“Execution was the favored solution to every problem, including those caused by previous executions,” writes Adam Hochschild. “When the national census showed that his reign of terror was shrinking the country’s population, Stalin ordered the members of the census board shot. The new officials, not surprisingly, came up with higher figures. Between about 1929, when Stalin had vanquished his rivals and concentrated power in his hands, and his death in 1953, most historians now estimate that he had been directly responsible for the deaths of somewhere around 20 million people.”
