Abstract
IN 1990-91 A DISCUSSION TOOK PLACE in this journal between Wheatcroft and Conquest about the relative merits of 'statistical' and 'literary' sources for the study of Soviet history.1 Of course Conquest was quite right in thinking that Soviet statistics were often very misleading.2 Furthermore, as has long been known by Sovietologists, literary sources are of great value in giving a qualitative picture (within economics, the classic case was the use of literary evidence to analyse the situation in agriculture). The purpose of this note, however, is to show by example that the use of literary sources for quantitative estimates can be a serious source of error.
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