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Excess Collectivization Deaths 1929–1933: New Demographic Evidence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Steven Rosefielde
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Extract

Although many Western scholars believe that 5 million Soviet peasants died as a result of forced collectivization, this inference is not firmly supported by official prewar census statistics. Official statistics suggest that there may have been as many as 9.2 million excess deaths between 1927 and 1939, a figure more than ample to cover hypothesized collectivization fatalities, but Frank Lorimer has argued that half of this discrepancy may be explained by a 27 percent underestimation of the mortality rate in the census of 1926. The possibility that standard Western estimates substantially exaggerate estimated collectivization fatalities therefore cannot be dismissed, even before allowance is made for victims of the famine of 1933-1934, Gulag forced labor, and the terror.

The plausibility of the hypothesis that collectivization claimed millions of lives is diminished further by Gosplan's estimate of the Soviet population in 1933, 165.7 million, a figure consistent with demographic trends of the late 1920s. Assuming that Gosplan had access to the relevant data when this estimate was made in 1937, it appears to follow that all excess deaths calculated from the census of 1939 occurred after rather than before 1933.

Type
Notes and Comment
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 43 , Issue 1 , Spring 1984 , pp. 83 - 88
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1984

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References

1. Murray Feshbach, “The Soviet Union: Population Trends and Dilemmas,” Population Bulletin, 37, no. 3 (August 1982): 7.

2. Steven Rosefielde, “Excess Mortality in the Soviet Union: A Reconsideration of the Demograpahic Consequences of Forced Industrialization 1929-49,” Soviet Studies, 35, no. 2 (July 1983), table 1. This estimate is calculated with Lorimer's natality statistics and official Soviet mortality rates reported in Naselenie SSSR (1974), p. 9. See Frank, Lorimer, The Population of the Soviet Union: History and Prospects (Geneva: League of Nations, 1946), p. 134 Google Scholar.

3. Lorimer, Population of the Soviet Union, pp. 117-19, 134-37.

4. Feshbach estimates that 5 million people perished during the famine 1932-34 and that purges and concentration camps may have claimed another 5 to 10 million people. Feshbach, “Soviet Union.“

5. Lorimer, Population of the Soviet Union, p. 112, and Rosefielde, “Excess Mortality,“ table Al.

6. Boris, Urlanis, Problemy dinamiki naseleniia SSSR (Moscow, 1974), p. 319 Google Scholar; Urlanis, “Dinamika urovnia rozhdaemosti v SSSR za gody Sovetskoi vlasti” in A. G. Vishnevskii, Brachnost', rozhdaemost', smertnost’ v Rossii i v SSSR (Moscow, 1977), p. 12. Lorimer concluded that Gosplan's 1933 population estimate was erroneous in his League of Nations study. See Lorimer, Population of the Soviet Union, p. 112.

7. Lorimer, Population of the Soviet Union, table 53, p. 134.

8. This assertion does not imply that fertility and natality rates were unaffected by the same extraordinary factors that caused mortality rates to decline. Natality rates fell 21 percent between 1929-30 and 1931-32 (see table 1, column 2). This decrease, however, is taken into account in the calculations performed in table 1 by the official ex post natality statistic for 1932 and Urlanis's estimate for 1931. As a consequence, the entire unexplained discrepancy between the expected and the observed population in 1931 is attributable to excess mortality (above the normal interpolated level).

9. Although the official natality series reported by Urlanis in 1977 broadly confirms Lorimer's estimates made in 1946, their reliability previously had been in doubt, precluding a clear determination of the relative importance of natality and mortality changes in explaining the observed population deficit. This ambiguity has now been eliminated by Urlanis's ex post natality series.

10. The interpolated mortality rates 1929-32 used in this calculation were computed from official ex post rates reported in 1927-28 and 1937-38. The figures for 1927-28 were calculated immediately after the 1926-27 census; those for 1937-38 during the census compilations 1937-39. The 1937-38 rates are only 1 per thousand higher than Lorimer's life table adjusted estimates (Lorimer, Population of the Soviet Union, p. 125). Life table estimates for 1929 likewise closely approximate the official rates, but they rely on Novosel'skii and Paevskii's life tables for the European part of the Soviet Union, which do not accurately describe mortality rates for the Soviet Union as a whole. Because of the uncertainties associated with Novosel'skii and Paevskii's life tables, I have not attempted to adjust the 1926 census mortality statistics, preferring instead to rely on the official ex post rates 1927-28 to interpolate the normal mortality trend 1929-33.

11. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956: An Experiment in Literary Investigation , 2 vols. (New York: Harper & Row, 1974), 2: 71-120.

12. Urlanis's population estimate for 1933, which he describes as approximative, is presented in a table intended to demonstrate the pitfalls of demographic forecasting. He cites the 158 million population figure for 1933 to show how far Gosplan's estimate had been in error. In rejecting Gosplan's estimate in this way he makes no qualifying remarks about the reliability of the 1933 population figure he reports (which is not presented as his own estimate) other than marking the statistic in the table with an asterisk. The corresponding note contains a single word, priblizitel'no (approximately), which suggests that the true population figure for 1933 is not known precisely but is close to 158 million. Although Urlanis does not explain how he obtained the 1933 population statistic, his treatment of the figure indicates that he is confident that it is basically accurate and that he obtained it either directly or indirectly from unpublished official sources. His position as a leading—if not the leading— Soviet demographer lends credence to this interpretation. See Urlanis, Problemy dinamiki naseleniia SSSR, p. 319.

13. Lorimer, Population of the Soviet Union, p. 117.

14. Anton Antonov-Ovseenko, Portret Tirana (New York: Kronika, 1980), p. 211.

15. Naselenie SSSR (Moscow, 1974, p. 9.

16. See Lorimer, Population of the Soviet Union, p. 117. Table Al provides an estimate of excess collectivization deaths using Coale's mortality adjustment for 1926. This alternative figure is 5.085 million people.

17. Antonov-Ovseenko, Portret Tirana.

18. Rosefielde, “Excess Mortality.” Note that these incredible estimates coincide with Feshbach's. See Feshbach, Soviet Union.

19. Ibid.