No, 100 million people did not die under Stalin and no reputable academic would suggest such a thing. That figure probably comes from misunderstanding the Black Book of Communism which argues, rather poorly that at least 100 million deaths were caused by communism.

First of all I interpret “died under Stalin” to mean people living in the Soviet Union who’s deaths Stalin is responsible for.

Next, the population of the Soviet Union as calculated in the 1951 census is 182 million. Over half of the citizens of the union would have had to die in a manner caused by Stalin for this statistic to be accurate. Not to mention that most of the deaths these people are talking about generally occurred in the 1930s when the population was significantly lower. Over half the citizens of the Soviet Union did not die during that time period. No reputable historian would claim such a thing.

So how many deaths is Stalin responsible for?

That is a complex and much debated area of history. Archival documents are not always to be relied upon, census data during the period was not always accurate not to mention at times deliberately distorted and crucial records were in some cases simply erased. During the Cold War Stalinist mass killings were used as an anti-communist propaganda point, with somewhat more right-wing academics like Conquest and Pipes generally arguing for a higher death counts and their somewhat more left-wing opponents such as Wheatcroft arguing for lower ones. Evidence was even scarcer during the cold war then now so academics would pore over census figures and reports from refugees and defectors to try to construct an accurate model of the number of deaths.

Then the Soviet Union collapsed, and the archives were opened.

Both camps proceeded to declare victory stating that the archives supported their interpretation of events. Proponents of a high death toll proclaimed that the archival documents whilst obviously not to be entirely trusted and incomplete showed the massive death toll of the soviet regime and that their estimates were fundamentally on the right track. Those who supported a lower figure instead argued that the archives fundamentally vindicated themselves and that their opponents showed poor scholarship in insisting upon using “their old Sovietological methods with round-about calculations based on odd statements from emigres and other informants who are supposed to have superior knowledge” as Wheatcroft puts it. The one thing the archives did rule out and basically everyone can agree on is huge estimates like the 60 million deaths put forward by the author Aleksander Solzhenytsin.

Further conflict appears over what should count as being ‘caused’ by Stalin. Executions he signed off on are fairly obvious, but what about deaths caused incidentally by policy? Should all the deaths in the various famines that occurred under his watch be blamed on him as a natural consequence of collectivisation or only those where he approved harsh grain collection quotas and/or refused or delayed food aid? Which types of evidence should be emphasised when working out the total number of dead? How should Gulag and transportation deaths be calculated?

So, what are the actual figures proposed? Conquest argued in 2007 that whilst it is impossible to work out the exact figure at least 15 million people were killed by the Soviet regime under Stalin, with the man often using the figure of 20 million as a rough estimate. Snyder on the other hand argues for Stalin intentionally killing roughly 6 million people and killing another 3 million in foreseeable deaths arising from government policies.

In popular histories you can find significantly higher numbers being used. 20 million is often used, however the death count somewhat regularly jumps into the high 20s and sometimes even high 30s depending upon which book you read. Estimates such as those are often based on earlier scholarly works created during the cold war or the misinterpretation of current articles. The Wheatcroft article I will link below dissects one of them and a good modern example of a popular media article like that is this one which proposes even higher figures then that. Then you get pieces of writing that don’t even try to base themselves on academic sources like this or attempt to base themselves on scholarly work but do a remarkably terrible job such as this.

So, to put it simply no, 100 million people did not die under Stalin and whilst the number of deaths caused by him is disputed it is definitely not 100 million.