How did Joseph Stalin kill people?

Answer 1

Stalin held mass executions and purges. These were in order to keep law and to punish deserters. He also used them to eliminate threats to his power.

By far the greatest number of people killed by Stalin was through famine and resettlement of people in uninhabitable lands. Stalin's death count using these methods against certain peoples, societal classes and nationalities was the equivalent of genocide.

Millions of Ukrainians (and Russian peasants) were left to starve as their crops were forcibly requisitioned from them in amounts Stalin needed to fund his Five Year Plans without regard to whether the peasants were left enough to survive on.

Millions of "kulaks" (relatively well off peasants) were dispossessed of their lands (Stalin's policies of "collectivization" and "dekulakization") and sent in exile in Siberia to die of starvation or exposure to harsh climate conditions.