http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat1.htm#Stalin

# Soviet Union, Stalin’s regime (1924-53): 20 000 000 [make link]

* There are basically two schools of thought when it comes to the number who died at Stalin’s hands. There’s the “Why doesn’t anyone realize that communism is the absolutely worst thing ever to hit the human race, without exception, even worse than both world wars, the slave trade and bubonic plague all put together?” school, and there’s the “Come on, stop exaggerating. The truth is horrifying enough without you pulling numbers out of thin air” school. The two schools are generally associated with the right and left wings of the political spectrum, and they often accuse each other of being blinded by prejudice, stubbornly refusing to admit the truth, and maybe even having a hidden agenda. Also, both sides claim that recent access to former Soviet archives has proven that their side is right.
* Here are a few illustrative estimates from the Big Numbers school:
o Adler, N., Victims of Soviet Terror, 1993 cites these:
+ Chistyakovoy, V. (Neva, no.10): 20 million killed during the 1930s.
+ Dyadkin, I.G. (Demograficheskaya statistika neyestestvennoy smertnosti v SSSR 1918-1956 ): 56 to 62 million “unnatural deaths” for the USSR overall, with 34 to 49 million under Stalin.
+ Gold, John.: 50-60 million.
o Davies, Norman (Europe A History, 1998): c. 50 million killed 1924-53, excluding WW2 war losses. This would divide (more or less) into 33M pre-war and 17M after 1939.
o Rummel, 1990: 61,911,000 democides in the USSR 1917-87, of which 51,755,000 occurred during the Stalin years. This divides up into:
+ 1923-29: 2,200,000 (plus 1M non-democidal famine deaths)
+ 1929-39: 15,785,000 (plus 2M non-democidal famine)
+ 1939-45: 18,157,000
+ 1946-54: 15,613,000 (plus 333,000 non-democidal famine)
+ TOTAL: 51,755,000 democides and 3,333,000 non-demo. famine
o William Cockerham, Health and Social Change in Russia and Eastern Europe: 50M+
o Wallechinsky: 13M (1930-32) + 7M (1934-38)
+ Cited by Wallechinsky:
# Medvedev, Roy (Let History Judge): 40 million.
# Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr: 60 million.
o MEDIAN: 51 million for the entire Stalin Era; 20M during the 1930s.
* And from the Lower Numbers school:
o Nove, Alec (“Victims of Stalinism: How Many?” in J. Arch Getty (ed.) Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives, 1993): 9,500,000 “surplus deaths” during the 1930s.
o Cited in Nove:
+ Maksudov, S. (Poteri naseleniya SSSR, 1989): 9.8 million abnormal deaths between 1926 and 1937.
+ Tsaplin, V.V. (“Statistika zherty naseleniya v 30e gody” 1989): 6,600,000 deaths (hunger, camps and prisons) between the 1926 and 1937 censuses.
+ Dugin, A. (“Stalinizm: legendy i fakty” 1989): 642,980 counterrevolutionaries shot 1921-53.
+ Muskovsky Novosti (4 March 1990): 786,098 state prisoners shot, 1931-53.
o Gordon, A. (What Happened in That Time?, 1989, cited in Adler, N., Victims of Soviet Terror, 1993): 8-9 million during the 1930s.
o Ponton, G. (The Soviet Era, 1994): cites an 1990 article by Milne, et al., that excess deaths 1926-39 were likely 3.5 million and at most 8 million.
o MEDIAN: 8.5 Million during the 1930s.
* As you can see, there’s no easy compromise between the two schools. The Big Numbers are so high that picking the midpoint between the two schools would still give us a Big Number. It may appear to be a rather pointless argument — whether it’s fifteen or fifty million, it’s still a huge number of killings — but keep in mind that the population of the Soviet Union was 164 million in 1937, so the upper estimates accuse Stalin of killing nearly 1 out of every 3 of his people, an extremely Polpotian level of savagery. The lower numbers, on the other hand, leave Stalin with plenty of people still alive to fight off the German invasion.
* [Letter]
* Although it’s too early to be taking sides with absolute certainty, a consensus seems to be forming around a death toll of 20 million. This would adequately account for all documented nastiness without straining credulity:
o In The Great Terror (1969), Robert Conquest suggested that the overall death toll was 20 million at minimum — and very likely 50% higher, or 30 million. This would divide roughly as follows: 7M in 1930-36; 3M in 1937-38; 10M in 1939-53. By the time he wrote The Great Terror: A Re-assessment (1992), Conquest was much more confident that 20 million was the likeliest death toll.
o Britannica, “Stalinism”: 20M died in camps, of famine, executions, etc., citing Medvedev
o Brzezinski: 20-25 million, dividing roughly as follows: 7M destroying the peasantry; 12M in labor camps; 1M excuted during and after WW2.
o Daniel Chirot:
+ “Lowest credible” estimate: 20M
+ “Highest”: 40M
+ Citing:
# Conquest: 20M
# Antonov-Ovseyenko: 30M
# Medvedev: 40M
o Courtois, Stephane, Black Book of Communism (Le Livre Noir du Communism): 20M for the whole history of Soviet Union, 1917-91.
+ Essay by Nicolas Werth: 15M
+ [Ironic observation: The Black Book of Communism seems to vote for Hitler as the answer to the question of who's worse, Hitler (25M) or Stalin (20M).]
o John Heidenrich, How to Prevent Genocide: A Guide for Policymakers, Scholars, and the Concerned Citizen (2001): 20M, incl.
+ Kulaks: 7M
+ Gulag: 12M
+ Purge: 1.2M (minus 50,000 survivors)
o Adam Hochschild, The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin: directly responsible for 20 million deaths.
o Tina Rosenberg, The Haunted Land: Facing Europes Ghosts After Communism (1995): upwards of 25M
o Time Magazine (13 April 1998): 15-20 million.
* AVERAGE: Of the 17 estimates of the total number of victims of Stalin, the median is 30 million.
* Individual Gulags etc.
o Kolyma
o Kuropaty
o Vorkuta
o Bykivnia
* Famine, 1926-38
o Richard Overy, Russia’s War (1997): 4.2M in Ukraine + 1.7M in Kazakhstan
o Green, Barbara (“Stalinist Terror and the Question of Genocide: the Great Famine” in Rosenbaum, Is the Holocaust Unique?) cites these sources for the number who died in the famine:
+ Nove: 3.1-3.2M in Ukraine, 1933
+ Maksudov: 4.4M in Ukraine, 1927-38
+ Mace: 5-7M in Ukraine
+ Osokin: 3.35M in USSR, 1933
+ Wheatcraft: 4-5M in USSR, 1932-33
+ Conquest:
# Total, USSR, 1926-37: 11M
# 1932-33: 7M
# Ukraine: 5M

There are a lot of speculations about how many people died in the USSR. The link you gave is a total BS.
On the eve of the WWI in 1914, the population of Russian Empire was 168 000 000. It included about 12 000 000 of the population of Finland and the part of Poland which broke from Russia in 1918 and were not regained since then. The Russian Civil war casualties according Scott Manning you are referring to, were 6,210,000. The USSR lost 26 600 000 in WWII-a well known figure. Lets add all this human losses to the number of supposed Soviet communists victims you referring to: 87 100 000. Take it out of the 167 000 000 in 1914, take out 12 000 000 Poles and Finns who separated and you get 50 millions in remainder. Then you of course believe than a half of the USSR population was imprisoned in GULAG. And now an interesting fact:
There 293,047,571 population in the USSR in 1991.
So I have a childish question: “Where all these babies came from?”
The dynamics of the USSR population growth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_Soviet_Union
does confirm massive losses of population after the Russian Civil War and WWII? but there is no evidence of any significant losses in between due to “communist repressions”. Myth, BS.

So if he would be in the White House, basically those that have to guard top secret information have to show it to someone who cannot pass the clearance.

Would you trust this person this information and the keys to the nukes?

Propaganda! The US economy is #1. That is all that is important. How it compares to some utopian economy doesn’t matter. The numbers don’t lie, liars do. Anyone with a computer and a spreadsheet can graph the economic data and see for themselves that the Economy was fine until the Democrats took over Congress. It is still in good shape. Are some citizens hurting? Yes, but so what? There will ALWAYS be someone at the bottom of the heap, even in a Socialist utopia. The Russian Stock Martket lost 10% Thursday. The Euro is falling. The US economy is number 1 and will stay that way for the next generation at least.
If push comes to shove America is sitting on the worlds largest non-liquid OIL reserves. Only America now has the technology to exploit those non-liquid reserves. I’m sure other nations will develop the tech, since the USA has shown it can be done, but right now it’s our ball and we will make the rules.
What is in the air is the smell of bullsh1t! It is blowing in from the Urals. The closer you get to America, the more it smells like money.

“Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.”
Aristotle
Greek critic, philosopher, physicist, & zoologist (384 BC – 322 BC)

Thanks for the laugh.
That is about 18,000 Nukes, NOT 40 thousand;

http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/nudb/datab10.asp

Of those, 5,199 were deliverable in 2002.
Not that the actual number matters. America is a democracy. The citizens rule, through their representatives. Russia is a dictatorship. Putin rules.
To destroy America, you need to kill all of us, otherwise we will just rebuild AFTER we destroy Russia. To destroy Russia, we just need to kill Putin.
Then somebody rational will take over in Russia, somebody that realizes throwing nukes at each other is stupid.
A VERY LARGE ocean liner can carry about 15,000 Soldiers.
So you would need about 66 such ships to carry 1 million soldiers. Those soldiers will want dinner and lunch as well as breakfast. So there are some more ships. Plus it would help if they had guns, bullets, boots etc. Even more ships.
Let be conservative and say 100 ships to get your 1 million men here. You want to bring 12 million, right? So that is 12 x 100 or 1200 ships. BIG ships. Not so big that one torpedo cannot sink it. IIRC, one SSN carries 24 such torpedos. Not sure if that is right, but it makes it easy to figure that 50 SSN’s could send all 12 million soldiers to the bottom of the sea. Not that it would be necessary.
Mexico sends more then 12 million Mexicans to America EVERY year. 12 million Chinamen would just be another drop in the ol’ melting pot. We would find them jobs and they would import wives ( Russian brides are on the upswing again, since Georgia was raped. Russian women are smart as well as hot, so they know that the USA is a much better place to live a good life then Putin’s Russia.)) and in a decade or so they would just be another American. Then we would need some more.

So as they say in my neck o the woods; “Bring it on”.
Russia is a Fluzzard. A fluzzard has the wings of a flea and the ass of a buzzard. Fluzzard. They are noted for making a furious buzzing sound but not getting off the ground.
Russia LOST the cold war. Russians are clueless about why they lost. If you start another war, you will lose that one too. Hot or Cold, it doesn’t matter. Russia needs to ditch Putin before he gets a bunch of folks killed repeating old mistakes Then figure out why you lost the last war before you start the next one.

“Win with ability, not with numbers”
- Field Marshal Prince Aleksandr V. Suvorov

The Kremlin strategists believe that the United States is on the brink of a crippling dislocation. According to a July 29 Pravda article, an anonymous Russian diplomat revealed that the “Russian administration believes the United States may soon suffer from a serious political crisis.” The sequence begins with a financial crash, advances to political unrest and finally to the dissolution of American military power. As the Russian diplomat warned, “America is standing on the verge of a large-scale crisis of its own existence.”

This persistent failure to put the shoe on the other foot, and to look at the world even for one second from Moscow’s point of view (even if one thinks that POV is skewed or paranoid) is the most baffling aspect of Washington’s behavior towards Russia in the last ten years (more or less since the Kosovo War, although the desire to separate former Soviet Central Asian resources from Kremlin control was publically stated earlier). I mean, we don’t seem to be making so many efforts to poke the Chinese in the eye, in spite of their much greater military buildup and repression of human rights. Could it be that Russia makes for a safer adversary, given corporate America and the Treasury’s ties to Beijing?