Source: anti-imperialism.com.
When
discussing the merits and achievements of the Soviet Union,
detractors of various stripes, from anti-communist to anti-Leninist,
often point to a 2013 International Business Times article named “How
Many People Did Joseph Stalin Kill?” by Palash Ghosh. The article, which depicts Soviet leader J. V. Stalin
as an inhuman cold-blooded mass murderer, claims that up to 60
million people, nearly one-third of the USSR’s 1941 population,
were killed on the part of the government and the leadership of the
country.[1][2] But do these figures actually hold up? Through a
careful read of the article, one can find glaring problems with the
logic and the conclusion and deduce that the article is not much more
than crude propaganda.
The
article, having been published on the 60th anniversary of Stalin’s
death, introduces Stalin as “one of history’s most prolific
killers”, proceeding to list various events as atrocities. Included
in the list are “imprisonment in labor camps”, “manufactured
famines” and “forced displacements”, all of which are implied
to be inherently atrocious like the other items listed. While these
are indeed atrocious events, this should raise the question of
hypocrisy, as a neo-liberal news publication lists these events with
the intention of portraying a socialist leader as a “prolific
killer” when historically they have happened on a number of
occasions in the imperialist states and their semi-feudal colonies à
la the American internment of Japanese and Germans in World War II,
the systematic depopulation of indigenous lands by the US government,
and the number of famines in British India in the 19th and 20th
centuries. One might in response concede that the USSR was by no
means alone if it is responsible for such atrocities,
but,nevertheless,
the actions of other nations does not absolve the Soviet Union. This
is true. Therefore, we move on to see Ghosh’s backing for the
assertion of Stalin as a mass murderer.