"One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.”?

Question

What did Stalin mean when he said this?
"One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.”

and how would I relate to the deaths at the Labour Camps?

Answer 1

It is possible to personalize one death--we can all imagine someone we know dying. On the other hand, the idea of a million deaths is unfathomable. People cannot think in terms of numbers that large (at least not in any sense but an abstract, conceptual sense). Therefore, one million deaths would be a statistic.

I always try to illustrate this idea to my students this way:

During the six years of World War II there were approximately 50 million deaths (military and civilian). This would be equal to:

8,333,333 deaths per year
694,444 deaths per month
22,831 deaths per day
951 deaths per hour
15.85 deaths per minute

By the time I finish the explanation (which usually takes about five minutes), 75 people would have died on an average day of WWII. The students can relate to that.

Stalin is responsible for the deaths of about 20 million Russians, most of whom died in the labor camps. The quote you gave represents his dismissal of the importance of these deaths.

Answer 2

1

Answer 3

Baghdad had nothing to do with 9/11 genius.

As others already noted, a million deaths means nothing because it's just a number. You cannot relate to that, thus there is not much really 'tragic' about it other than a generalized notion of death as being tragic.

My own credo is 'one death is a tragedy only to those affected by it, a million deaths is necessary population control.'

Answer 4

Simply put, a single death is an understandable thing, and you can feel bad for that person and his friends and family. But a million is such a huge number that your brain just doesn't quite grasp the scope of it and it becomes a number instead of a tragic death.

Answer 5

Heres an analogy. Someone in your community dies. The local paper does a nice write up on him. The community morns for their family.

However hundreds of peopl are murded each year. Yet you dont grive for all of them. Just the one that was close to you.

It shows that killing just one person brings great grief but when people hear about a large number of deaths, they arent moved as that one single death.

It relates to larbor camps because it shows hte human's ability to care so greatly about a single loss that they overlook the much great outracites (sp) because they do not touch them personally.

Answer 6

Stalin, a leading psychopath, and role model for current "statesmen" i dare not name, meant that most sane and kindly people "shut down" in the face of such abject horror, and in denial, cannot allow themselves to feel/relate to such a horrendous fact as the million deaths. One, on the other hand is manageable, and, thus, empathy, sadness, grief are allowed to arise.

He was responsible, it is said, for the murders of some 60 million of his "countrymen". Fortunately, his reign of unmitigated terror was brought to an end via his being poisoned by his doctors, most of whom belonged to a "gene pool" he victimized regularly. Minimal justice, long overdue :)

Answer 7

One death is retail. They tend to be personal

Many deaths are wholesale. A government that wants to enforce it's will must think in wholesale, because governments use WAR to enforce its will. WAR should be thought of in wholesale terms.

( what you see in IRAQ is not WAR, it is a POLICE ACTION, and we have LOST every police action we have had..8P... )

A NUKE over Baghdad would be WAR....9/11 was an act of WAR....