Soviet genocide
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Soviet genocide is a controversial term that refers to deaths of millions of civilians before and during World War II was designed to eliminate domestic opposition to the Soviet Union.
While it is indisputable that Soviet Union brought deaths and suffering to millions of its population, technically, the term "genocide" in inapplicable, because Soviet repressions were based on the notions of social class and class struggle, rather than on racist or nationalist theories. Nevertheless the term is indiscriminately used in emotional and politically motivated texts. This usage is often motivated by the fact that, e.g., ethnicity-targeted population transfer in the Soviet Union, while lacking genocidal purposes, has effectively led to considerable numbers of deaths due to inflicted hardships.
"During the war the Soviets committed genocide against at least nine of their distinct ethnic- linguistic sub-nations, including ethnic Germans, ethnic Greeks, Crimean Tatars, and Balkars." [1] (http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/CHARNY.CHAP.HTM)
The death of millions of people in Ukraine during the Holodomor famines of 1932—1933 is attributed to intentional non-providing the relief and blocking the migration of starving population by the Soviet government. The numbers of victims vary drastically between 2 and 15 millions.
The actual number (if any) of those killed or starved for political, ethnical or other reasons, is technically unknown. For those who believe the Soviet genocide to have happened, the number is widely debated and commonly changed back and forth (sometimes for political reasons). For example Solzhenitsyn suggested the total number of 60 million.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union when NKVD/KGB and state archives became publicly available, it became posible to derive more accurate estimate. Opened archives made it possible both to debunk wild exaggerrations and to reveal certain facts for which only anecdotical evedence existed. See Category:Soviet political repressions for artricles on the topic.