Quote:
Of those deported or arrested for political reasons from 1921 onwards, the number
of deaths about which we have more or less reliable information seems to have been
about 3–3.5 million, of which about 1 million were shootings, 1–1.5 million deaths
of deportees (see note 60) and perhaps 1 million deaths of prisoners.
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source: Michael Ellman,
"Soviet Repression Statistics: Some Comments", Europe-Asia Studies, vol. 54, no. 7, 2002, pp1151-1172
http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/ELM-Rep...Statistics.pdf
very good overview of all available sources.
Problem with a lot of estimates is that they lump in all deaths, not just victims of actual repression, but deaths from illness, famine as a result of social/economic policies, work accidents, deaths from wars, etc., all of which is fine if you are trying to figure out the total human cost of communism, but does not help if you are trying to compare the actual victims of the Nazis versus the Bolsheviks.
The other problem is that figures were overblown for Cold War propaganda purposes. During the Cold War, the U.S. was making the argument that the Commies were pure evil. Problem was, one of their key ally, Germany, was still being run by former Nazis who held many key posts in government, military and business until the mid-late 70s. So there was pressure to inflate the number of victims under Stalin so the West could say that "Yes the Nazis were bad, but the Commies are worse".
In fact, there is no comparaison, we have a pretty good idea of the total number the Germans murdered in 1933-45. The number is around 12 million, including 6 million jews and 2.5 million soviet POWs in 41-42. By contrast, the total number that the Soviets murdered in 1921-53 is around 3.5 million.
The Russian Commies were ruthless, but there was a political logic to their killings. The Germans under Hitler were just barbarians who killed entire populations for no valid reason.