Estimates of the number of people killed by Joseph Stalin vary widely, but scholarly consensus based on Soviet archival data suggests the following:

• Official records show about 799,455 executions from 1921 to 1953.
• Approximately 1.5 to 1.7 million deaths occurred in the Gulag labor camps.
• Around 390,000 deaths resulted from the dekulakization forced resettlement.
• Up to 400,000 deaths were due to deportations during the 1940s.
• The Soviet famine of 1932–1933 (Holodomor and other famines) caused the deaths of at least 5.5 to 6.5 million people.

Altogether, these categories total about 3.3 million officially recorded victims, but including famine deaths and other foreseeable consequences of Stalin's policies, estimates rise significantly. Historian Timothy D. Snyder estimated that Stalin deliberately caused about 6 million deaths, rising to 9 million when including foreseeable deaths from policies

. Other historians, like Simon Sebag Montefiore and Robert Conquest, have suggested figures around 15 to 20 million deaths attributable to Stalin's regime

. The Great Purge alone (1936–1938) resulted in between 700,000 and 1.75 million deaths through executions and imprisonments

. The Katyn massacre accounted for about 22,000 Polish officers killed on Stalin's orders

. In summary, the most reliable modern estimates place the death toll caused by Stalin's regime at roughly 6 to 9 million people directly, with some estimates going as high as 15 to 20 million when including all indirect deaths such as famine and forced labor camp mortality