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In The Soviet Story from 1:37:54 to 1:38:54, killing quotas of Soviet citizens are talked about. I could not find any concrete reason, evidence, or documentation suggesting that such "killing quotas " existed inflicted by the Soviet government on its own people and find it to make very little sense.

Can someone verify the claims made in this video and back them up with some evidence as they seem exaggerated to me off the bat.

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    Welcome to History:Stack Exchange. Thank you for your question; please consider revising it to be more in line with our community expectations. Like many other stacks, we expect questions to provide evidence of prior research. That helps us to understand the question, and avoids our repeating work you've already done. Our help center, and other stacks provide additional resources to assist with revisions.
    – MCW ♦
    Commented Dec 21, 2020 at 19:50
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    Does Wikipedia help? e.g. "I had only been an expert there and I can only answer for what I am saying there myself. I had told to Šnore that some of his narratives are obvious forgeries he was tricked by. For example, Beria—Müller agreement on killing Jews together""
    – MCW ♦
    Commented Dec 21, 2020 at 19:52
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    @MarkC.Wallace: Is this perhaps ore suited to Skeptics?
    – Pieter Geerkens
    Commented Dec 21, 2020 at 20:43

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This quota ("лимиты") was introduced in the infamous NKVD Order No. 00447 of July 30, 1937 (yes, as Mark says, Wikipedia does help, you just have to know where to look; Russian Wikipedia mirror is much more detailed than the English link I gave). If and when I have more time, I will add more on this. The only surprising thing about these quotas is that they surprise anybody: After all, USSR was a country of planned economy.

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  • A planned economy where they kill their own citizens?
    – Schwarz Kugelblitz
    Commented Dec 22, 2020 at 2:12
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    @SchwarzKugelblitz: Sure. And slave labor in GULAG is a big part of the planned economy, which means that smart GULAG officials even start to protect (up to a point) their prisoners so they can fulfill their 5 year plans! Zavenyagin was one of those.
    – Moishe Kohan
    Commented Dec 22, 2020 at 2:22
  • @SchwarzKugelblitz that order is a result of a very complex situation. It must be viewed in a context. Those was not just dumb repressions for the fun of it.
    – Zmur
    Commented Jan 17, 2021 at 19:26
  • Can you elaborate on what situation you talk about?
    – Schwarz Kugelblitz
    Commented Jan 17, 2021 at 19:48
  • @Zmur: Nobody says it was done for fun, the Party line was that all the killings were done in order to "protect the Socialist Motherland from the class enemies." In order to explain the sudden increase of the number of class enemies Stalin came up with the theory of the "increased class straggle during construction and development of socialism." If one wants to understand what was really going on, the book by Robert Conquest "The Great Terror" is still one of the best.
    – Moishe Kohan
    Commented Jan 17, 2021 at 20:17

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