Why a journalist was unaware on the number of Stalin´s victims?

The main newspaper in Finland, Helsingin Sanomat, published a correction by telling  that "in Tuesday, October 30 on page A24,  it was claimed that ca. one million people died during Stalin´s progroms in 1930´s. This number refers to those executed. The total number of dead people due to Stalings pogroms was tens of millions."

To me it was extremely surprising that a journalist of the main newspaper in the country had made such a mistake. This is because one might have imagined that Stalin´s achievements are generally known here in Russia´s neighborhood - or at least their order of magnitude.

I wrote this short note, because I suspect that the mistake was not made by chance, but due to the willingness of our media to hide the magnitude of destruction and human suffering due to the big socialist experiment during the last century. This becomes understandable by thinking, whether such an order-of-magnitude mistake could even be imagined to be made in the number of Jewish victims of the Hitler´s regime.

Therefore I consider it possible, that it is exactly this reason - hiding the bloody footsteps of sosialism - why we have not demonized the use of hammer and sickle in clothes or demonstrations in a similar way as the use of swastika. And noticeably, we have even in our parliament a political party that cherishes the legacy of this ideology.

The original story in Finnish:
Miksei toimittaja tiennyt Stalinin kymmenien miljoonien uhrien määrää?