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There is a difference between deactivating and deleting users. Please see this article which describes the differences. You can recreate the user, but all of their previous work and associations will be lost.
Hope this helps, sorry it’s not the simple answer.
Deleting is permanently removing the user, whereas deactivating, activated, the user record still exists but is not currently being used. A deactivated user can be reactivated, but once a record is deleted, it is gone and you need to recreate it losing any previous history.
