It wouldn't per se, because the source you are citing is a memoir from 1981 written no doubt without the benefit of access to archival sources. The style is written in such a way as to maximise the deficit in population, for unsurprising politically motivated reasons - the Soviet Union sucked, and it was quite good in the 1930s at starving many of its citizens to death.It would appear that a possible discrepancy of 14 million would reveal itself in the census. How would this impact the pre-war estimate of the jewish population of the Soviet Union? How would this impact the holocaust survivor estimates?
Mind you, I present a quote and a question, not an interpretation.
Re: 1937 and 1939 censuses
By contrast, Stephen Wheatcroft and R.W. Davies, two of the genuine experts on Soviet population statistics, state that the 1937 census, which indeed ended with an embarrassingly lower figure than was expected, because of the famines of 1932/33, came in at:
162 million
expected: 180.7 million, never published as the memoir rightly says.
Recent statistical work has raised the 1937 census to 162.7 million.
Whereas the 1939 census was massaged upwards to 170.1 million by an arbitrary increase of 2.82 million:
- 1.14 million to account for people away from home at the time of the census (not an unknown problem even today)
- 1.68 (1%) surcharge to allow for undercounting
actual 1939 figure
167.3 million
- 159.1 million civilians
- 2.3 million in outlying regions (special census required)
- 2.1 million military
- 3.7 million 'special contingent' of the NKVD ie GULag and 'special resettlers' not in GULag.
The difference amounts to 98/100.
Wheatcroft and Davies base their chapter on a full consideration of the pre- and post-1991 literature, census materials, methods and also incidentally address the entire question of the population deficit stemming both from 'excess mortality' as well as unborn children.
I therefore trust them considerably more than a memoir of a former senior Party member. (N.B. Robert Conquest got fried when he relied on Mikoyan's son's reminiscences before 1991, and then the archives opened and better data became available.)
Re: Jewish population,
It is my understanding that Mordecai Altshuler, who compiled the 1939 Jewish population into a separate publication used by all specialists in this field, worked with the post-1991 archival released data and thus from figures corresponding to the 167.3 million total.
Moreover it would have to be investigated more closely whether Jews were more or less likely to suffer in the 1930s, as a largely urban population, whereas the major population deficits came in rural Ukraine and Kazakhstan. From data on the Terror, Jews were victimised almost exactly at the national average, neither more nor less. Poles were the nationality who got it in the neck during the Terror of 1937-8 the worst in absolute and relative terms, though some smaller national minorities suffered proportionately even harder.
The Jewish population of the 1939 borders Soviet Union was 3.02 million, up from 2.68 million in 1926.
Within this, the Jewish population of the Ukraine fell from 1.547 million in 1926 to 1.533 million in 1939 (= 4.9% of total pop.)
And the Jewish population of the Belorussian SSR fell from 407,000 to 375,000 1926 > 1939. Ie from 8.2 to 6.7% of total population.
Migration to the RSFSR was the cause. The Jewish population of the RSFSR and more distant republics in the Caucasus etc was 1.112 million in 1939.
Does this affect the Holocaust?
No. The first reason being the most important factor in preventing Jewish deaths in German occupied Soviet territory was the number who were evacuated or who fled.
The second reason being the continued uncertainties over the information about dividing the data for Poland vs Soviet Union as debated between myself and Michael Mills. Until the compilation by-region is complete for that, there isn't much basis for further discussion about how to divide Poland and the Soviet Union.
However, I would like to take the opportunity of illustrating the kinds of research, calculations, analysis and sources used by myself and other historians of the Holocaust in the Soviet Union like Altman, Smilovitsky and Gerlach, to arrive at the 'harder' numbers I have previously cited further up the thread.
Perhaps this way one can illustrate on the one hand where uncertainties lie, and on the other why the numbers offered in the more recent research are not 'flaccid' and made-up.
Some Examples from Central Russia and Belorussia
To refer back to the post-1991 research on the number of Holocaust victims in the RSFSR - Altman calculates 144-170,000, in my view it should be lower than higher, thus the 'working round number' I would go for would be 150,000.
(All my earlier efforts were to arrive at 'working round numbers', by the way.)
I couldn't easily give you a figure for the total Jewish population of all territories of the RSFSR which were occupied by the Germans, though if you check up on Altshuler you can easily arrive at one. Nonetheless it is clear that for Russia proper, only a fraction of the pre-war Jewish population was caught up under the German occupation.
For the Russian provinces I have researched:
Bryansk Oblast 17,000 victims out of 32,655 pop (1939) = 52%
Smolensk Oblast 17-21,000 victims out of 33,020 pop (1939) = 51 to 63%
Figures from Altman and cross-checked by me, i.e. I have seen all his sources for these provinces and more of my own that he has not seen.
I would opt for the lower total for Smolensk since the higher total is created by incidents which are not as well sourced as the rest. (That, my friend, is how historians work: going through all bloody forty districts of a tiny shitty little province and researching the hell out of them. No magic formula can avoid this kind of effort.)
Given that one can document considerable numbers of refugees from Belorussian SSR who fled east but were overtaken by the invasion, landing in ghettos in the west of these Russian provinces, evidently the majority of the local Jewish population succeeded in fleeing or being selected for evacuation by the authorities. Perhaps 60% of the original native Jewish population fled or were evacuated from these two Russian provinces, leaving 40% behind, but 10-12% were replaced by 'westerners', refugees who just weren't lucky enough to escape all the way to Moscow or beyond.
Note I am not positing a general 'surcharge' of refugees, I am working backwards from eyewitness-proven and mostly German-documented massacres and comparing them with prewar population figures. The uncertainties come from those instances where eyewitnesses contradict each other.
The proportion caught up in the occupation was of course significantly higher in both Belorussia and the Ukraine. It was also significantly higher in the provincial towns than in the big cities. In Belorussia, the Ukraine and western Russia, however, probably the majority of the Jewish population lived in provincial towns = the shtetls, often well away from the main roads and not possessing juicy new factories whose machine tools and workforces the Soviet authorities would have wanted to evacuate.
To take two big cities (100,000+ prewar total population of all ethnicities) in Belorussia:
In Gomel, on the very eastern edge of Belorussia, no more than 3,000 Jews were caught, briefly ghettoised and then mass-murdered out of a pre-war Jewish population of 40,880 (7%). The rest had time to flee; many factories were also evacuated from the city, which was briefly the republic capital in late July after the fall of Minsk. Gomel fell at the start of August 1941.
In Bobruisk, somewhat further west, around 13,000 Jews died in no fewer than four separate actions, out of a 1939 Jewish population of 26,703 (ca. 50%). Bobruisk fell mid-July 1941.
A number of towns have been noted where there were more Jewish victims in a locality than there was 1939 Jewish population. This applies exclusively to the smaller towns, not to the larger cities like e.g. Vitebsk, Borisov, Bobruisk, Gomel.
Where such instances exist, it is the German sources which indicate a higher total. They are then cross-confirmed from eyewitness accounts and local investigations plus exhumations, gathered 18-24 months before the German Ereignismeldungen were discovered after the war. So there is no question of fakery with the German documents, no attempt to fudge them to agree with each other. (Where discrepancies exist I opt for the lower figure as a matter of principle, i.e. caution.)
This indicates the extent of the flight from western Belorussia, ie eastern Poland, to eastern Belorussia and to the RSFSR was very large. It also indicates the extent of the flight from the big cities to 'safer' rural areas, which was a pattern of general applicability to all inhabitants of the larger cities - most large urban populations were cut clean in half by the invasion. The cities were recently expanded in the 1920s and 1930s, so many people had relatives in villages or smaller towns. That was the then contemporary social reality for Belorussians, Russians and Jews alike.
The cases of towns with larger Jewish populations than before the war exist primarily, for Belorussia, in a band of territory just east of Minsk. One need only travel a few districts to the east, and the numbers drop off like a stone, to well below the 1939 population level. The pattern happens to correspond with the shape of the frontline in July-August 1941.
In some cases, there is also evidence that there were local concentrations of rural Jews into the ghettos in the district capitals, i.e. the Germans forced Jews in the countryside into the towns. But the main pattern is the mass flight from west to east.
Again, these patterns, both of being overtaken by the German advance, leaving cities for provincial towns, and local resettlements, are backed up by eyewitness accounts from survivors.
Thus the fate of Soviet Jews can not only be documented, but also varied in accordance with comprehensible human behaviour patterns and responses which flowed from the specific circumstances of the invasion, its tempo, geography and violence.
The Current State of the Art
My work is naturally able to build on that of Altman, Smilovitsky and Kruglov for central Russia and Belorussia and parts of the Ukraine. All three use German sources to some extent but mainly the Soviet postwar reports; they are pretty scrupulous in contrasting overlapping data and pointing to discrepancies. As indicated above, I disagree with Altman in a very few places and no doubt when I finish the ongoing project, I might find disagreements with Smilovitsky and Kruglov. If so, I will be gladly publicising them since us academics like to revise and correct each other's work. It's what makes history a science.
As I have just indicated, my analysis of my research data is ongoing; I cannot and would not in any case present the full details here on an internet forum. It's valuable work, not financially, but in terms of my academic work.
So for the moment, having gone through the same sources as the above named historians, I see no reason to disagree grossly with their totals, which I have presented before. I have indicated ways in which the numbers of Jews who died at German hands in these regions varied according to the specific local circumstances. The numbers are not pulled out of thin air.
Nor, ultimately, is there any way 'through the back door' to arrive at a better number at this time through statistical projections which rest on generalisations about prewar populations, evacuations, refugee flight, etc.
I regard the figures for the RSFSR, Belorussia, Ukraine, etc as 'working round numbers' with the margin of error fairly small. Further research will harden up the numbers, most probably by reducing them slightly. By how much, remains to be seen.
Do The Numbers Matter?
I'm not a statistician - I'm a historian. I can only offer you a historical and historiographical explanation for why the numbers are the way they are. Ultimately, no one should accept any kind of 'numbers game' with this era, they should actually explore the history, both through the eyes of individuals (which means the eyewitnesses, who bring it home to one on a human level) as well as communities (towns).
The problem is, it's very tempting for some to engage in 'revisionism', which is invariably based on what the Germans call Zahlenspielerei - numbers games. That disrespects the historical circumstances considerably, as well as the individuals who fell victim. I'm not saying anyone has necessarily engaged in 'revisionism' on this thread, just pointing to the problem with engaging in purely statistical calculations.
It's for this reason that the numbers do matter, and for this reason that one has to be careful with them. Out of respect for the victims, hundreds of historians across Europe and elsewhere, as well as community groups, lawyers, governments, and survivors, have been attempting to document ever more precisely the numbers and where possible the names of the victims. I've cited quite a few such efforts both from books and websites. Similar efforts are underway for non-Jewish victims of KZs, and for victims of the Stalinist purges. War memorials across much of Europe exist for both world wars alongside innumerable memorial books dedicated to particular regiments. Yes, some of this effort is a bit morbid, but it's quite a universal characteristic of 20th Century European History.
In most cases, the professional, amateur, local and government historians went to all that trouble for quite parochial reasons, in order to honour a particular community, or to answer a specific case. I don't believe that the community associations formed by emigres and survivors who had once lived in Polish shtetls were engaged in a collective conspiracy to inflate the numbers of their war dead; they were concerned only with their neighbours and friends when they wrote their memorial books.
Does it ultimately matter then whether one goes for this or that total number of victims of the Holocaust? David Thompson drew the comparison with a serial killer whose victims might number 45, 51, 60 or 62. A serial killer is still a serial killer under those circumstances, and genocide is still genocide whether it invoved 4.5 million or 6.2 million. Or indeed the numbers one could mention from Armenia, the Ukrainian famine, Rwanda, Cambodia or other horrors.
Nonetheless.
Yes, I would argue, it does matter. Not because there is a sacred total that must be obeyed. I am not Jewish, and I despise Ariel Sharon for inflating the number of Holocaust victims from Hungary, as he did in a political speech over a year before he went into a coma this past month.
It matters, firstly, because to opt for an older number (such as Reitlinger, or worse still something from 1945) ignores and disrespects the work of those several thousand individuals who have put in considerable effort in the past fifty years to be more precise. Secondly, lack of precision disrespects the victims.
The Holocaust in Western, Central and Southern Europe is not only well-documented, but well-understood and well-presented in the books. The numbers are generally accepted. Those victims are somehow more like us anyway; they shaved, they wore suits and dresses, and did not write in incomprehensible Yiddish or Cyrillic alphabets. They were, for want of a better term, more 'American' than the Ostjuden who formed the overwhelming majority of victims of the Holocaust.
It is somewhat different for the Holocaust in Eastern Europe. As people will have followed through this thread and the debates, there is still much room for uncertainty, especially regarding how one reconciles prewar Poland and prewar Soviet Union, given the border changes during 1939-41 and in 1945. Even I can't get my head round all of them.
In my view, it is telling that more Jews can be proven to have died in two provinces of Russia, Bryansk and Smolensk, than did Belgian Jews. It highlights the fact that one cannot simply take the bird's eye view with gigantic countries like Russia and Poland, whose Jewish populations were enormous, but must instead look regionally. That is precisely what historians have been and are doing, and why research is trending in a more comprehensive and precise direction.
The Eastern Europe of 1939-45 might seem like a fantasy la-la land to some, where 'millions' perish anonymously, but there are now plenty of books, memoirs, accounts, sources and archives open to all to make it quite concrete and human. It's no longer possible, as 'revisionists' have been wont to do, to argue that all those deported to Treblinka were 'resettled' to the east, whereupon they promptly disappeared 'behind the Iron Curtain'. Nor is is possible to say, 'we don't know and we can't find out', about what transpired in Chislavichi, Sumy, Volkovysk or Debica.
Yet the work of finding out is still somewhat ongoing. The last time anyone attempted to arrive at a precise calculation, Franz Golczewski and Gerd Robel came up with a calculation which totalled 4.8 million for Poland and the Soviet Union. That was 15 years ago. Since then we have had an avalanche of new research, especially on the Soviet Union but also on Poland. A recalculation is most definitely in order. It will not, however, inflate the number of 4.8 million higher. In my view, it will discover that it was lower. But not drastically lower. Without re-engaging in the numbers game, I think it safe to say that the number of Polish and Soviet Jews who died was of the order of at least 4 million. The number of Western, Southern and Central European Jews was well over a million.
Until the latest wave of research is synthesised more precisely, the best that one can say is that the number of European Jews who died in the Holocaust was more than 5 million, and less than 6.2 million.
Most people who have any understanding of the Holocaust tend to say that between 5 and 6 million died. They are right to do so. To claim less than 5 million died in discussions today, in 2006, is in my view wrong. Not morally wrong, not politically wrong, not religiously wrong, but factually wrong.
Quellen:
Far too many archival sources to name.
Altshuler, Mordecai (ed), Distribution of the Jewish Population of the USSR 1939. Jerusalem, 1993
Wheatcroft S.G. and Davies, R.W., ‘Population’ in: R.W. Davies, Mark Harrison and S.G. Wheatcroft (eds); The Economic Transformation of the Soviet Union 1913-1945, Cambridge, 1994
Gerlach, Christian, Kalkulierte Morde. Die deutsche Wirtschafts- und Vernichtungspolitik in Weissrussland 1941 bis 1944. Hamburg, 1999
Smilovitsky, Leonid, Katastrofa Evreev Belorussii 1941-1944. Tel Aviv, 2000 - in English online at http://www.jewishgen.org
Altman, Ilya, Zhertvy nenavisti. Kholokost v SSSR 1941-1945 gg. Moscow, 2002
Eshelony idut na vostok. Sbornik statei i vospominaniya. Moscow, 1966
Aleksievich, Svetlana, Poslednie sviditelni. Moscow, 2004 - eyewitness accounts, also in German as Die letzten Zeugen.
and many, many more works, including many already cited further back down this thread.
I have written enough on this subject for the moment; thank you for all who have helped out, chipped in, and argued back, especially iwh and Michael Mills, even if I disagree with you sometimes...
Right now I don't have anything more to say on the matter. I have said my piece.