The total population figure of the USSR came to 162 million—meaning that (for those who expected 170 million) some eight million people were “missing.” That inexact number included victims of the famine and their unborn children. It also reflected the genuine chaos of the famine years. The peasants dying by the roadsides, the mass migration, the deportations, the impossibility of keeping accurate statistics in villages where everyone was starving, including public officials—all of these things made the census-takers’ job more difficult.21 In truth, nobody was absolutely sure how many people
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