Jordan Peterson on history: what the evidence says · JRE #877
SUBJECT: HISTORY
Not a true/false call. Every claim is logged with its sources; read the exhibits below.
in the Soviet Union between 1919 and 1959, somewhere between 30 and 50 million people were killed in internal oppression alone. And then in China... it might have been up to 100 million killed during Mao's time.
What the evidence says 01 / RECORD
Peterson's figures sit at or beyond the high end of historian estimates. Archival research summarized by NPR (Orlando Figes) puts Soviet repression under Stalin at roughly 25 million people affected (executed, imprisoned, deported, or exiled) between 1928 and 1953, a broader, non-lethal-inclusive count that is still below Peterson's 30-50 million killed, and covers a narrower period than his 1919-1959 range. For China, the best-documented Mao-era catastrophe, the Great Leap Forward famine (1958-1962), is estimated by archival historian Yang Jisheng (per NPR) at 36 million deaths, with other scholarly reconstructions ranging roughly 15-45 million, well short of Peterson's 100 million figure. The general phenomenon he describes (mass death under Soviet and Maoist rule) is real and well-documented, but the specific numbers he cites exceed the estimates found in the cited archival research.