tainly too low, because prisoners who were mortally ill were often
released from penal servitude days before they passed away.
Famine of 1946–1948. There is only very sketchy information on this
“unknown” famine. Recent Russian scholars have placed the death
toll at 2 million. It is estimated that almost half the population, 100
million people, suffered from malnutrition after World War II.
Thousands of peasants were arrested for stealing food for their
families during the famine: MVD figures show 53,369 arrests in
1946 alone for theft of food. Most of those convicted were women
pilfering food for their children. Almost three-quarters of those ar-
rested went to forced labor camps. They were not reckoned as po-
litical prisoners, but they were victims of the system.
Political Arrests during Stalin’s Last Years. Approximately 350,000
captured Soviet military personnel received death or 25-year sen-
tences after their repatriation from Germany. In the Ukraine and
the Baltic states, prophylactic arrests of villagers continued until
1953, as the MGB sought to break the back of nationalist resist-
ance. Arrests of intellectuals and dissident military officers contin-
ued as well, though not at the pace of the Yezhovshchina: between
1947 and 1953, there were 350,000 arrests for political offenses.
The last mass execution of political prisoners was the shooting of
Jewish intellectuals and factory workers following the trial of the
Anti-Fascist Committee in late 1952.These figures are “soft.” They do not include those killed in the pro-
longed partisan war in the Ukraine and the Baltic in 1945–1953 or the
peripatetic civil war that existed in the Caucasus in 1925–1935 over col-
lectivization. Nor does the figure include those who were murdered out
of hand on Stalin’s and others’ personal orders. Alexander Yakovlev’s A
Century of Violence in Soviet Russia(New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univer-
sity Press, 2002) is the best short volume on the costs of the terror. It is
not for the squeamish. The Memorial organization is creating a history
of the martyrdom of the people, but despite extraordinary courage and
persistence, it lacks complete records for the period. It now has lists for
many mass graves and still continues to search for other execution
grounds. Its website in Russian and English is the best place to follow
developments in the history of the Soviet holocaust.LOSS OF LIFE IN THE STALIN ERA • 32306-313 z08 App H.qxd 7/27/06 8:05 AM Page 323