 As the majority of excess deaths under Stalin were not direct killings, the exact number of victims of Stalinism is difficult to calculate due to lack of consensus among scholars on which deaths can be attributed to the regime.Official records reveal 799,455 documented executions in the Soviet Union between 1921 and 1953; 681,692 of these were carried out between 1937 and 1938, the years of the Great Purge.However, according to Michael Ellman, the best modern estimate for the number of repression deaths during the Great Purge is 950,000–1.2 million, which includes executions, deaths in detention, or soon after their release.