Subtract 8 from 61 (best combined with trying to force yourself to read what you claim to not have had read above).
Good luck promoting your very own criteria for people being "slaves in a prison country", may be one day the meaning of terms will change enough for your original post (the one on the nations "enslaved" by Russian Leaders) to make sense :)
As you know: In my references, most researchers seems to be between 15-20 millions.
My definition of slave:
Someone living with no rule of law. No human rights. E.g. their property and lives can be taken on a whim by their rulers. They are not allowed to leave, or there are violent repercussions.
Ok, so we are down from the sensational 60+ M figures to 3-4 times less now, that's progress (still questionable figures though) :)
A "typical" communist state from 50 years may not give its people what a pedantic contemporary person would call a full set of "human rights", but would provide free education, medicine, and so on (not to mention lesser level of violent crimes often), how's that slavery?
[as regarding not being able to leave -- you can make an attempt and force yourself to read above on that -- difference in income equalities, forming a nice "brain drain potential" is a pragmatic reason to constrain emigration, not some mysterious appetite of "party leader" for eating their own people alive]
You know absolutely nothing about communism, so to say :)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8372340
Original link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_killings_under_Communist_r...