the_dunk_tank

The death count is laughably, provably false. So I'll stick to talking about repression. Or rather, I'll let Moshe Lewin - one of the most pre-eminent Sovietologists of the last few decades - do the talking. From *The Soviet Century:

Laws against political critics, targeted at ‘especially dangerous crimes against the state’, achieved notoriety during the Cold War when the phenomenon of dissidence emerged. Criminal prosecution of it was based on the following set of articles:

Article 64: flight abroad or refusal to return to the USSR – act of treason.

Article 70: anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda.

Article 72: activity by organized groups leading to especially dangerous crimes against the state and participation in anti-Soviet organizations.

Article 142: violation of the law on the separation of Church and state, including in education, punishable by a year’s imprisonment or a fine of up to 50 roubles. In the event of a repeat offence, the maximum sentence was three years’ imprisonment.

Article 190: the circulation or composition of texts defaming the Soviet state and its social system (up to three years’ imprisonment or one year’s mandatory labour, or a minimum fine of 100 roubles).

Article 227: infringement of citizens’ rights under the guise of religious ceremonies (e.g. ‘forced’ baptism), punishable by three-five years’ imprisonment or exile, with or without confiscation of property. Active participation in a group, or active propaganda in favour of committing such acts, could mean up to three years’ imprisonment or exile, or a year’s mandatory labour. Note that if the acts and individuals pursued presented no danger to society, methods of social pressure were applied instead.6

Most cases of a political character were brought for ‘anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda’, ‘organizational activities’, defamation of the state, or (in lesser numbers) violation of the law on separation of Church and state. According to the KGB, 8,124 trials were held for ‘anti-Soviet manifestations’ during the Khrushchev–Brezhnev–Chernenko periods (1957–85), most of them on the basis of the articles targeting anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda and the deliberate circulation of calumnies against the state – the two most widely used articles.7

The actual number of people proceeded against (including by way of prophylaxis) does not in itself alter the fact that the Soviet system was politically retrograde, allowing its opponents’ propaganda to score points. The regime possessed repulsive features that cost it dear in the international arena. But the scope of the repression we are dealing with for the post-Stalinist period – an average of 312 cases a year for twenty-six years for the two main political crimes (and in some cases, reduction or quashing of sentences by a higher court) – constitutes not merely a statistic, but an index: this was no longer Stalinism and it does not warrant description of the USSR as the ‘Evil Empire’, which was common in the West. Apocalyptic invective of this sort makes the Soviet Union seem rather innocent by comparison.

What Lewin is pointing out here is that the total number of people brought to trial (not convicted, and plenty that were sentenced had those sentences overturned) for "political" crimes, per the KGB's own records from the Soviet archives, amounts to a little over 300 per year. In a nation of over 200 million people. That is such an incredibly small number objectively, but even moreso when compared to Westerner's beliefs that from 1917 through 1991, the USSR was just one big gulag and anyone who dared make fun of Brezhnev's eyebrows would be locked away for life. In that same section Lewin highlights that plenty more people were subject to prophylaxis (i.e. dissidents getting a talking-to and being told to cut it out, and it stopped there)... but to be outraged over that or the 312 per year trials frankly assumes most of those people didn't deserve it. But that's not true either. It's not like the USSR had any reason to go after randos and there's no evidence (at least post-Stalin) that USSR went after anyone but genuine threats. Wreckers get wrecked, sorry not sorry, I support the USSR going after wreckers when they are in a life-and-death struggle with a West that was really out to get them.