[dgordon]

45 million dead in four years. Yep, that's about right for the Holodomor times four.

Of course, Stalin and Mao still aren't as synonymous with ultimate evil as Hitler was, and won't be, despite killing quite a few million more people. For decades Western leftists even praised them. It probably has to do something with not being utterly defeated in the biggest war of all time. History is written by the winners and all that, and Stalin was a winner of WWII. (Mao wasn't in power yet.)

[lzw]

Very good point, but there's also, seemingly, a widespread perception that those killed by government policy are not really murdered the way those killed in the holocaust were. Start 100 million and you can always blame it on "the capitalists" who "were too greedy", even if your country was a communist one.

Never seems to have the impact of killing 10 million in gas chambers, which is why it is the more popular method than gas chambers for the modern mass murderer.