austin-murphy-the-triumph-of-evil

76 THE TRIUMPH OF EVIL
number remains under 200,000. Such a "low" number seems especially
likely given the fact that aggregate death rates (from all causes) through­
out the Soviet Union were actually lower in 1937-38 than in prior years
(Wheatcroft, 1993).
Assuming the remaining I 00,000 or so death sentences passed in the
other years of Stalin's reign (i.e., 1921-36 and 1939-53) resulted in a
60% execution rate, as per the Vinton (1993) sample, the total number
executed by Stalin's Soviet Union would be about 250,000. Even with
the thousands executed between 1917 and 1921, it is plausible that the
number of unarmed civilians killed between 1917-1953 amounted to
considerably less than a quarter million given that thousands of these
victims may have been Soviet soldiers (Freeze, 1997), given that some
may have been armed bandits and guerri llas (Getty, 1985), and given
that at least 14,000 of the actual executions were of foreign POWs
(Vinton, 1993). A USA fo rmer attache to the Soviet Union, George
Kennan, has stated that the number executed was really only in the tens
of thousands (Smith, 2000), and so it is very likely that the true number
of unarmed civilians killed by the Soviet Union over its entire history
(including the thousands killed in Afghanistan more recently) is too
small for the country to make the top ten in mass murders.
There were no doubt many innocent victims during the 1937-38 Stalin
purge, but it should also be mentioned that there is substantial evi·
dence from the Soviet archives of Soviet citizens advocating treason·
able offenses such as the violent overthrow of the Soviet government
or fo reign invasion of the Soviet Union (Davies, 1997). In addition,
the Soviet Union felt itself so threatened by subversion and imminent
military invasions by Japan and Germany (which occurred in full fo rce
in 1938 and 1941, respectively) that it perceived a need to undertake a
nationwide campaign to eliminate potential internal enemies (Manning,
1993). Moreover, these external threats were fu rther fu eled by the fact
that the Russian nobility and czarists (over a million of whom had emi·
grated after the communist revolution in 1917) had given financial aid to
the German Nazis in the 1930s for the purpose of using them (once they
had successfully taken power in Germany) to help them overthrow the
Soviet government (Feinberg, 1999). 8 Forged documents and misinfor·
mation spread by Nazi Germany to incriminate innocent and patriotic
Soviets also contributed to Soviet paranoia (Andrew and Gordievsky,
CHAPTER 1
1990). It must also be remembered that Soviet fear of foreign-sponsored
subversion in the 1930s existed within the context of guerrilla warfare
fought against the Soviet Union by some of the same groups of people
who had fought with the foreign invaders against the Soviet Union in
the 1918-22 Foreign Interventionist Civil War (Conquest, 1986).
While the 1937-38 purges were very repressive and tragic by almost
any measure, they may have helped prevent the fascists from inciting a
successful rebellion or coup in the Soviet Union (Thurston, 1996). Such
a threat was a very real one given that the German Nazis did succeed in
using political intrigues, threats, economic pressure, and offers of ter­
ritorial gains to bring other Eastern European countries into their orbit,
including Bulgaria, Romania, and Hungary, as well as Yugoslavia for
a short period of time (Miller, 1975), given that the Soviet Union had
been subjected to a brutal 1918-22 civil war which was launched by
rebels who were supported by over a million foreign invading troops
from over a dozen capitalist countries (Schulz, 1982), given that there
was a large amount of sabotage committed by Soviet citizens in the
1930s (Conquest, 1986), and given that there were a significant number
of Soviet dissidents who were in favor of overthrowing the Soviet gov­
ernment even if it required an invasion by Germany or some other for­
eign power (Davies, 1997). It is also possible that the Germans and
Japanese had spread sufficient misinformation to lead many people to
believe in the existence of an alliance between the exiled Trotsky and
the fascist countries that offered Germany and Japan some Soviet ter­
ritories in return for helping the Russian dissident take power in the
remaining part of Russia (Glotzer, 1968). In addition, many people may
have worked independently to sabotage the Soviet Union in the hope
that they would thereby contribute to a fo reign overthrow of the Soviet
Union (Ritterspom, 1992), especially since Nazi Germany did make
extensive efforts to incite uprisings, cause subversive actions, and create
ethnic conflicts in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union (Schulz, 1982).
Although the Soviet Union may have falsely blamed Trotsky for advo­
cating cooperation with the fascists, even Trotsky admitted that some
of the victims of Stalin's repression may have indeed been German or
Japanese agents (Glotzer, 1968). Despite the Soviet Union's success in
defeating the subsequent invasions by fascist Japan (in 1938) and Ger­
many (194 1-44), the danger posed by the Nazi spies and saboteurs in
77