a very important bit of information. We have researched your group {Mufon} and feel it is the most reliable group in the country. We hope that you will research and search this information. The jars with creatures in formaldehyde and the wrecked craft are some where! "Cordell said they were afraid they would start a panic if the public found out about it." 

Sincerely, Lucile Andrew, Ashland, Ohio.

 Depiction of Aliens in Containers

Cordell Hull was one of the greatest statesmen of the 20th Century with absolutely no apparent reason to tell this story unless it was true, especially at a time when stories of flying saucers and their alien drivers had not yet become part of our culture.
Hull was elected U.S. Senator 1931-1937, as chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and became the Secretary of State under President Franklin D. Roosevelt in March 1933, the longest in American history until 1944, when he resigned because of ill health. He was also offered the Vice Presidency and in 1945, Cordell Hull won the 1945 Nobel Prize for Peace.

Reverend Holt and Hull were both born in Pickett County and were cousins and friends.
Holt attained a Doctor in Theology degree from Ashland Theological Seminary, and was a minister at the Shenandoah Christian Church in Greenwich, Ohio. He was a community leader, and wrote a book entitled Life's Convictions. He married Vina May Clark and they had three daughters. Two of the daughters claim they had been told about the creatures by their father. Lucile's original letter essentially tells the story as her father told it to her when she was a teenager. Unfortunately, Lucile said that she was too young to really pay much attention to what her father told her but Allene the mother of Eloise, the co-author of this story was told the same story as her sister. Both sisters assured us that they remember the stories independently.
Reverend Holt described the entities in the glass jars as "creatures, a term common for his day.." He never referred to them as "aliens" or "extraterrestrials." He never said where they came from.

Depiction of the Flying Saucer

Lucile stated that his experience happened in the "late 1930s," probably 1939. The material that was nearby the less than four feet tall creatures was described as "silver metallic." She also remembers him referring to the material as being a "vehicle" that appeared to have been taken apart and was "in pieces." He said the color of this material wasn't a color that he had seen before, but for the lack of a better word he used "silver." Reverend Holt was not the sort of person to make up such a wild story and, the sisters feel that by telling the story they are following their father's wishes.

 Barbara A. Wolamin, "the curator U.S. Capitol building," chuckled a bit after being told the story. She said, "She had never heard about these creatures being stored at the Capitol, but she did confirm there was a sub-basement that was divided into storage rooms back then. She said that the building had been significantly changed over the years, so in a small way, part of Reverend Holt's story checked out.
 After Cordell Hull left government service he wrote his memoirs in a two-volume book set.No reference, to this story appeared in these pages, in his papers in the Library of Congress. Numerous experts and libraries were contacted and there has been no confirmation for the story.
If four alien bodies and other world technology were retrieved in1939, what would that do to our interpretation of the U.S. Government's involvement in UFO research? One would assume prior knowledge would have made the government ready for an event like Roswell and that the Roswell retrieval was more efficient because of that. This is a story that truly deserves further investigation.
Thanks to William E. Jones, MUFON State Director for Ohio. Dr. Irena Scott and CUFOS International
http://www.ufocasebook.com/hull.html

The Great Airships, First Encounters

The Great Airships, First Encounters

Dayton, Ohio brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright were always interested in being able to soar in the skies. Being influenced by printed material of early German attempts with gliders, the two experimenters built their own glider in 1900. Early on, they tested different types of wing shapes, while honing their plane-making skills. By 1903, the brothers had built a 12-horsepower engine and two propellers.

Late in the year, on December 17, they finally made their first flight. Though tagged as a plane, their first success in flight was actually done in a motorized glider. The flying apparatus had no way to steer it. The two had gained experience in motors while experimenting with motorized bicycles operating their own bicycle shop.

The first historic flight at Kitty Hawk lasted only twelve seconds, but it was a start. By 1905, the brothers could stay in the air for up to 30 minutes, and even steer their plane.

As far as we know, no one else had developed the capability of sustained air flight, at least on this planet. But early accounts of our first settlers included an occasional report of something flying in the sky. These happen chance sightings were normally made when one would check the sky for weather conditions, or see birds fly over. One of the very first sightings of what could be a UFO occurred as early as 1865, over 35 years before the first known flight at Kitty Hawk. Fortunately, there are still newspaper accounts of this and other early sightings of days long since passed.

The Missouri Democrat dated October 19, 1865 gives an account of the sighting of an unknown flying object under the headline of "A STRANGE STORY-REMARKABLE DISCOVERY."
The story was reported by one James Lumley, who was a trapper. The report stated that "if" what Lumley reported was true, it would shake the foundations of the scientific world. Lumely claims that in the middle of September, he was trapping in the mountains at a location about 75-100 miles above the Great Falls of the Upper Missouri River.
Just after sunset, Lumley saw a "bright, luminous, body" in the skies. This body moved very quickly to the East. After five seconds, the unknown object burst into pieces. He soon heard a thunderous explosion followed by a "rushing sound." This explosion shook the ground. He could smell sulphur in the air. Though impressed by what he had seen and heard, the next day would bring even more remarkable discoveries.
About two miles from his campsite, he could see a path cut through the forest. Whatever had come through the area had leveled everything in its path. He soon discovered the cause of the great destruction, a giant object which was made of a rock-like material.
This object had been driven into the side of a mountain after ripping through the forest. This was much more than an asteroid or comet: the object was divided into compartments. Also, hieroglyphic-like symbols could be seen carved into the object's surface.
He also discovered fragments of what appeared to be glass, and strange liquid-like stains located in several places on the object. Almost humorously, the newspaper account ascertains that the object "had" to be a meteor which was used by extraterrestrials. Their theory was that these other-worldly beings traveled on meteors, and would eventually land on Earth, and put mankind into wholesale servitude.

A second newspaper report on a strange airship was included in the Denison Daily News of Denison, Texas on January 25, 1878. A Texas farmer, John Martin, was credited with one of the first uses of the term "flying saucer." Martin had actually seen a "balloon-shaped" UFO, but used the saucer term to describe the size of the object from his perspective. Martin's sighting was January 2.
What he saw was a dark object high in the sky. The object was moving closer to him all the while. Because the object maintained a dark color, there was speculation that the object was solid and backlit.
The headlines of the 25th would read, "A STRANGE PHENOMENON." A portion of the report is listed here:
"From Mr. John Martin, a farmer who lives some six miles south of this city, we learn the following strange story: Tuesday morning while out hunting, his attention was directed to a dark object high up in the southern sky. The peculiar shape and velocity with which the object seemed to approach riveted his attention and he strained his eves to discover its character."
"When first noticed, it appeared to be about the size of an orange, which continued to grow in size. After gazing at it for some time Mr. Martin became blind from long looking and left off viewing it for a time in order to rest his eyes. On resuming his view, the object was almost overhead and had increased considerably in size, and appeared to be going through space at wonderful speed."

The most enduring account of early air ships occurred in the small Texas town of Aurora in 1897. This account would also be carried in newspapers, preserving details of an alleged UFO crash and the burial of an alien being. This ongoing legend would cause the state of Texas to declare the town a "historical site."

On April 19, 1897, a slow moving space ship crashed into a windmill, bursting into pieces. As the debris was searched through, supposedly the body of a small alien was discovered. Originally the alien pilot was dubbed the "Martian pilot." Some of the debris also revealed material sketched with a type of hieroglyphic. The town folk gave the poor little creature a proper burial in the local cemetery.
This incident, whether true or not, has had just enough publicity to stay afloat for over 100 years. It was made into a movie, "The Aurora Encounter" in 1986, starring Jack Elam. The news of the crash spread quickly, even for that time period. A newspaper article of the event still exists, written by E. E. Haydon, reporter for the Dallas Morning News. Below is the original article:

About 6 o'clock this morning the early risers of Aurora were astonished at the sudden appearance of the airship which has been sailing around the country. It was traveling due north and much nearer the earth than before. Evidently some of the machinery was out of order, for it was making a speed of only ten or twelve miles an hour, and gradually settling toward the earth.
It sailed over the public square and when it reached the north part of town it collided with the tower of Judge Proctor's windmill and went into pieces with a terrific explosion, scattering debris over several acres of ground, wrecking the windmill and water tank and destroying the judge's flower garden.
The pilot of the ship is supposed to have been the only one aboard and, while his remains were badly disfigured, enough of the original has been picked up to show that he was not an inhabitant of this world. 

How much of the story was real, and how much pure story telling we will never know. The Aurora incident is still being studied today. There are a number of other American reports, along with much evidence from around the world going back to early civilizations which indicate flying apparatus were being seen in the skies.

There seems to be little doubt that even before mankind had mastered the art of flying, someone, somewhere had. Of course, UFO reports can often times be explained by conventional flying objects, but what known craft could we use for an explanation in the mid to late 1800's? The Wright Brothers had not yet created their new flying machine.
(B J Booth)http://www.ufocasebook.com/Airships.html
------------------------------------
The Aurora, Texas Crash of 1897

The state of Texas has always been called the "big state." This expression applies to many things, but is especially true regarding "tall tales." I have heard them all of my life, and sometimes it is difficult to separate truth from fiction. Such is the case with one story that comes from the small town of Aurora. The town's history book labels the community as "the town that almost wasn't," and that expression is directly related to the legend of a spaceship crashing into a windmill, and the burial of a small alien creature found in the aftermath. This event has become the most important news story to ever come out of this small Texas city. Aurora was designated a "historical site" by the State of Texas. The year was 1897, and this was the year of the "great airships" reports in the United States. As the story goes, it was on April 17, 1897, that a slow moving space ship crashed into a windmill, bursting into pieces. As the debris was searched through, supposedly the body of a small alien was discovered. Originally the alien pilot was dubbed the "Martian pilot." Some of the debris also revealed material sketched with a type of hieroglyphic. The town folk gave the poor little creature a proper burial in the local cemetery. This incident, whether true or not, has had just enough publicity to stay afloat for over 100 years. It was made into a movie, "The Aurora Encounter" in 1986, starring Jack Elam. The news of the crash spread quickly, even for that time period. A newspaper article of the event still exists, written by S. E. Haydon, reporter for the Dallas Morning News. Below is the original article: "About 6 o'clock this morning the early risers of Aurora were astonished at the sudden appearance of the airship which has been sailing around the country. It was traveling due north and much nearer the earth than before. "Evidently some of the machinery was out of order, for it was making a speed of only ten or twelve miles an hour, and gradually settling toward the earth. It sailed over the public square and when it reached the north part of town it collided with the tower of Judge Proctor's windmill and went into pieces with a terrific explosion, scattering debris over several acres of ground, wrecking the windmill and water tank and destroying the judge's flower garden. "The pilot of the ship is supposed to have been the only one aboard and, while his remains were badly disfigured, enough of the original has been picked up to show that he was not an inhabitant of this world." The story never gained a lot of exposure at the time, but eventually it was commented on by UPI on May 24, 1973: "Aurora, Tex. -- (UPI) -- A grave in a small north Texas cemetery contains the body of an 1897 astronaut who was 'not an inhabitant of this world,' according to the International UFO Bureau. The group, which investigates unidentified flying objects, has already initiated legal proceedings to exhume the body and will go to court if necessary to open the grave, director Hayden Hewes said Wednesday. "After checking the grave with metal detectors and gathering facts for three months, we are certain as we can be at this point [that] he was the pilot of a UFO which reportedly exploded atop a well on Judge J.S. Proctor's place, April 19, 1897," Hewes said." "He was not an inhabitant of this world." The legend was back in the news! Only a couple of days later, UPI followed up the first report with another from Aurora. They had located a living witness to the event. "A ninety-one-year-old who had been a girl of fifteen in Aurora at the time of the reported incident was quoted. "I had all but forgotten the incident until it appeared in the newspapers recently." She said her parents had actually been to the crash sight, but had not allowed her to accompany them for fear of what might be in the debris. "She recalled that the remains of the pilot, 'a small man,' had been buried in the Aurora cemetery, validating the other legends." The Associated Press now joined the chase for the sensational story. From the city of Denton, Texas came this account: "A North Texas State University professor had found some metal fragments near the Oates gas station (former Proctor farm). One fragment was said to be 'most intriguing' because it consisted primarily of iron which did not seem to exhibit magnetic properties." The professor also said he was puzzled because the fragment was "shiny and malleable instead of dull and brittle like iron." For reasons unknown, the Aurora Cemetery Association fought the attempts to exhume the alleged alien body. They were successful, and the dead alien's remains stayed a mystery. The town of Aurora still shows traces of Military intervention today, and the question must be asked, "Why would the U. S. Military be in the town of Aurora?" Anyone familiar with the Roswell crash of 1947 will remember that debris from Mac Brazel's field was flown to Ft. Worth, which is only a short hop's distance from Aurora. Is this why the Military was in Aurora? Could the Government have the alien body? Today Aurora, like other cities, is modernized, and yet a few hints of the past still remain. Although the headstone of the alien was stolen, there remain pictures of it today. A copy of this photo now adorns the grave site. There has been, at times, a lobby to exhume the remains of the little pilot and give it a proper burial, with a new headstone. So far, this has not happened. Should the little grave be dug up, or should we just leave it and the legend of the Aurora UFO alone? ------------------------------------------- original newspaper article by S. E. Haydon

WAR ISN'T THIS CENTURY'S BIGGEST KILLER

http://hawaii.edu/powerkills/WSJ.ART.HTM

WAR ISN'T
THIS CENTURY'S
BIGGEST KILLER

By R.J. Rummel

Published in The Wall Street Journal (July 7, 1986). This was based on a pilot survey of possible sources of democide data. As a result of this study I applied for a grant from the United States Institute of Peace to do a much more methodical survey of democide, which eventuated in my Death by Government and Statistics of Democide. This pilot study underestimated these final totals by about 42 percent.

Our century is noted for its absolute and bloody wars. World War I saw nine-million people killed in battle, an incredi ble record that was far surpassed within a few decades by the 15 million battle deaths of World War II. Even the number killed in twentieth century revolutions and civil wars have set historical records. In total, this century's battle killed in all its international and domestic wars, revolutions, and violent conflicts is so far about 35,654,000.
Yet, even more unbelievable than these vast numbers killed in war during the lifetime of some still living, and largely unknown, is this shocking fact. This century's total killed by absolutist governments already far exceeds that for all wars, domestic and international. Indeed, this number already approximates the number that might be killed in a nuclear war.

Table 1 provides the relevant totals and classifies these by type of government (following Freedom House's definitions) and war. By government killed is meant any direct or indirect killing by government officials, or government acquiescence in the killing by others, of more than 1,000 people, except execution for what are conventionally considered criminal acts (murder, rape, spying, treason, and the like). This killing is apart from the pursuit of any ongoing military action or campaign, or as part of any conflict event. For example, the Jews that Hitler slaughtered during World War II would be counted, since their merciless and systematic killing was unrelated to and actually conflicted with Hitler's pursuit of the war.
The totals in the Table are based on a nation-by-nation assessment and are absolute minimal figures that may under estimate the true total by ten percent or more. Moreover, these figures do not even include the 1921-1922 and 1958-1961 famines in the Soviet Union and China causing about 4 million and 27 million dead, respectably. The former famine was mainly due to the imposition of a command agricultural economy, forced requisitions of food by the Soviets, and the liquidation campaigns of the Cheka; the latter was wholly caused by Mao's agriculturally destructive Great Leap Forward and collectivization.
However, Table 1 does include the Soviet government's planned and administered starvation of the Ukraine begun in 1932 as a way of breaking peasant opposition to collectivization and destroying Ukrainian nationalism. As many as ten million may have been starved to death or succumbed to famine related diseases; I estimate eight million died. Had these people all been shot, the Soviet government's moral responsibility could be no greater.
The Table lists 831 thousand people killed by free -- democratic -- governments, which should startle most readers. This figure involves the French massacres in Algeria before and during the Algerian war (36,000 killed, at a minimum), and those killed by the Soviets after being forcibly repatriated to them by the Allied Democracies during and after World War II.
It is outrageous that in line with and even often surpassing in zeal the letter of the Yalta Agreement signed by Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt, the Allied Democracies, particularly Great Britain and the United States, turned over to Soviet authorities more than 2,250,000 Soviet citizens, prisoners of war, and Russian exiles (who were not Soviet citizens) found in the Allied zones of occupation in Europe. Most of these people were terrified of the consequences of repatriation and refused to cooperate in their repatriation; often whole families preferred suicide. Of those the Allied Democracies repatriation, an estimated 795,000 were executed, or died in slave-labor camps or in transit to them.
If a government is to be held responsible for those prisoners who die in freight cars or in their camps from privation, surely those democratic governments that turned helpless people over to totalitarian rulers with foreknowledge of their peril, also should be held responsible.
Concerning now the overall mortality statistics shown in the table, it is sad that hundreds of thousands of people can be killed by governments with hardly an international murmur, while a war killing several thousand people can cause an immediate world outcry and global reaction. Simply contrast the international focus on the relatively minor Falkland Islands War of Britain and Argentina with the widescale lack of interest in Burundi's killing or acquiescence in such killing of about 100,000 Hutu in 1972, of Indonesia slaughtering a likely 600,000 "communists" in 1965, and of Pakistan, in an initially well planned massacre, eventually killing from one to three million Bengalis in 1971.
A most noteworthy and still sensitive example of this double standard is the Vietnam War. The international community was outraged at the American attempt to militarily prevent North Vietnam from taking over South Vietnam and ultimately Laos and Cambodia. "Stop the killing" was the cry, and eventually, the pressure of foreign and domestic opposition forced an American withdrawal. The overall number killed in the Vietnam War on all sides was about 1,216,000 people.
With the United States subsequently refusing them even modest military aid, South Vietnam was militarily defeated by the North and completely swallowed; and Cambodia was taken over by the communist Khmer Rouge, who in trying to recreate a primitive communist agricultural society slaughtered from one to three million Cambodians. If we take a middle two-million as the best estimate, then in four years the government of this small nation of seven million alone killed 64 percent more people than died in the ten-year Vietnam War.
Overall, the best estimate of those killed after the Vietnam War by the victorious communists in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia is 2,270,000. Now totaling almost twice as many as died in the Vietnam War, this communist killing still continues.
To view this double standard from another perspective, both World Wars cost twenty-four million battle deaths. But from 1918 to 1953, the Soviet government executed, slaughtered, starved, beat or tortured to death, or otherwise killed 39,500,000 of its own people (my best estimate among figures ranging from a minimum of twenty million killed by Stalin to a total over the whole communist period of eighty-three million). For China under Mao Tse-tung, the communist government eliminated, as an average figure between estimates, 45,000,000 Chinese. The number killed for just these two nations is about 84,500,000 human beings, or a lethality of 252 percent more than both World Wars together. Yet, have the world community and intellectuals generally shown anything like the same horror, the same outrage, the same out pouring of anti-killing literature, over these Soviet and Chinese megakillings as has been directed at the much less deadly World Wars?
As can be seen from Table 1, communist governments are overall almost four times more lethal to their citizens than non-communist ones, and in per capita terms nearly twice as lethal (even considering the huge populations of the USSR and China).
However, as large as the per capita killed is for communist governments, it is nearly the same as for other non-free governments. This is due to the massacres and widescale killing in the very small country of East Timor, where since 1975 Indonesia has eliminated (aside from the guerrilla war and associated violence) an estimated 100 thousand Timorese out of a population of 600 thousand. Omitting this country alone would reduce the average killed by noncommunist, nonfree governments to 397 per 10,000, or significantly less than the 477 per 10,000 for communist countries.
In any case, we can still see from the table that the more freedom in a nation, the fewer people killed by government. Freedom acts to brake the use of a governing elite's power over life and death to pursue their policies and ensure their rule.
This principle appeared to be violated in two aforementioned special cases. One was the French government carrying out mass killing in the colony of Algeria, where compared to Frenchmen the Algerians were second class citizens, without the right to vote in French elections. In the other case the Allied Democracies acted during and just after wartime, under strict secrecy, to turn over foreigners to a communist government. These foreigners, of course, had no rights as citizens that would protect them in the democracies. In no case have I found a democratic government carrying out massacres, genocide, and mass executions of its own citizens; nor have I found a case where such a government's policies have knowingly and directly resulted in the large scale deaths of its people though privation, torture, beatings, and the like.
Absolutism is not only many times deadlier than war, but itself is the major factor causing war and other forms of violent conflict. It is a major cause of militarism. Indeed, absolutism, not war, is mankind's deadliest scourge of all.
In light of all this, the peaceful, nonviolent, pursuit and fostering of civil liberties and political rights must be made mankind's highest humanitarian goal. Not simply to give the greatest number the greatest happiness, not simply to obey the moral imperative of individual rights, not simply to further the efficiency and productivity of a free society, but also and mainly because freedom preserves peace and life.

R.J. Rummel-Definition of Democide

http://hawaii.edu/powerkills/DBG.CHAP2.HTM

DEATH BY GOVERNMENT

Chapter 2
Definition of Democide^*

By R.J. Rummel

Genocide: among other things, the killing of people by a government because of their indelible group membership (race, ethnicity, religion, language). Politicide: the murder of any person or people by a government because of their politics or for political purposes. Mass Murder: the indiscriminate killing of any person or people by a government. Democide: The murder of any person or people by a government, including genocide, politicide, and mass murder.

Genocide is horrible, an abomination of our species, totally unacceptable. It is an obscenity, the evil of our time that all good people must work to eradicate. And at the core there is no doubt as to what this evil is--all recognize that the Nazi program to kill all Jews was genocide. Nor is there any doubt that the current Bosnian Serb massacre of Bosnian Moslems is genocide. But was genocide also the massacre of helpless villagers in the Sudan by government forces fighting a rebellion, the Indonesian army purge of communists, the assassination of political opponents by the Nationalist government on Formosa, the "land-reform" executions of landlords in the Soviet Union, or the rapid death of inmates in Vietnamese re-education camps? What about non-killing which has been called genocide, such as the absorption of one culture by another, the disease spread to natives by contact with colonists, the forced deportation of a people, or African slavery? In international conventions and the professional literature, genocide was initially defined as the intentional destruction of people because of their race, religion, ethnicity, or other permanent group membership. The origin of the concept is the 1944 work by Raphael Lemkin on Axis Rule in Occupied Europe:

New conceptions require new terms. By "genocide" we mean the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group. This new word, coined by the author to denote an old practice in its modern development, is made from the ancient Greek word genos (race, tribe) and the Latin cide (killing), thus corresponding in its formation to such words a tyrannicide, homicide, infanticide, etc. Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups. Genocide is directed against the national group as an entity, and the actions involved are directed against the individuals, not in their individual capacity, but as members of the national group.1

This was written at the height of the Jewish Holocaust, a clear case of a regime trying to exterminate a whole group, its intellectual contributions, its culture, and the very lives of all its people. There was an immediate need for some way of conceptualizing this horror and "genocide" did it. During the Nuremberg trials of the Nazi war criminals and in the post-war discussion and debate over how to prevent such killing in the future, "genocide" became commonly used. And in incredible little time, it passed from Lemkin's pages into international law. In 1946 the United Nations General Assembly recognized that "genocide is a crime under international law which the civilized world condemns, and for the commission of which principles and accomplices are punishable." Then two years later the General Assembly made this concrete. It passed the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. This international treaty, eventually signed by well over a majority of states, affirms that genocide is a punishable crime under international law, and stipulates the meaning of genocide to be:

any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

Note that the Convention is consistent with Lemkin's definition and elaboration. Relevantly here, the gravity of both is that genocide is the intent to destroy in whole or part a group. One way of doing this is to kill members of the group, but also genocide includes the intent to destroy a group in whole or in part by other means, such as by preventing births in the group or causing serious mental harm. That is, by both definitions, genocide does not necessarily include killing.
This has been the source of much confusion. In the early years of its use "genocide" was applied almost entirely to the Jewish Holocaust and then, especially through the work of Armenian scholars, to the mass murder of Armenians by the Young Turk regime during World War I (as described in chapter 10 of Death By Government). However, scholars increasingly have come to realize that restricting the killing aspect of the concept to those murdered by virtue of their indelible group membership does not even account for the millions of those wiped out by the Nazis. How then do we conceptualize the purposive government killing of protesters or dissidents, the reprisal shooting of innocent villagers, the beating to death of peasants for hiding rice, or the indiscriminate bombing of civilians? How do we conceptualize torturing people to death in prison, working them to death in concentration camps, or letting them starve to death, when such killing is done out of revenge, for an ideology, or for reasons of state having nothing to do with the social groups to which these people belong?
Because of such questions scholars have generalized the meaning of "genocide." In some cases it has been extended to include the intentionally killing of people because of their politics or for political reasons ², even though this has been explicitly excluded from the Genocide Convention. Some scholars also have extended the definition of genocide to cover any mass murder by government whatsoever ³; some have even stretched the concept much further, such as to characterize the unintentional spread of disease to indigenous populations during European colonization, including that in the American West.⁴ To all these scholars the critical aspect of "genocide" is intentional government killing.
All this is confusing. Both the non-killing aspect of "genocide" and the need to have a concept covering other kinds of government murder, all the following have been called genocide: the denial of ethnic Hawaiian culture by the American run public school system in Hawaii; government policies letting one race adopt the children of another race; African slavery by Whites; South African Apartheid; the murder of women by men; death squad murders in Guatemala; deaths in the Soviet gulag; and, of course, the Jewish Holocaust. The linking of all such diverse acts or deaths together under one label has created an acute conceptual problem that begs for the invention of new concepts to cover and be limited to intentional government murder. Thus, both Barbara Harff⁵ and I have independently developed the concept of politicide for a government's premeditated killing of people because of their politics or for political reasons. But this new concept is still not sufficient, since many mass murders by government cannot be so labeled either, such as the working of POWs to death by the Japanese army in World War II or the killing of Black Africans that resisted enslavement.
Already in general use we have the concept of "mass murder" or "massacre." Although usage varies, both usually mean the intentional and indiscriminate murder of a large number of people by government agents, such as the shooting down of unarmed demonstrators by police, or soldiers lobbing grenades into prison cells before retreating under pressure from enemy troops. They can also include the random executions of civilians, as in the German reprisals against partisan sabotage in Yugoslavia; working prisoners to death, as in the Soviet Kolyma mining camps; the blanket fire bombing of cities, as in the British-American bombing of Hamburg in 1943; the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; or atrocities committed by soldiers, as in the 1937-1938 Japanese rape and pillage of Nanking during which they probably killed some 200,000 people.
We also have the concept of "terror" applied to government killing, whose meaning is usually that of the extrajudicial execution, slaying, assassination, abduction or disappearance forever, of targeted individuals. That is, the killing is discriminating. This may be to exterminate actual or potential opponents or for social prophylaxis, as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn characterized Stalin's country-wide elimination of undesirables.⁶ Such killing also may be for the purpose of promoting fear among a people and thus ensuring their obedience and subservience.
But then there is killing that does not easily fit under any of these labels. There is, for example, murder by quota carried out by the Soviets, Chinese communists, and North Vietnamese. For the Soviet and Vietnamese communists, government (or party) agencies would order subordinate units to kill a certain number of "enemies of the people," "rightists," or "tyrants," and the precise application of the order was left to the units involved. Moreover, millions of people wasted away in labor or concentration camps not because of their social identity, their political beliefs, or who they were, but simply because they got in the way, violated some Draconian rule, did not express sufficient exuberance over the regime, innocently insulted the Leader (as by setting on a newspaper with the picture of Stalin showing), or simply was a body that was needed for labor (as the Nazis would grab women innocently walking along a road in Ukraine and deport them to Germany for forced labor). And there are the hundreds of thousands of peasants that slowly died of disease, malnutrition, overwork, and hunger in Cambodia as the Khmer Rouge forced them under penalty of death to labor in the collectivized fields, expropriating virtually their whole harvest and refusing them adequate medical care.
Moreover, even when applicable the concepts of "genocide," "politicide," "mass murder" or "massacre," and "terror" overlap and are sometimes used interchangeably. Clearly, a concept is needed that includes all intentional government killing in cold blood and that is comparable to the concept of murder for private killing.
The killing of one person by another is murder whether done because the victim was Black or White, refused to repay a loan, or hurled an insult. It is murder if the killing was a premeditated act or the person died because of a reckless and wanton disregard for their life. Nor does it matter whether the killing is done for high moral ends, for altruistic reasons, or for any other purpose, it is murder under Western and most other legal codes (unless officially authorized by government, as for judicial executions or military combat). And as a crime murder is limited by definition to taking the life of another in some way. Although we use murder metaphorically, as in someone "murdering" the language, it is not the crime of murder to hurt someone psychological, to steal their child, or to rob them of their culture.
As an analogous concept for public murder, that by government agents acting authoritatively, I offer the concept of democide. Its one root is the Greek dTmos, or people; the other is the same as for genocide, which is from the Latin caedere, to kill. Democide's necessary and sufficient meaning is that of the intentional government killing of an unarmed person or people. Unlike the concept of genocide, it is restricted to intentional killing, and does not extend to attempts to eliminate cultures, races, or a people by means other than killing people. Moreover, democide is not limited to the killing component of genocide, nor to politicide, mass murder or massacre, or terror. It includes them all and also what they exclude, as long as such killing is a purposive act, policy, process, or institution of government. In detail, democide is any actions by government:

(1) designed to kill or cause the death of people

(1.1) because of their religion, race, language, ethnicity, national origin, class, politics, speech, actions construed as opposing the government or wrecking social policy, or by virtue of their relationship to such people;
(1.2) in order to fulfill a quota or requisition system;
(1.3) in furtherance of a system of forced labor or enslavement;
(1.4) by massacre;
(1.5) through imposition of lethal living conditions;
(1.6) by directly targeting noncombatants during a war or violent conflict.

(2) that cause death by virtue of an intentionally or knowingly reckless and depraved disregard for life (which constitutes practical intentionality), as in

(2.1) deadly prison, concentration camp, forced labor, prisoner of war, or recruit camp conditions;
(2.2) killing medical or scientific experiments on humans;
(2.3) torture or beatings;
(2.4) encouraged or condoned murder, or rape, looting, and pillage during which people are killed;
(2.5) a famine or epidemic during which government authorities withhold aid, or knowingly act in a way to make it more deadly;
(2.6) forced deportations and expulsions causing deaths.

(3) with the following qualifications and clarifications:

(a) "government" includes de facto governance, as by the Communist Party of the People's Republic of China; or by a rebel or warlord army over a region and population it has conquered, as by the brief rule of Moslem Turks (East Turkistan Republic) over part of Sinkiang Province (1944-1946);
(b) "actions by governments" comprise official or authoritative actions by government officials, including the police, military, or secret service; or such non-governmental actions (e.g., by brigands, press-gangs, or secret societies) receiving government approval, aid, or acceptance;
(c) clause 1.1 includes, for example, directly targeting noncombatants during a war or violent conflict out of hatred or revenge, or to depopulate an enemy region or terrorize or force the population into urging surrender; this would involve, among other actions, indiscriminate urban bombing or shelling, or blockades that cause mass starvation;
(d) "relationship to such people" (clause 1.1) includes their relatives, colleagues, co-workers, teachers, or students;
(e) "massacre" (clause 1.4) includes the mass killing of prisoners of war or of captured rebels;
(f) "quota" system (clause 1.3) includes randomly selecting people for execution in order to meet a quota; or arresting people according to a quota, some of whom are then executed;
(g) "requisition" system (clause 1.3) includes taking from peasants or farmers all their food and produce, leaving them to starve to death;
(h) and excluding from the definition:

(h.1) execution for what are internationally considered capital crimes, such as murder, rape, spying, treason, and the like, so long as evidence does not exist that such allegations were invented by the government in order to execute the accused;
(h.2) actions taken against armed civilians during mob action or a riot (e.g., killing people with weapons in their hands is not democide);
(h.3) the death of noncombatants killed during attacks on military targets so long as the primary target is military (e.g., during bombing enemy logistics).

Table 2.1 gives an overview of this concept in relation to the other concepts mentioned above, placing them within the context of democidal sources of mass death.
Democide is meant to define the killing by government as the concept of murder does individual killing in domestic society. Here intentionality (premeditation) is critical. This also includes practical intentionality. If a government causes deaths through a reckless and depraved indifference to human life, the deaths were as though intended. If through neglect a mother lets her baby die of malnutrition, this is murder. If we imprison a girl in our home, force her to do exhausting work throughout the day, not even minimally feed and clothe her, and watch her gradually die a little each day without helping her, then her inevitable death is not only our fault, but our practical intention. It is murder. Similarly, for example, as the Soviet government forcibly transported political prisoners to labor camps hundreds of thousands of them died at the hands of criminals or guards, or from heat, cold, and inadequate food and water. Although not intended (indeed, this deprived the regime of their labor), the deaths were still public murder. It was democide.
Moreover, when conceptually there is not a clear domestic analog to murder, as in the indiscriminate bombing of urban areas, I have tried to follow the Geneva Conventions and Protocols.⁷ Killing helpless people in time of war or military action in breach of these international agreements is a violation of the international law they codify a crime and is ipso facto democide. Therefore the forced detention of prisoners of war under conditions that cause their death is democide, as is death caused by medical experimentation on them. Bombing, shelling, or bombarding civilians indiscriminately is also democide, as is the forced removal of all food stuff in occupied areas, thus causing the death of the inhabitants from starvation. Similarly, food blockades that cause the indiscriminate death of civilians is democide, as was the largely British blockade of the Central Powers during and after World War I. As Article 14 to Protocol II of the Geneva Conventions affirms: "Starvation of civilians as a method of combat is prohibited."⁸
I have to again be absolutely clear on this since so much takes place in time of war. War related killing by military forces that international agreements and treaties directly or by implication prohibit is democide, whether the parties are signatories or not. That killing explicitly permitted is not democide. Thus, the death of civilians during the bombing of munitions plants in World War II is not democide. Nor is the death of civilians when through navigation or bombing errors, or the malfunction of equipment, bombs land on a school or hospital, unless it is clear that the bombing was carried out recklessly in spite of a high risk to such civilian buildings. Nor is the death of civilians in a bombed village beneath which has been built enemy bunkers. Nor is the death of civilians caught in a cross fire between enemy soldiers, or those civilians killed while willingly helping troops haul supplies or weapons. Seldom is it easy to make these distinctions, but the aim here must be clear. I discriminate between democide in time of war and war-deaths. The latter are those of the military and civilians from battle or battle related disease and famine. The former are those victims (which may include the military, as when POWs are massacred) of internationally prohibited war-time killing, what may be called war-crimes or crimes against humanity.
What then about the American fire-bombing of Tokyo or atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II? I recently received a letter from a colleague who was distressed that I would count deaths from such raids as American democide. I discuss this to some extent in Statistics of Democide, but here I might note that this was indiscriminate civilian bombing and would thus be by Article 48 to Protocol I of the Geneva conventions unlawful. The Article reads:

In order to ensure respect for and protection of the civilian population and civilian objects, the Parties to the conflict shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives and accordingly shall direct their operations only against military objectives.9

Article 51 makes the meaning of this more specific:

Indiscriminate attacks are prohibited. Indiscriminate attacks are: (a) those which are not directed at a specific military objective; (b) those which employ a method or means of combat which cannot be directed at a specific military objective; or (c) those which employ a method or means of combat the effects of which cannot be limited as required by this Protocol; and consequently, in each such case, are of a nature to strike military objectives and civilians or civilian objects without distinction.10

And still more specifically,

Among others, the following types of attacks are to be considered as indiscriminate: (a) an attack by bombardment by any methods or means which treats as a single military objective a number of clearly separated and distinct military objectives located in a city, town, village or other area containing a similar concentration of civilians or civilian objects. . . .11

Pulling all this together, throughout this book a death constitutes democide if it is the intentional killing of an unarmed or disarmed person by government agents acting in their authoritative capacity and pursuant to government policy or high command (as in the Nazi gassing of the Jews). It is also democide if these deaths were the result of such authoritative government actions carried out with reckless and wanton disregard for the lives of those affected (as putting people in concentration camps in which the forced labor and starvation rations were such as to cause the death of inmates). It is democide if government promoted or turned a blind eye to these deaths even though they were murders carried out "unofficially" or by private groups (as by death squads in Guatemala or El Salvador). And these deaths also may be democide if high government officials purposely allowed conditions to continue that were causing mass deaths and issued no public warning (as in the Ethiopian famines of the 1970s). All extra-judicial or summary executions comprise democide. Even judicial executions may be democide, as in the Soviet show trials of the late 1930s. Judicial executions for "crimes" internationally considered trivial or non-capital, as of peasants picking up grain at the edge of a collective's fields, of a worker for telling an anti-government joke, or of an engineer for a miscalculation, are also democide.
I have found that in the vast majority of events and episodes democide is unambiguous. When under the command of higher authorities soldiers force villagers into a field and then machine gun them, there should be no question about definition. When a group armed by the government for this purpose turn the teachers and students out of their school, line up those of a particular tribe and shoot them, it is surely democide. When all food stuffs are systematically removed from a region by government authorities and a food blockade is put in place, the resulting deaths must be democide. Sad to say, most cases of government killing in this century is that clear. The number of deaths will be hazy for many of these cases; the perpetrators and intent will not.

---

NOTES

* From the pre-publisher edited manuscript of Chapter 2 in R.J. Rummel, Death By Government, 1994. For full reference this book, the list of its contents, figures, and tables, and the text of its preface, click book.
1. Lemkin (1944, p. 79).
2. See, for example, Fein (1984); Kuper (1981) and Porter (1982).
3. See, for example, Chalk and Jonassohn (1988); Charny (1991).
4. See Stannard (1992).
5. See Harff and Gurr (1988).
6. Solzhenitsyn (1973).
7. On these I have found the commentaries in Bothe and Partisch (1982) particularly useful.
8. Bothe and Partisch (1982, p. 679).
9. Bothe and Partisch (1982, p. 280-281).
10. Ibid., p. 297.
11. Ibid.

R.J. Rummel-LETHAL POLITICS-ch,I (MORTACRACY IN THE USSR)

http://hawaii.edu/powerkills/USSR.CHAP.1.HTM#appen2

PREFACE^*

This book is part of a project on government genocide and mass killing in this century. The aim is to test the hypothesis that the citizens of democracies are the least likely to be murdered by their own governments; the citizens of totalitarian, especially Marxist systems, the most likely. The theory is that democratic systems provide a path to peace, and universalizing them would eliminate war and minimize global, political violence. This was the conclusion of my Understanding Conflict and War,¹ and has been further confirmed by systematic, empirical tests since.² In the process of that research, I discovered that governments have murdered millions of their own citizens, and that in some cases, the death toll may have actually exceeded that of World War II. To get some idea of the numbers involved, I surveyed the extent of genocide and mass killing by governments since 1900. The results were shocking: according to these first figures, independent of war and other kinds of conflict, governments probably have murdered 119,400,000 people, Marxist governments about 95,200,000 of them. By comparison, the battle-killed in all foreign and domestic wars in this century total 35,700,000.³
These monstrous statistics sharply reoriented my research. For over thirty years, as a political scientist and peace researcher, my research had focused on the causes and conditions of war, conflict, and peace. I had believed that war was the greatest killer and that nuclear war would be a global holocaust. Now I have found that aside from war the total killed by government was almost four times that of war. It was as though a nuclear war had already occurred.
Surprisingly few have recognized this. While much has been published on individual genocides, such as of the Jews or Armenians, and some general analyses have been done, as by Kuper⁴, virtually no research has been published on the total amount of genocide and mass murder among nations.⁵ The one exception is Elliot's Twentieth Century Book of the Dead, which arrives at a figure of about 100,000,000 killed in this century, including war. The work, however, omits many small genocides and is limited in its treatment of killing by Marxist governments.
For these reasons, with a grant from the United States Peace Institute, I undertook in 1988 a project to refine and elaborate my findings, to determine empirically the conditions and causes of government genocide and mass killing, and to assess the role of democratic versus autocratic institutions. The aim was to provide a comprehensive overview of such governmental murder, to test further whether the more democratic a nation, the more secure its citizens from such killing, and to publish the results in a major monograph.
Among the first studies undertaken was that of Soviet genocide and mass murder. This was a very difficult task, for while widely different estimates were available on such Soviet institutions as the labor camp, such polices as collectivization or the Red Terror, or such events as the deportation of Poles in 1939-1941, few experts had tried to systematically accumulate and total them over Soviet history. To my knowledge, there are only two major works in English attempting to tally the toll in some systematic manner.⁶ Robert Conquest gives a carefully accumulated total for the Stalin years (at least 20,000,000 killed)⁷; and in his samizdat translated into English, Dyadkin, a Soviet geophysicist, did a demographic analysis of excess Soviet deaths, 1926 to 1954, and concluded that Soviet repression killed 23,100,000 to 32,000,000 Soviet citizens over this 29-year period.⁸
Scattered here and there in one book or another are estimates of the number murdered. For example, Panin claims that 57,000,000 to 69,500,000 were killed, and says that estimates of authors in the West vary from 45,000,000 to 80,000,000 ⁹; Solzhenitsyn mentions a 66,000,000 figure calculated by an ŽmigrŽ professor of statistics ¹⁰; and Stewart-Smith gives an estimate of 31,000,000 killed in repression ¹¹. Like Dyadkin's, some estimates have been based on demographic analyses, as Medvedev's 22,000,000 to 23,000,000 total (1918-1953), or Dyadkin's aforementioned figures.¹²
For lack of a thorough statistical accumulation and analysis of Soviet genocides and mass murder from 1917 to recent years, I had to undertake at least a first effort in this direction. Initially, the result was to be a chapter in a monograph on 20th century genocide and mass killing. But it soon became clear that the Soviets themselves are responsible for so many genocides, and that so many different kinds of mass killings had occurred, that to unravel and present the detailed events and institutions involved and the related statistics would require a monograph itself. Thus this book.
To best present the historical details, statistical analyses, and various figures and sources, and yet to make the book readable and useful to various publics, I have divided the book in the following way. First, the statistical data, sources, and analyses have been separated from the historical when, what, and why of the estimates. This provides an explanation and understanding of the deaths being reported, and historical narrative for those uninterested in the statistical details, while also making available the statistical material for specialists. Second, rather than put all the statistics in one, huge appendix at the end of the book, an appendix has been prepared for each historical period, thus keeping the historical narrative and related statistical material together. Third, each historical period has been treated as a chapter, with the associated statistical appendix at the end. Finally, an historical overview and analysis and presentation of the final results was made the first chapter, which constitutes an executive summary. Its appendices sum up the statistical data, compares these to estimates in the literature, and simulates the result of altering some important assumptions.
I should note that there is a clear division in style between the appendices and the historical narrative. In the appendices I have tried to be as objective, neutral, and balanced in a conservative direction as possible, recognizing that we all have biases that work against our best intentions in surprising ways. The methodological appendix to this book spells out the principles and procedures guiding the preparation of the estimates and totals in the appendices.
However, in the narrative I have been less than dry and disinterested. I am clearly horrified by the nature and extent of mass killings being recorded; as a pacifist, I have been so overcome with emotion that at times I have had to put this work aside many times. Therefore, I did not restrain myself from peppering the narrative with adjectives like "monstrous", "horrible", and "evil", and liberally used irony and sarcasm as rhetorical weapons against this inhumanity. The style of Solzhenitsyn's Gulag seemed also appropriate here. But he wrote with a mission, and from the perspective of his own experience, and I am no Solzhenitsyn. Once I was able to unload myself onto a preliminary draft, I then thoroughly revised it, eliminating the more "egregious" adjectives and phrases. Nonetheless, a style remains which is more assertive, less "balanced", than some specialists and historians might desire. If this be so, then I can only say that it is to others I must leave writing with dispassion about the murder of tens of millions of human beings.
One final comment on the term murder. If anything may appear to display an anti-Soviet, less than professional bias, it may be the consistent accusation that the Soviets have murdered all these millions; and to use the term in the title of this book. I am doing this, however, because I believe the technical meaning of murder fits what the Soviets did. To murder someone means to unlawfully and purposely kill him, or to be responsible for his death through reckless and depraved indifference to his life (as in Soviet deportations or the labor camps). As established by the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal after World War II, "crimes against humanity" consists of

murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation and other inhuman acts done against any civilian population, or persecutions on political, racial or religious grounds, when such acts are done or such persecutions are carried on in execution of or in connexion with any crime against peace or any war crime.13

With the Nazi invasion of Poland that began World War II, their massacre of Jews and others, deportation of civilians, atrocities in occupied territory, execution of opponents at home, and so on, were thus crimes against humanity. Similar acts by Soviet authorities during their own civil and international wars were also such crimes.
As for Soviet genocides, massacres of civilians, deportations, and the like, in time of peace, the Genocide Convention, passed by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1948 covers much of that. By Article I:

The Contracting Parties confirm that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or in time of war, is a crime under international law which they undertake to prevent and to punish.14

The Soviet representative, among others, successfully fought to limit the interpretation of genocide to national, religious, ethnic, and language groups.¹⁵ The massacre of political groups and opponents are purposely excluded. But a prior resolution of the General Assembly passed in late 1946 explicitly covers them. According to this resolution,

Genocide is a denial of the right of existence of entire human groups, as homicide is the denial of the right to live of individual human beings....Many instances of such crimes of genocide have occurred, when racial, religious, political and other groups have been destroyed, entirely or in part.... The General Assembly Therefore, Affirms that genocide is a crime under international law which the civilized world condemns, and for the commission of which principals and accomplices--whether private individuals, public officials or statesmen, and whether the crime is committed on religious, racial, political or any other grounds--are punishable.16

All this covers what the Soviets did in killing their own or subject people. According to the international community, these were crimes against humanity. They were illegal. If ever the responsible actual or former Soviet officials were tried before an international tribunal for these crimes, they could be punished as murderers.
While trying to be as historically objective as possible, we also should not fear calling a murderer, a murderer; and murder, murder.

LETHAL POLITICS

Chapter 1

61,911,000 Victims:
Utopianism Empowered^*

By R.J. Rummel

...when we are reproached with cruelty, we wonder how people can forget the most elementary Marxism. ---- Lenin "How long will you keep killing people?" asked Lady Astor of Stalin in 1931. Replied Stalin, "the process would continue as long as was necessary" to establish a communist society.

Probably 61,911,000 people, 54,769,000 of them citizens, have been murdered by the Communist Party--the government--of the Soviet Union. This is about 178 people for each letter, comma, period, digit, and other characters in this book. Old and young, healthy and sick, men and women, and even infants and infirm, were killed in cold-blood. They were not combatants in civil war or rebellions, they were not criminals. Indeed, nearly all were guilty of ... nothing.
Some were from the wrong class--bourgeoisie, land owners, aristocrats, kulaks. Some were from the wrong nation or race-- Ukrainians, Black Sea Greeks, Kalmyks, Volga Germans. Some were from the wrong political faction--Trotskyites, Mensheviks, Social Revolutionaries. Or some were just their sons and daughters, wives and husbands, or mothers and fathers. And some were those occupied by the Red Army--Balts, Germans, Poles, Hungarians, Rumanians. Then some were simply in the way of social progress, like the mass of peasants or religious believers. Or some were eliminated because of their potential opposition, such as writers, teachers, churchmen; or the military high command; or even high and low Communist Party members themselves.
In fact, we have witnessed in the Soviet Union a true egalitarian social cleansing and flushing: no group or class escaped, for everyone and anyone could have had counter-revolutionary ancestors, class lineage, counter-revolutionary ideas or thought, or be susceptible to them. And thus, almost anyone was arrested, interrogated, tortured, and after a forced confession of a plot to blow up the Kremlin, or some such, shot or sentenced to the dry guillotine--slow death by exposure, malnutrition, and overwork in a forced labor camp.
Part of this mass killing was genocide, as in the wholesale murder of hundreds of thousands of Don Cossacks in 1919,¹ the intentional starving of about 5,000,000 Ukrainian peasants to death in 1932-33,² or the deportation to mass death of 50,000 to 60,000 Estonians in 1949.³ Part was mass murder, as of the wholesale extermination of perhaps 6,500,000 "kulaks" (in effect, the better off peasants and those resisting collectivization) from 1930 to 1937,⁴ the execution of perhaps a million Party members in the Great Terror of 1937-38,⁵ and the massacre of all Trotskyites in the forced labor camps.⁶
And part of the killing was so random and idiosyncratic that journalists and social scientists have no concept for it, as in hundreds of thousands of people being executed according to preset, government, quotas. Says Vladimir Petrov (who in 1954 defected while a spy-chief in Australia and whose credibility and subsequent revelations were verified by a Royal--Australian-- Commission on Espionage⁷) about his work during the years 1936 to 1938:

I handled hundreds of signals to all parts of the Soviet Union which were couched in the following form: "To N.K.V.D., Frunze. You are charged with the task of exterminating 10,000 enemies of the people. Report results by signal.--Yezhov." And in due course the reply would come back: "In reply to yours of such-and-such date, the following enemies of the Soviet people have been shot."8

From time to time, in one period or another, quotas also were generally assigned for the numbers to be arrested throughout the length and breadth of Soviet territory. For example, Solzhenitsyn makes these quotas basic to the Great Terror of 1936 to 1938:

The real law underlying the arrests of those years was the assignment of quotas, the norms set, the planned allocations. Every city, every district, every military unit was assigned a specific quota of arrests to be carried out by a stipulated time. From then on everything else depended on the ingenuity of the Security operations personnel.9

But murder and arrest quotas did not work well.¹⁰ Where to find the "enemies of the people" to shoot was a particularly acute problem for these local NKVD who had been diligent in uncovering "plots". They had to resort to shooting those arrested for the most minor civil crimes, those previously arrested and released, and even mothers and wives who appeared at NKVD headquarters for information about their arrested loved ones.
We lack a concept for murder by quotas because we, not the journalist, historian, nor political scientist, have ever before confronted the fact that a government can and has done this kind of thing. For the same reason, neither do we have a concept for the execution of starving peasants who fished in a stream without Party permission (trying to steal state property), nor pinning a ten-year sentence on the first one to stop clapping after Stalin's name was mentioned at a public meeting.¹¹ Nor for executing a fourteen-year-old because his father was purged; nor for the Red Army's not only permitting but encouraging mass rape and murder of civilians in virtually every country it newly occupied during World War II.
I call all this kind of killing, whether genocide or mass murder, democide. Throughout this book, democide will mean a government's concentrated, systematic, and serial murder of a large part of its population.
In sum, the Soviets have committed a democide of 61,911,000 people, 7,142,000 of them foreigners. This staggering total is beyond belief. But, as shown in Figure 1.1, it is only the prudent, most probable tally, in a range from an highly unlikely, low figure of 28,326,000 (4,263,000 foreigners); and an equally unlikely high of 126,891,000 (including 12,134,000 foreigners). This is a range of uncertainty in our democide estimates--an error range--of 97,808,000 human beings.
Just consider this error range in Soviet democide, as shown in Figure 1.1. It is larger than the population of 96 percent of the world's nations and countries. Actually, if France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark and Switzerland were blasted clean of all human life in a nuclear war, the human toll would be less than just this range in the Soviet's probable democide--the range, and not even the total murdered. 

Appendix 1.1 to this chapter provides the overall totals, and comparisons of these totals to those estimated by others. Appendix 1.2 details various estimates of death rates in labor camps or through deportations, and the overall death rate estimates used throughout the appendices. It also shows the effect of varying some assumptions underlying the totals.
All figures given in the text are taken from or based on one or more of these appendices. Table 1.1 gives a breakdown of the most probable, central estimates, of the various agents of murder developed in these appendices for each historical period. The Soviet death toll from international and civil wars and rebellions is also shown for comparison. Figure 1.2 displays the relative contribution of the democide components to the overall 61,911,000; Figure 1.3 shows the percentage contribution of these components and war to total violent deaths. Finally, Figure 1.4 overlays the total democide per period by the annual democide rate.
It is impossible to fix in mind and digest this democide. Focusing on the most probable estimate of 61,911,000 murdered, as shown in Table 1.2 it is over four times the battle dead (15,000,000) for all nations in the Second World War.¹² Indeed, it exceeds the total deaths (35,700,000) from all this century's international, civil, guerrilla, and liberation wars, including the Russian Civil War itself.¹³ Many other comparisons are given in Table 1.2 and Figure 1.5, the purpose of which is to communicate some feel for what the Soviet democide means in sheer numbers.
Another way of viewing the Soviet democide is in terms of the annual risk it posed to the soviet citizen. Table 1.3 shows this risk of death from war and some commonplace risks, like smoking or cancer. Figure 1.6, following, graphs some of them.
Now consider just the low democide estimate of 24,063,000 citizens murdered. This is an absolute, rock bottom, low. It is calculated from all the most conservative, lowest estimates, for all kinds and sources and periods of democide, for 1917 to 1987. It is highly improbable that all these hundreds of very low estimates are correct. The low of 24,063,000 killed is over 20,000,000 dead below the 42 year average (1918-1959) low estimate among experts or knowledgeable Soviets; more important, it is over 15,000,000 dead below the 42 year average of those low estimates based on census data (see Appendix 1.1). Yet, this lower limit of 24,063,000 citizens murdered is itself much greater than the 15,000,000 battle dead of the largest, most lethal war of all time.
This absolute minimum is already so overwhelming that one's horror, shock, or disbelief hardly can be increased were the number five times higher, as is the high estimate; nor can any moral or practical conclusion that one would draw from this low be altered in the slightest by focusing on the more probable, middle estimate of 54,769,000 citizens killed.
Morally, we simply cannot distinguish a difference in evil between the murder of 20,000,000 from that of 60,000,000 human beings. Hitler's crimes against humanity, his mass murder of Jews, Gypsies, the handicapped, and so on, already take us to the limit of our moral discernment and we can only say of Stalin and Lenin, that they, like Hitler, were absolutely evil. While for statistical and correlational analysis, it is important to approximate the number murdered as close as the data and prudence allow, for moral and policy purposes, we well could focus on the low democide of over 24,000,000 citizens, or over 28,0000,000 people in total.
Whether the actual democide is this low, or higher, the fact is that most of these people were intentionally, knowingly, killed on a continental scale. Of course, this begs the most probing questions. What actually happened? When? Why? How are we to understand this democide? I will try to specifically answer these questions in the following chapters. But the key to it all can be disclosed here: Marxism.
In November, 1917, Lenin led his small Bolshevik party in a very risky, but ultimately successful coup against the provisional, democratic socialist government of Aleksandr Kerensky. This was not just a seizure of power and change of leadership, but a revolutionary transformation in the very nature and world-view of governance. It was the creation of a unique reason-of-state; and the institution of an utterly cold-blooded, social engineering view of the state's power over its people. This unparalleled, brand new
Bolshevik government married a fully, self-contained, secular philosophy of nature and the Good, to an initially shaky, but an eventually absolute, ahistorical political force--a melding of an idea and power. It was then and has been since, utopia empowered.¹⁴
The philosophy is an universal perspective, at once a theory about reality (dialectical materialism), about man in society (historical materialism); about the best society (communism); about an implementing public policy (a socialist dictatorship of the proletariat); and about political tactics (revolution, vanguard, party, etc.). And its praxis is to be absolute in scope, absolute in power, and absolute in technique. Quoting Lenin: "The scientific concept of dictatorship means nothing else but this: power without limit, resting directly upon force, restrained by no laws, absolutely unrestricted by rules."¹⁵
In sum, with its theory, attendant "factual" explanation of the past and present human condition, and vision of a better society, this ideology provides both answers to the whys and wherefores of political and economic life, and more important, it provides solutions: it defines for the believer a way to peace and happiness, to equality and welfare, and to freedom from hunger, poverty, and exploitation.
The theoretical part of this communist ideology was first developed in the works of the 19th century philosopher and political-economist Karl Marx and his followers. Lenin, both a philosopher and a political revolutionary, added a political program and tactics. Lenin's peculiar brand of communism became known as Bolshevism before and for decades after he successfully seized power in Russia; in our time the ideology is called Marxism, or more specifically, Marxism-Leninism to denote the revisions introduced by Lenin. Henceforth, I will simply refer to it as Marxism.
Marxism is thoroughly uncompromising. It knows the truth, absolutely; it absolutely knows the Good (communism) and the Evil (capitalism, feudalism); it absolutely knows the way (a socialist dictatorship of the proletariat). Once this ideology seized the authority and naked power of the Russian state--its army, police, courts, prisons--it moved to put its Marxist program into effect. And thus, the history of the Soviet Union since the Bolshevik coup has been simply this: a protracted, total, engineering application of state power to demolish and then rebuild all social institutions--to create on earth the Marxist utopia.
Since Marxists know the Truth, ideological opponents could only be gravely mistaken and therefore enemies of the people. Knowing the Way to Happiness, those who intentionally or unintentionally blocked the Way must be eliminated. Even at the level of tactics, even among those Marxists who had the correct Vision, no one could be allowed to differ; for even at this level, at least until Mikhail Gorbachev, there was only one Truth.
Absolute ideas plus the absolute power of the state could mean only one thing: the state and its monopoly of force was the instrument of "progress", of Utopian change. Thus, the Red Army would be used to suppress resistance to taking private property (being a source of evil); a secret police force would be created to uncover enemies of the people, and to eliminate opponents. Law would become an instrument of terror and revolutionary change; court trials, if held, would be predetermined as the clergy of Marxism saw necessary. And all was permitted as a matter of course--governmental lies, deceit, robbery, beating, torture, and the murder of 61,911,000 people--all instrumental to the communist future.
Most important, in this ideology the living were to be sacrificed for the unborn. The living were objects, like mortar and bricks, lumber and nails, to be used, manipulated, piled on each other, to create the new social structure; personal interests and desires, pain or pleasure, were of little moment, insignificant in the light of the new world to be created.¹⁶ After all, how could one let, say, Ivan's desire to till the land of his father, Mikhail's to purchase better shoes, or Aleksandr's to store food to preserve his family through the winter, stand in the way of the greater good of future generations? This ideological imperative can be seen in Lenin's attitude toward the famine of 1891-2 on the Volga. As Russians, regardless of class and ideology, tried to help the victims, Lenin opposed such aid, arguing that famine would radicalize the masses. Said Lenin, "Psychologically, this talk of feeding the starving is nothing but an expression of the saccharine-sweet sentimentality so characteristic of our intelligentsia."¹⁷
Ideology is the critical variable in Soviet democide. It explains how individual communists could beat, torture, and murder by the hundreds, and sleep well at night. Grim tasks, to be sure, but after all, they were working for the greater good. It explains how Soviet rulers, particularly Lenin and Stalin, could knowingly command the death of hundreds of thousands and, as in the case of the Ukrainian famine of 1932-33, millions. Read Solzhenitsyn on this:

Shakespeare's evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses. Because they had no ideology. Ideology--that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory which helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and other's eyes, so that he won't hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors. That was how the agents of the Inquisition fortified their wills: by invoking Christianity; the conquerors of foreign lands by extoling the grandeur of their Motherland; the colonizers, by civilization; the Nazis, by race; and the Jacobins (early and late), by equality, brotherhood, and the happiness of future generations. Thanks to ideology, the twentieth century was fated to experience evildoing on a scale calculated in the millions.... There was a rumor going the rounds between 1918 and 1920 that the Petrograd Cheka...did not shoot all those condemned to death but fed some of them alive to the animals in the city zoos. I do not know whether this is truth or calumny....But I wouldn't set out to look for proof, either. Following the practice of the bluecaps, I would propose that they prove to us that this was impossible. How else could they get food for the zoos in those famine years? Take it away from the working class? Those enemies were going to die anyway, so why couldn't their deaths support the zoo economy of the Republic and thereby assist our march into the future? Wasn't it expedient? That is the precise line the Shakespearean evildoer could not cross. But the evildoer with ideology does cross it and his eyes remain dry and clear.18

However, in human affairs, especially at the level of societies and nations, no ideology, religion, or policies are pure and simple. The practical articulation and implementation of Marxism has been swayed or refracted, hindered or aggravated, aided or abetted, by Russian tradition and racism; by Russian imperialism and chauvinism.
Moreover, communists have not been immune to the lust for power for its own sake. Surely, the cliches of power--power aggrandizes itself, power can only be limited by power, and absolute power corrupts absolutely--apply no less to Marxists than other rulers. Was the unleashing of the Red Terror by Lenin in 1919 mainly to assure his power and rule? Was it simply the traditional reflex of a Russian ruler to political opposition? Was the famine Stalin knowingly imposed on the Ukraine an attempt to assure Russian national dominance over the Ukraine? Was it due to Stalin's fear that the assertive independence of Ukrainian communists would undermine his power? Doubtless such different factors played a role. But throughout this history, Marxism was mediating, channeling, directing: communism was the Good, the state (read ruler) must have and use absolute power to create this better world; any one or anything that actually or potentially hindered this power or future must be eliminated.
In this light, the macro history of Soviet democide makes sense, although individual policies or campaigns may appear inexplicable, like quotas for shooting "enemies of the people." This history is long and complex, but if organized around the major ideological campaigns and events, can be divided into eight periods: Civil War, National Economic Policy, collectivization, Great Terror, pre-World War II, World War II, post-war and Stalin's twilight, and post-Stalin. I will devote a chapter to each period and try to provide some understanding of what democide occurred and why.

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APPENDIX 1.1

Table 1A presents the overall democide and totals of those killed in terror, deportations, camps and transit, and democidal famine for the eight periods of Soviet history, 1917-1987 (lines 18 to 23 in the table). From 28,326,000 to 126,891,000 people were killed during these years; a prudent estimate is 61,911,000 dead. Of these, 54,767,000 were Soviet citizens (line 8). The totals for citizens and foreigners are given separately in the table (lines 2 to 15). Note that the democide figures for citizens, and thus the overall democide total, exceeds the sum of the democide components (terror, deportations, etc.). This is due to the lack of estimates for some of these components for some of the periods, and the derivation of the democide total for these and some other periods from democide estimates available in the references.
Also given in the table is the total dead from international wars, battle dead from civil war and rebellions, and non-democidal dead from famine and disease. Considering just the mid-estimates, 29,536,000 Soviet citizens have thus died (the sum of lines 26 and 28), or a little over half the democide among citizens.
Of course, this begs the question: how good are these democide figures? This will be answered, in part, through the appendices to each of the following chapters, which will detail for the relevant period the various estimates, sources, qualifications, procedures, and calculations that accumulate across the periods to the democide totals given in Table 1A.
However, some tests can also be applied here. But first, before considering them, some consideration must be given to the meaning of validity in this context. As pointed out in Appendix A on methods and procedures, the actual democide toll is beyond our grasp, were even Soviet archives open to us. At best, we can only find some high-low range that most probably brackets the true number, and estimate within that range a most likely, prudent estimate. At the beginning, therefore, we must accept that mid-estimates in Table 1A are wrong, perhaps off by many millions. Even the lows and highs may not be low or high enough. Therefore, the validity of these results in the scientific sense of the term is already clear--they are undoubtedly invalid.
But there is a larger meaning of the term then being precisely true. That is, being most probable in the light of the experience of those involved, the knowledge of experts, the social and physical conditions, and the social context. For example, given what has been revealed about GULAG during the Second World War by former prisoners and Soviet officials, such as the near famine conditions imposed on the camps; the deadly camp regime, the heavy labor for possibly 12 to 14 hours a day, often in a killing climate; the low value given prisoner's lives by the camp administration; the constant uncovering of "plots", with subsequent rounds of executions, by camp officials trying to justify their noncombat duties in wartime; and the assertions by prisoners and experts that many millions thus died; an estimate that the annual death rate was from 10 percent to 28 percent seems likely, and that consequently over 6,000,000 to near 18,000,000 camp prisoners were killed during the 4Û-years out of an annual camp population ranging from 9,000,000 to 12,300,000, seems reasonable. And that given the detailed estimates in the references, that within this range the true number is around 11,000,000 dead appears most probable. On the other hand, given all the evidence, an estimate that, say, 500,000 prisoners (or 30,000,000), were killed during the war appears most improbable.
To establish validity here, therefore, is to make sure that a particular estimate is most consistent with all the evidence. This has been done in the subsequent chapters for each period, where the text establishes the social conditions and context for asserting particular estimates of democide, and the chapter's appendices provide the detailed estimates, sources, and calculations. For each period, I believe, the validity of the democide totals, understood in these terms, has been established.
What remains here is to determine whether the democide components and overall totals of Table 1A (lines 2 to 23) accumulated from these appendices for each period are also consistent with the relevant, overall estimates of experts. If a democide low is at the lower end or below such estimates, the high is at their upper end or higher, and the mid-estimate--meant to be the prudent, most probable estimate--is near and perhaps somewhat below their central thrust, then (given also what has been done in the appendices for each period) I will consider them valid.
With this in mind, Table 1A presents a variety of estimates of the camp toll during all or a major part of Soviet history. Because these are so variable in the years they cover, all (except the estimates on line 47 specific to the Kolyma camp complex) were proportionated over 42 and 70 year periods and averaged. In doing this, the one case (line 40) where there is a low and high estimate, but no mid-one, the mid-estimate is made the average of the two. The formula for proportionating the estimates over 42 years is simply ((estimate/(1+difference in years)) X 42), and the "c." and "s" is dropped from the years. Obviously, the 70 year period covers the whole Soviet history considered here. But, after Stalin died in 1953, democide dropped sharply in the next decade and thereafter sloped down to very small numbers. Thus, proportionating the estimates only over the period up to 1960--42- years--may be more realistic.
The camp averages for both the 42 and 70-year periods are shown in the table (lines 48 and 49), along with the component totals (line 50--"Cf." means "compare"). Note that the component low of 15,919,000 dead in camps and transit is far below both the 42 and 70-year average lows; also the high of 82,281,000 dead is higher than that for the 42-year average and closer to that for 70-years. That the 70-year average high is higher is understandable, given the great reduction in the camp population and death rates after Stalin. The mid-estimate of 39,464,000 dead is below both average mid-estimates and, indeed, is slightly more than half-way between the low and the 42-year mid-average. Based on the references, therefore, these component totals seem to capture the variation in estimates of those killed in the camps, while the mid-total does appear prudent.
Next considered in the table is estimates of those citizens and foreigners who died in the deportations (lines 53 to 55). Since there are only three such estimates in the references, no proportionating need be done. For comparison, the component totals (line 56) are shown below the estimates. It is unclear from the sources whether these estimates include those among the deported who died in the camps. The component totals do exclude all such; were they included, however, they would probably less than double the totals. Moreover, the totals given are underestimates, since there were no estimates available for some regions or periods where and when deportation must have taken place. In any case, as can be seen, the range and mid-total seems consistent with the estimates.
Next to compare is the total democide for the Stalin period itself. Four estimates are shown (lines 65 to 69) and below them are given for comparison the appropriate democide totals computed from the appendices. It can be seen immediately that the low and high does bracket the estimates, but that the mid-total seems too high, even higher than one high estimate of 40,000,000. The most detailed of these estimates is that from Conquest, and we can get some insight into the reason for the high mid-total by considering his calculations.¹⁹ Now, Conquest's estimate of 20,000,000 killed under Stalin is a minimum, "which is almost certainly too low and might require an increase of 50 per cent or so....."²⁰ But even a 50 percent increase would only bring the total to 30,000,000, still under the mid-total of 42,672,000 given here. First, one source of the difference is that Conquest too conservatively estimates the death toll in the camps as 12,000,000 for the years 1936 to 1950, when for just the post-war period alone, 1946-1953, the toll probably exceeded this (see Appendix 8.1). The mid-total of those killed in the camps during the Stalin years is 32,584,000 (less than 2,000,000 of these foreigners); about 7,000,000 more were killed in other years.²¹ It is significant here, therefore, that the overall, mid-total of camp deaths based on these numbers already has been shown not to be excessive (lines 38 to 56).
Second, Conquest excludes the 5,000,000 intentionally starved to death in the Ukrainian famine (this intentionality and number Conquest establishes in a much later work),²² and the perhaps 333,000 famine deaths Stalin was responsible for in the post-war period. Third, excluding those killed in collectivization and the camps, Conquest only allows for a million executions during the period, which he believes is "certainly a low estimate."²³ Indeed, a million executions is probably a safe estimate for the Great Terror period alone. Indeed, I get from the Appendices (4.1-8.1) a total of 4,565,000 more killed in Stalin's terror throughout his 25-year reign. Finally, Conquest ignores the millions that died in deportations after the collectivization period (in a much later work Conquest himself calculates that 530,000 died alone in the deportation of eight nations during the war;²⁴ this excludes the death toll among Ukrainians, non-Volga German-Soviets, Greek-Soviets, Korean-Soviets, etc.--see Appendix 7.1).
When all these differences are added into Conquest's minimum figure, the result is consistent with the mid-total of 42,672,000 citizens dead under Stalin's regime that is given here.
However, the number killed by Stalin is just part of the larger democide totals for Soviet history. The most important question is then how these totals compare to estimates of the total democide. The table (lines 68 to 75) gives non-census based estimates of the overall democide. As was done for the camp death estimates, these are proportionated and averaged for 42 and 70-years (lines 76 and 77), and compared to the democide totals (citizens) determined here (line 78). This shows that the democide low is well below that of the estimates; the high is mid-way between the 42 and 70 year averages, and the mid-total is appropriately prudent. This also lends support to the total for the Stalin years discussed above.
Finally, there is the census based estimates. Too much can be made of unnatural death estimates based on supposed "census results." For one thing, census figures, particularly in the 1930s, were politically manipulated to show a greater population growth then actually occurred (thus, understating total deaths--see the introduction to Appendix 6.1). For another, the calculations of unnatural deaths are very sensitive to birth and death rate assumptions. Indeed, one can look at these census based estimates as, like the democide totals here, having no more than a more or less warranted assignability. In any case, five such estimates are shown in the table (lines 81 to 86); four of them are proportionated as above (the population deficit includes the number that would have been born, had there not been a certain number of deaths, and therefore should not enter into an average of unnatural deaths, especially if it is to be compared to democide totals), and compared to the democide of citizens. The democide low and high do bracket the results, while the democide mid-total lies between the 42 and 70-year averages (line 90).
Overall, the democide components and grand totals do reflect the diverse estimates of experts and in this sense are warranted. Moreover, similar assessments for each period also shows the subtotals are consistent with the references. Finally, actual Soviet democidal institutions, processes, and events that are outlined in subsequent chapters provide justification for these totals. In sum, probably somewhere between 28,326,000 and 126,891,000 people were killed by the Communist Party of the soviet Union from 1917 to 1987; and a most prudent estimate of this number is 61,911,000.
The democide rates over the three generations of Soviet history are shown in the table (line 94). Clearly, an infant born in 1917 had a good chance of being killed by the Party sometime in his future. A more precise statement of this is given by the average of the democide rates for each period, weighted by the number of years involved (line 95). Focusing on the most-probable mid-risk of .45 percent, throughout Soviet history, including the relatively safe years after the 1950s, the odds of the average citizen being killed by his own government (Party) has been about 45 to 10,000; or to turn this around, 222 to 1 of surviving terror, deportations, the camps, or an intentional famine. As pointed out in the text, this is almost twenty times the risk of an American dying in an a vehicular accident.

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APPENDIX 2.1

One problem in determining Soviet democide is that there are often for one period or another, or one year or another, only estimates of the number deported or in forced labor camps, but no estimates of the resulting dead. Were some death rate statistics available, then, the number killed in deportations or the camps could be calculated. Accordingly, estimates of these rates were sought in the references and are given in Table 1B. From them a range of relevant death rates and a prudent mid-rate were calculated.
The table first lists various death rate estimates for the camps and special settlements (lines 2 to 16). These are consolidated into one set of rates by first making the low the lowest of all the estimates, the high the average among all rates higher then the low (excluding Solzhenitsyn's extremely high rate-line 5-and the higher of the two, extremely high rates for the Kolyma camps-line 11), and the mid-estimate the average of all the estimated rates between the low and high. The result is a conservative low 10 percent per annum death rate; a moderate, mid-estimate of 20 percent, lower than over half the estimated rates; and a high of 28 percent, modest enough considering some of the higher estimates in the table.
I could find no death rates for the prisoners in transit to the camps, but four were available for the deportations. These are shown in the table (lines 20 to 24). Consolidating these as was done for the camp death rates gives a range of 10 to 26 percent killed during deportation. Now, the deportations involved whole families, including pregnant women, infants and young children, the aged, and the sick and infirm. The toll among the deported from lack of food and water, cold or heat, and disease in overcrowded railway, freight cars, during possibly weeks of being carted, was understandably high. By comparison, the transit to the camps involved mostly able, adult males. The death toll must have been much lower as a result, perhaps by around two-thirds. Accordingly, the deportation death rates were reduced to a range of 3 to 9 percent to get reasonable rates for transit to the camps (line 27).
Finally, there is need for overall deportation death rates as well. Estimates of these rates or those calculated from estimates of deportation numbers and dead are shown in the table (beginning on line 31). These are subdivided in terms of the deportation of classes, minority nations, POWs, and foreign civilians. Deportation deaths and death rates normally also include transit deaths. POWs are included here, although most were deported to camps. A major reason is that estimates of their losses also cover transit deaths, which in many cases were high.
A consolidated range of death rates was determined for each classification, usually as was done for the camp estimates. Thus, for example, among nations deported (lines 35 to 63) the overall range in the death rates consolidated from them is 9 to 29 percent (line 65). These consolidations for each classification of deported were then averaged to get one set of rates (line 110): 18 to 43 percent killed by deportation, with a mid-estimate of 26 percent.
The table concludes by presenting together the death rates that were determined for the camps, transit, and deportations. These are the basic rates, then, used when necessary to calculating these deaths for each period.
An important question is then how sensitive the democide totals are to using these rates. If the results hang on them, then this means that Table 1B is the most important in this book and the rates developed there entail the most critical assumptions.
This question is particularly pertinent to the number of those killed in the camps. In total, probably 39,467,000 people died in the camps or in transit to them (Table 1A, line 20)-about 64 percent of the likely overall democide. This number was found by consolidating or averaging (a) the result of calculating the death toll by applying camp and transit death rates determined in Table 1B to annual estimates of the camp population, and (b) estimates of camp deaths given in the references. Table 1C presents a sensitivity analysis of the effects of altering the death rates on the democide totals. Although it accounts for a small percentage of the deaths, deportation death rates are also included. First shown is the base, death rate estimates used for each period and the resulting overall democide figures. Then seven cases are given, each involving a zeroing or reduction in the transit, camp, or deportation death rates. The cases are rank ordered, Case I showing the least effect on the democide range, Case VII the most. The former involves eliminating transit deaths altogether by making transit death rates zero, while keeping camp and deportation deaths the same; the latter involves cutting all three death rates by 3/4ths.
I should note that the effect of reducing the death rates for camps or deportations by, say, one-half, is not a matter of simply halving the total killed for the component. This is because, as mentioned above, the totals not only involve the computation of the number of deaths by use of the death rates, but also the consolidation or averaging of the results of these computations with the estimates of the number of dead given in the literature. Thus, reducing the death rate does not proportionally reduce the democide figures.
Now, given the estimates in Table 1B, it is hardly likely that the death rates used here are four times too high-that the low for the camp death rate is 2.5 percent, rather than 10; or the high should be 7 percent, and not 28. Indeed, in the references I could find no estimate of a camp, transit, or deportation death rate lower than 9 percent (see Table 1B). Yet, using these unrealistically reduced rates still gives in Case VII a total democide range of 20,844,000 to 78,087,000 killed, with a mid-estimate of 41,567,000. While this is a reduction of near 20,000,000 dead in the mid-estimate, this total killed still remains a demographic catastrophe greater than the civilian and military death toll of World War II. In other words, were the death rates used here much too high, the resulting democide totals would still be terribly significant.
There is another way of validating the death rates determined in Table 1B. Are the resulting camp, deportation, and overall democide totals consistent with estimates in the literature? And Appendix 1.1 shows that they are. Therefore we might conclude that while these rates cannot be exact, they at least appear to reflect the actual death toll in the camps, transit, and deportations.

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NOTES

* From the pre-publisher edited manuscript of Chapter 1 in R.J. Rummel, Lethal Politics, 1994. For full reference this book, the list of its contents, figures, and tables, and the text of its preface, click book. The epigraphs are quoted in Conquest (1968, p. 544) and Antonov-Ovseyenko (1981, pp. 104-5) 1. Quoted in Conquest (1968, p. 544).
2. Quoted in Antonov-Ovseyenko (1981, pp. 104-5).
3. "The suppression of the Don Cossack revolt...of 1919 took the form of genocide. One historian has estimated that approximately 70 percent ...were physically eliminated."(Heller and Nekrich, 1986, p. 87) Around 1900, the Don region had a population of about 1,000,000 Cossacks.(p. 78)
4. Conquest (1986, p. 306). "It certainly appears that a charge of genocide lies against the Soviet Union for its actions in the Ukraine. Such, at least, was the view of Professor Rafael Lemkin who drafted the [Genocide] Convention." (p. 272) The "Ukrainian famine was a deliberate act of genocide of roughly the same order of magnitude as the Jewish Holocaust of the Second World War, both in the number of its victims and in the human suffering it produced."(Mace, 1986, p. 11)
5. "The swath cut by deportation was so wide that the issue of genocide ought to be considered....Most Estonian deportees never returned, having largely perished. In the case of 'kulaks', all members of a population group, identified through past socio-economic status, were deported, regardless of their individual present behavior. There was no legal way to leave the condemned social group. In the case of children, the guilt was hereditary. If destroying a social group entirely, with no consideration of personal behavior, is genocide, then the March 1949 deportation would seem to qualify." (Taagepera, 1980, p. 394)
6. Conquest (1986, p. 306). "The genocide against the peasants ... was unique not only for its monstrous scale; it was directed against an indigenous population by a government of the same nationality, and in time of peace." (Heller and Nekrich, 1986, p. 236)
The Soviets now appear to admit to this genocide. In the Moscow News, a Moscow published, English language newspaper, was recently written: "In what amounted to genocide, between five and ten million people died during the forced collectivization of farming in the early thirties." (Ambartsumov, 1988)
7. Hingley (1974, p. 284); Medvedev (1979, p. 102).
8. Medvedev (1979,p. 117).
9. Petrov (1956, pp. 9-10).
10. Ibid., p. 73-4. One such telegram to Sverdlovsk ordered that 15,000 "enemies of the people" be shot.(p. 74)
11. Solzhenitsyn (1973, p. 1971).
12. "NKVD cadres themselves were terrorized into 'production' frenzies by surprise visits from NKVD headquarters officials. In an unannounced visit to the Rostov NKVD office, Genrikh Lyushkov, a high-ranking state security officer, charged the gathered officials with laxness in pursuing enemies and immediately fingered three of their own number as enemies; the intimidated district chief quickly prepared the charges and had his own accused men shot." (Dziak, 1988, p. 68)
13. Solzhenitsyn (1973, pp. 69-70).
14. Small and Singer (1982, p. 91).
15.Calculated from Ibid., Tables 4.2 and 13.2.
16. This is a paraphrase of the title of Heller and Nekrich's (1986) history of the Soviet Union, Utopia in Power.
17. Quoted in Leggett (1981, p. 186).
18. See Heller (1988).
19. Conquest (1986, p. 234).
20. Solzhenitsyn (1973, p. 174).
21. (1968, Appendix A). Elliot (1972, pp. 223-224) accepts Conquest's total of 20,000,000, but arrives at it by a different breakdown of the agents of death.
22. Conquest (1968, p. 533).
23. From Appendices 4.1-8.1.
24. (1986).
25. Conquest (1968, p. 533).
26. (1970a, p. 165). 
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