[ben_w]

I thought most of those deaths were indirectly, resulting from agricultural and economic policies and forced relocations and only a relatively (10%) small number of executions?

If you include economic causes, you might need to include the excess mortality of systematically impoverished communities in western nations — and I don’t just mean “PoC in the USA”, as I can point to a UK study claiming the government’s austerity policies since 2010 have caused 120,000 excess deaths: https://www.bmj.com/company/newsroom/health-and-social-care-...

Also, if those deaths were related to economic policies, you probably have to weigh them by population size.

Obviously that’s still a million executions more than most; I am not defending him, this is just about making it an apples-to-apples comparison.

[_Codemonkeyism]

It looks like something of ~7M from the famines, ~2M from Gulags, ~1M from executions, uncertain number from torture.

Numbers from

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excess_mortality_in_the_Soviet...

I'd say if famines are the cheapest way, many dictators with a genocide mind set would do that if possible.

[estsauver]

There's some evidence it was not accidental: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor#Genocide_question