The three historians who studied the heretofore secret gulag records concluded that the number of victims were far less than usually claimed in the West. This finding is ridiculed by anticommunist liberal Adam Hochschild, who prefers to repeat Churchill’s story about Stalin’s fingers (New York Times, 5/8/96). Like many others, Hochschild has no trouble accepting undocumented speculations about the gulag but much difficulty accepting the documented figures drawn from NKVD archives.
