[legatus]

I know democide has been mostly coined by Rummel. Do you by chance refer to him? If so, could I ask for your sources? I know that Rummel's data has been heavily criticized by many historians. His work is usually about taking the largest estimate, which is fruitful if you want big titles (à la Black Book of X), but unfruitful if you are interested in the truth.

[50656E6973]

>unfruitful if you are interested in the truth.

Do you really think its possible to find "the truth" of numbers when it comes to things like democide?

[legatus]

No, no historian thinks he will find the definitive truth. My point is that there are valid historians (I only know about a few fields, but you can see which historians are valid by how much their peers respect their work) that at least try to get as close to the the probable number of, in this case, deaths. One example: taking a look at Rummel's data on the Soviet Union, he reports 60 million deaths 1917-1987, which is laughable (he even claimed that was a low estimate!). That's the number reported by Solzhenitsyn, which is not considered a reliable source in contemporary Sovietology (probably not a source at all). Here is a relevant thread on r/AskHistorians if you're interested: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3v5u2t/are_r...

[giggles_giggles]

Is the irony of saying Solzhenitsyn is unreliable while linking a Reddit thread as a better source lost on you?

[legatus]

I'm really sorry an AskHistorians thread is not good enough for you. Let me paste Jonathan Smele's remark about Rummel's work (Smele is known for his compiled bibliography on the Russian Revolution):

>A poorly researched, obsessively anti-Soviet polemical general survey. [1]

Unsurprisingly, you would have read that exact quote in the reddit thread I linked. Guess that was too much to ask for.

[1] Jonathan Smele, Russian Revolution and Civil War Annotated Bibliography

[Fins]

What's wrong with being anti-Soviet?

[legatus]

The point is that in this case Rummel doesn't even attempt to be objective. You can be biased, everyone is. A real historian, someone who is respected by his peers, actively tries to remove his bias from his work. It isn't really profitable (you earn much more by writing extremely biased pop-history) but some individuals, such as me, value it.