The figure of 60 millions can lead to numerous misunderstandings. This figure (and even a figure of 100 million) is quoted by demographers, who investigated the decrease of population in the USSR as a result of mass terror. However, it does not represent the exact number of perished persons, but a mathematically calculated figure including unborn children, i.e. children that would have been born, if their potential parents had stayed alive. On the other hand, no fewer foreign citizens were affected by Soviet terror, above all those, who came under Soviet occupation (in Poland, Romania, the Baltic States, China, Korea, Germany and other European countries). Many of them were shot dead, many lost their lives in exile or in camps.
One should also bear in mind that the number of those killed could be even larger than the number of those, who suffered from reprisals! For the victims of the "hunger terror" (in the Ukraina, the Kuban Region, in Kazakhstan) in 1932-1933 were technically no victims of repression at all: they were neither arrested nor sent into internal exile, they merely had their food taken away. A typical case of "bloodless murder". Many people feel that one should also include the Leningrad Blockade: however, it is not really clear, who imposed this blockade - the Wehrmacht (German Armed Forces under Hitler) or the NKVD (People's Commissariate of Internal Affairs of the USSR)?
Thus, it becomes obvious that we must not confuse the terms: "victims of reprisals" and "victims of the regime". The second category represents a larger number of victims than the first.
From time to time we hear the question: why are there so few Kazakhs in Kazakhstan, less than half the population overall? And in the north and the east even none at all? Because in 1933 only one third of all Kazakhs remained in Kazakhstan: one third starved to death, when the Communists killed off all their (the nomadic cattle breeders') livestock, in order to "make them settle in one place" (whereby it is difficult to keep nomades under control), and the remaining third took refuge with their herds across the border to Sinchiang in China.
We must accept that, basically, we do not have any exact figures on the number of victims of the regime; we might, at most, talk of scales. However, how should we consider the 35 millions of USSR citizens who died during the war, for example? Are they victims of Stalin? Of Hitler? And this figure, too, is not necessarily correct: we should remember that 10 years ago this figure was believed to 15 millions less. After all, Hitler would have had no real chance of seizing power in Germany without the assistance of the USSR [i.e.the VKP/b (All-Communist Party of the Bolsheviks) and the Comintern]. Well, who is to blame for the victims of World War II then?