Jordan Peterson on history: what the evidence says · JRE #877
“6 million Ukrainians starved to death. They had posters. The Soviets produced posters in the 1930s that said, essentially, don't forget it's wrong to eat your children.”
What the evidence says
Peterson's death toll of 6 million is above mainstream demographic estimates for the Holodomor (1932-33). NPR reports the famine killed "at least 4 million" Ukrainians, and other demographic reconstructions (including a widely cited 2015 Ukrainian/UNC study) put the toll around 3.9 million, with a broader historian-cited range of roughly 3.5-5 million; some higher estimates up to 7-10 million exist but are outliers. A figure of 6 million is higher than the most-cited scholarly range, making it an exaggeration rather than a fabrication, since no single precise figure is universally agreed upon. The claim about Soviet posters explicitly warning against eating one's children is widely repeated in popular accounts but could not be corroborated against a primary source or peer-reviewed history in this review; that detail remains unverified.