[rabite]

Wikipedia cites the Holodomor as 5 million. That was mostly in East Ukraine. That's most of the half. The other 2.5 million were from gulags.

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

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

There were 20 million+ excess deaths, of which 10 million are commonly attributed to Yagoda:

https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3342999,00.html

Maybe you disagree with these numbers, but they're the ones I know of.

[racional]

Wikipedia cites the Holodomor

You cited, as an encyclopedic fact, 10M as having perished specifically "Yagoda's torture chambers" per your words, which can only refer to NKVD (or otherwise "political") persecutions -- not the various deportations en masse or the Holodomor. The WP page you cited confirms upper bound for the former set of excess fatalaties (i.e. the one that you were explicitly referencing) at 770k -- which we shall charitably round up to 1M for the sake of "civility" here -- for the entire USSR during the pre-war era.

Far short of the 10M figure you are introducing for whatever imaginitive and creative purposes.

Again: 10M in this category -- the number who perished "Yagoda's torture chambers" throughout the USSR before the start of the war; and "about half" being in Ukraine; or around 5M, is the number you put forth -- apparently for the nifty rhetorical effect you thought it might bring.

Whereas the historical consensus for this category is <400k.

[rabite]

> Far short of the 10M figure you are introducing for whatever imaginitive and creative purposes.

I didn't introduce the 10M figure, I linked an example article where it was used (the Ynetnews one) -- it is a common number I have seen of those who died in Soviet prisons. Maybe not specifically those who were captured by the NKVD -- but I think a lot of people were dropping dead who were also not political prisoners.

> 10M in this category -- the number who perished "Yagoda's torture chambers" throughout the USSR before the start of the war; and "about half" being in Ukraine;

No -- I said about half of these excess deaths were in Ukraine, most of that half being made up of the 5 million people killed in the Holodomor.

I'm sorry I don't have perfectly legible accounting of the millions of people Stalin killed in Ukraine, but with the lower bound being in the millions I don't think saying 7.5 million people killed in Ukraine is unreasonable. The Holodomor killed 5 million and then there's assuredly another 2.5 million made up in further excess deaths there somewhere. I don't know if it is perfectly accurate and I don't care. These were the people who Bandera had a fiduciary duty to protect, as a leader of Ukrainians. I don't support the evil things that happened in Volhyn and Galicia, but those things had a historical context where there was a credible threat of millions more lives of his countrymen on the line. Tough choices had to be made and he made them.