Hitler as an SI unit : 4chan

Western scholars have estimated that between 16.4 million and 29.5 million people died in the Great Leap Forward. It is a common argument that this was due to executions ordered by Mao and the Chinese Communist Party. People who know a little more about the history of China know about the famine, natural disasters and starvation during this period. However, they often attribute these starvation deaths to malicious programs and mismanagement of industrialization and distribution of goods.

The first problem with these myths is that they are based on inaccurate statistics. Such high mortality figures are based on comparing projected population size with actual population size. This method assumes constant population growth, which is far from reality during tumultuous periods in history such as a revolution. The statistics are also based on figures supplied by the bourgeoisie and revisionists, which were enemies of the Great Leap.

In reality, the deaths attributed to the Great Leap (1958-60) are mostly due to starvation, particularly from the Great Leap's aftermath (1960-1), not executions. Flooding and drought seriously affected over half of China's land in that famine. The Soviet Union withdrew its industrial aid in 1960 causing a virtual halt in most of China's industry. The Soviet Union had agreed to provide about 300 modern industrial plants but only 154 were completed by 1960. Thousands of Soviet technicians who were in China to assist with industrial development left within the period of a month, taking with them their blue-prints and stopping supply shipments.

Mao did claim government responsibility for 800,000 executions between 1949 and 1954. These were popularly sanctioned executions done in people's trials against the most hated landlords and pro-Japanese (pro-imperialist) elements who had terrorized the masses during World War II and its aftermath.

Neither Mao, nor the Chinese Communist Party claimed that the Great Leap Forward had been without mistakes. Self-criticism is an important part of Maoism, and Mao himself wrote self-criticisms on some practices of the Great Leap. Unlike the Soviets, the Chinese admitted when the goals they had set for themselves had been too high, and were unreasonable.

With a quarter of the world's children, if China hadn't been liberated by Mao and the Chinese Communist Party, that situation would be much worse today. As it was, 22 million Chinese died of starvation during World War II, thanks to Japanese imperialism and the U.S.-backed regime.

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Let me quote Rudy Rummel, professor emeritus of political science and author of 24 scholarly books on war and democide (murder by government):

"From the biography of Mao, which I trust (for those who might question it, look at the hundreds of interviews Chang and Halliday conducted with communist cadre and former high officials, and the extensive bibliography) I can now say that yes, Mao’s policies caused the famine. He knew about it from the beginning. He didn’t care! Literally. And he tried to take more food from the people to pay for his lust for international power, but was overruled by a meeting of 7,000 top Communist Party members.

So, the famine was intentional. What was its human cost? (...) Chang and Halliday put it at 38,000,000, and given their sources, I will accept that."

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[–]candygram4mongo 1 point2 points3 points 4 days ago

Something around a million for Stalin is the new number.

If there are people claiming a million victims of Stalin, they are far, far outside the mainstream. Either that or you're misusing the figure from Michael Ellman in this Wikipedia article, which excludes the Holodomor and other famine deaths entirely, and covers only two years. In the actual paper he says

This estimate of roughly a million is, of course, an underestimate of repression victims in 1937–38.

and also

Of these, from 1921 onwards about 3–3.5 million seem to have died from shooting, while in detention, or while being deported or in deportation.

And of course, this entire paper is itself on the low end of estimates, even accepting that only executions and Gulag victims "count". It's also pretty clear that the author has as much of an axe to grind as the "faggot Western historians" you decry (like for instance, Robert Conquest, who puts the figure for executions alone at over 1.7 million, and who incidentally was a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, until he experienced the Stalinist takeover of Bulgaria).