Red Terror
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'''Red Terror''' in [[Soviet Russia]] was the campaign of mass arrests and [[execution]]s conducted by the [[Bolshevik]] government. In [[Soviet historiography]], the Red Terror is described as officially announced on [[September 2]], [[1918]] by [[Yakov Sverdlov]] and ended in about October 1918. However many historians, beginning with [[Sergei Melgunov]], apply this term to repressions for the whole period of the [[Russian Civil War]], 1918-1922.<ref name="Melgunov"> [[Sergei Melgunov|Serge Petrovich Melgunov]], ''Red Terror in Russia'', Hyperion Pr (1975), ISBN 0-883-55187-X</ref><ref name="Black"/> The mass [[repression]]s were conducted [[extrajudicial punishment|without judicial process]] by the [[state security]] organization, [[Cheka]].<ref name="Radzinsky"/>
The term "Red Terror" was originally<ref> Jan ten Brink (1899) English translation by J. Hedeman [http://books.google.com/books?id=m7QEAAAAYAAJ&dq=robespierre+%22red+terror%22&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=XeBLxKxvPY&sig=8ZNFDmwk4sQ9wlVYtz2zyB0sLjw "Robespierre and the Red Terror"], reprinted in 2004, ISBN 1402138296</ref> used to describe the last six weeks of the "[[Reign of Terror]]" of the [[French Revolution]], ending on [[July 28]], [[1794]] (execution of [[Maximilien Robespierre|Robespierre]]), to distinguish it from the subsequent period of [[the White Terror (France)|the White Terror]]<ref>[http://www.victorianweb.org/history/hist7.html French Revolution]</ref> (historically this period has been known as the Great Terror (French: [[:fr:Terreur (Révolution française)#La Grande Terreur (juin-juillet 1794)|la Grande Terreur]])).
==Purpose of the Soviet Red Terror==
The Red Terror was claimed to be introduced in reply to [[White Terror#Russian White Terror|White Terror]]. The stated purpose of this campaign was struggle with [[counter-revolutionaries]] considered to be [[enemies of the people]]. Many [[Bolshevik|Russian communists]] openly proclaimed that Red Terror was needed for extermination of entire [[social classes|social groups]] or former "[[ruling classes]]". Lenin planned the terror in advance. In [[1908]] he had written of "real, nation-wide terror, which reinvigorates the country".<ref> [[Robert Conquest]] ''Reflections on a Ravaged Century'' (2000) ISBN 0-393-04818-7, page 98</ref> Communist leader [[Grigory Zinoviev]] declared in September 1918:
:''"To overcome of our enemies we must have our own [[socialist]] [[militarism]]. We must carry along with us 90 million out of the 100 million of Soviet Russia's population. As for the rest, we have nothing to say to them. They must be annihilated."''<ref>George Leggett. ''The Cheka: Lenin's Political Police'' [[Oxford University Press]], 1986. ISBN 0198228627 page 114</ref>
For many people the major evidence of their guilt was their social status rather than actual deeds. [[Martin Latsis]], chief of the Ukrainian [[Cheka]], explained in newspaper ''"Red Terror"'':
:"Do not look in the file of incriminating evidence to see whether or not the accused rose up against the Soviets with arms or words. Ask him instead to which [[social class|class]] he belongs, what is his background, his [[education]], his [[profession]]. These are the questions that will determine the fate of the accused. That is the meaning and essence of the Red Terror."<ref name="State"> [[Yevgenia Albats]] and Catherine A. Fitzpatrick. ''The State Within a State: The KGB and Its Hold on Russia - Past, Present, and Future'', 1994. ISBN 0-374-52738-5.</ref>
==History==
The campaign of mass repressions was officially initiated as retribution for the assassination of [[Petrograd]] [[Cheka]] leader [[Moisei Uritsky]], and attempted assassination of [[Vladimir Lenin]] by [[Fanya Kaplan]] on [[August 30]], [[1918]]. While recovering from his wounds, Lenin instructed: "It is necessary - secretly and ''urgently'' to prepare the terror" <ref name="Mitrokhin"> [[Christopher Andrew]] and [[Vasili Mitrokhin]] (2000). The [[Mitrokhin Archive]]: The KGB in Europe and the West. Gardners Books. ISBN 0-14-028487-7, page 34.</ref> Even before the assassinations, Lenin was sending telegrams to "to introduce mass terror" in [[Nizhny Novgorod]] in response to a suspected civilian uprising there, and "crush" landowners in [[Penza]] who protested, sometimes violently, to requisition of their grain by military detachments:<ref name="Black"/> <!--page 72, Black Book, telegrams sent on August 9 and 10-->
:"Comrades!... You must make example of these people. (1) Hang (I mean hang publicly, so that people see it) at least 100 kulaks, rich bastards, and known bloodsuckers. (2) Publish their names. (3) Seize all their grain. (4) Single out the [[hostage]]s per my instructions in yesterday's telegram."
Five hundred "representatives of overthrown classes" were executed immediately after assassination of Uritsky <ref name="Radzinsky"> [[Edvard Radzinsky]] ''[[Stalin]]: The First In-depth Biography Based on Explosive New Documents from Russia's Secret Archives'', Anchor, (1997) ISBN 0-385-47954-9, pages 152-155</ref>. The first official announcement of Red Terror, published in ''Izvestiya'', "Appeal to the Working Class" on [[September 3]] [[1918]] called for the workers to "crush the [[Lernaean Hydra|hydra]] of [[counterrevolution]] with massive terror! ... anyone who dares to spread the slightest rumor against the [[Soviet democracy|Soviet regime]] will be arrested immediately and sent to [[concentration camp]]" <ref name="Black"/> <!--page 74, Black Book-->. This was followed by the decree ''"On Red Terror"'', issued [[September 5]] [[1918]] by the [[Cheka]]<!--page 76, Black Book-->.
On [[15 October]], checkist [[Gleb Bokiy]], summing up the officially ended Red Terror, reported that in [[Petrograd]] 800 alleged enemies had been shot and another 6,229 imprisoned.<ref name="Mitrokhin"/> Casualties in the first two months were between 10,000 and 15,000 based on lists of [[extrajudicial punishment|summarily executed]] people published in newspaper "''[[Cheka]] Weekly''" and other official press<!--page 78, Black Book-->.
On [[16 March]] [[1919]], all military detachments of Cheka were combined in a single body, the Troops for the Internal Defense of the Republic which numbered 200,000 in [[1921]]. These troops policed [[labor camps]], ran the [[Gulag]] system, conducted [[Prodrazvyorstka|requisitions of food]], put down peasant rebellions, riots by workers, and mutinies in the [[Red Army]], which was plagued by desertions <ref name="Black">Nicolas Werth, Karel Bartošek, Jean-Louis Panné, Jean-Louis Margolin, Andrzej Paczkowski, [[Stéphane Courtois]], ''The [[Black Book of Communism]]: Crimes, Terror, Repression'', [[Harvard University Press]], 1999, hardcover, 858 pages, ISBN 0-674-07608-7 </ref>
===Repressions against peasants===
The [[Internal Troops]] of Cheka and the Red Army practiced the terror tactics of taking and executing numerous hostages, often in connection with desertions of forcefully mobilized peasants. It is believed that more than 3 million [[deserter]]s escaped from the [[Red Army]] in 1919 and 1920. Around 500,000 deserters were arrested in 1919 and close to 800,000 in 1920 by Cheka troops and special divisions created to combat desertions.<ref name="Black"/> Thousands of deserters were killed, and their families were often taken [[hostage]]. According to [[Lenin]]'s instructions,
:"After the expiration of the seven-day deadline for deserters to turn themselves in, punishment must be increased for these incorrigible traitors to the cause of the people. Families and anyone found to be assisting them in any way whatsoever are to be considered as hostages and treated accordingly."<ref name="Black"/>
In September 1918, only in twelve provinces of Russia, 48,735 deserters and 7,325 bandits were arrested, 1,826 were killed and 2,230 were executed. A typical report from a Cheka department stated:
:''"[[Yaroslavl]] Province, [[23 June]] [[1919]]. The uprising of deserters in the Petropavlovskaya ''volost'' has been put down. The families of the deserters have been taken as hostages. When we started to shoot one person from each family, the [[Green armies|Greens]] began to come out of the woods and surrender. Thirty-four deserters were shot as an example".''<ref name="Black"/>
During the suppression of the [[Tambov Rebellion]], estimates suggest that around 100,000 peasant rebels and their families were imprisoned or deported and perhaps 15,000 executed.<ref>Robert Gellately. ''Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe.'' [[Knopf]], 2007. ISBN 1400040051 page 75</ref>
This campaign marked the beginning of the [[Gulag]], and some scholars have estimated that 70,000 were imprisoned by September, 1921.<!--page 80, Black Book-->
===Repressions against Russian industrial workers===
On 16 March 1919, Cheka stormed the Putilov factory. More than 900 workers who went to a strike were arrested. More than 200 of them were executed without trial during next few days. Numerous strikes took place in the spring of 1919 in cities of [[Tula]], [[Orel]], [[Tver]], [[Ivanovo]], and [[Astrakhan]]. The starving workers sought to obtain food rations matching those of Red Army soldiers. They also demanded the elimination of privileges for Communists, freedom of press, and free elections. All strikes were mercilessly suppressed by Cheka using arrests and executions.<ref>''Black Book'', pages 86-87</ref>
In the city of Astrakhan, the strikers and Red Army soldiers who joined them were loaded onto barges and then thrown by the hundreds into the [[Volga]] with stones around their necks. Between 2,000 and 4,000 were shot or drowned from 12 to 14 of March 1919. In addition, the repression also claimed the lives of some 600 to 1,000 [[bourgeoisie]]. Recently published archival documents indicate this was the largest [[Wiktionary:massacre|massacre]] of workers by the Bolsheviks before the suppression of the [[Kronstadt rebellion]].<ref>''Black Book'', page 88</ref>
However, strikes continued. On January 1920, Lenin sent a telegram to a city of [[Izhevsk]] telling that "I am surprised that ... you are not immediately executing large numbers of strikers for the crime of [[sabotage]]."<ref> ''Black Book'', page 90.</ref> On 6 June 1920, female workers in [[Tula]] who refused to work on Sunday were arrested and sent to [[labor camp]]s. The refusal to work during the weekend was claimed to be a "counter-revolutionary conspiracy formeted by Polish spies".
==Atrocities of the Red Terror==
At these times, there were numerous reports that Cheka interrogators employed [[torture]]s of "scarcely believable barbarity". Allegedly, people were tied to planks and slowly fed into furnaces; the skin was peeled off victims' hands to produce "gloves"; naked people were rolled around in barrels studded with nails; "in Kiev, cages of rats were fixed to prisoners' bodies and heated until the rats gnawed their way into the victims' intestines."<ref>''The KGB in Europe'', page 38.</ref>
According to [[Edvard Radzinsky]], "it became a common practice to take a husband hostage and wait for his wife to come and purchase his life with her body".<ref name="Radzinsky"/> The [[Pyatigorsk]] [[Cheka]] organized a "day of Red Terror" to execute 300 people in one day. They ordered local Communist Party organizations to draw up execution lists. According to one of [[Chekism|chekists]], "this rather unsatisfactory method led to a great deal of private settling of old scores... In [[Kislovodsk]], for lack of a better idea, it was decided to kill people who were in the hospital".<ref name="Black"/>
Members of the clergy were subjected to particularly brutal abuse. According to documents cited by the late [[Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev|Alexander Yakovlev]], then head of the Presidential Committee for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression, priests, monks and nuns were crucified, thrown into cauldrons of boiling tar, scalped, strangled, given Communion with melted lead and drowned in holes in the ice.<ref name="Yakovlev">[[Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev]]. ''A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia.'' [[Yale University Press]], 2002. ISBN 0300087608 [http://books.google.com/books?id=ChRk43tVxTwC&pg=PA156&lpg=PA156&dq=yakovlev+crucified&source=web&ots=ICKDgb9JAk&sig=gFYkPqJP9tewjmH3VL7b7ODHe5w page 156]</ref> An estimated 3,000 were put to death in 1918 alone.<ref name="Yakovlev"/>
==Interpretations by historians==
Some historians believe that Red Terror was necessary for Bolsheviks to stay in power because they had no popular support.<ref name="Black"/><ref name="Pipes"> [[Richard Pipes]] Communism: A History (2001) ISBN 0-812-96864-6, pages 39.</ref> [[Bolshevik]]s only got a quarter of the vote at the height of their popularity in the elections.<ref name="reflections"/> Massive strikes by Russian workers were "mercilessly" suppressed during the Red Terror.<ref name="reflections"/>
[[Robert Conquest]] concluded that<ref name="reflections"> [[Robert Conquest]] ''Reflections on a Ravaged Century'' (2000) ISBN 0-393-04818-7, page 101 </ref> "unprecedented [[terror]] must seem necessary to ideologically motivated attempts to transform society massively and speedily, against its natural possibilities."
[[Richard Pipes]] said that despotism and violence were the intrinsic properties of every [[Communist country|Communist regime]] in the world.<ref name="Pipes"> [[Richard Pipes]] ''Communism: A History'' (2001) ISBN 0-812-96864-6, pages 39.</ref> He also argued that Communist terror follows from [[Marxism]] teaching that considers human lives as expendable material for construction of [[Communism|the brigher future society]]. He cited Marx who once wrote that "The present generation resembles the Jews whom Moses led through the wilderness. It must not only conquer a new world, it must also ''perish'' in order to make a room for the people who are fit for a new world".<ref name="Pipes">[[Richard Pipes]] Communism: A History (2001) ISBN 0-812-96864-6, pages 74-75.</ref>
[[Edvard Radzinsky]] noted that [[Joseph Stalin]] himself wrote a ''[[nota bene]]'' "Terror is the quickest way to new society" beside the following passage in a book by Marx: "There is only one way to shorten and ease the convulsions of the old society and the bloody birth pangs of the new - revolutionary terror".<ref name="Radzinsky"/>
Marxist [[Karl Kautsky]] recognized that the Red Terror represented a variety of [[Communist terrorism|terrorism]], because it was indiscriminate, intended to frighten the civilian population, and included taking and executing [[hostage]]s. He said: "Among the phenomena for which Bolshevism has been responsible, [[Terrorism]], which begins with the abolition of every form of freedom of the Press, and ends in a system of wholesale [[execution]], is certainly the most striking and the most repellent of all".<ref>[[Karl Kautsky]], [http://marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1919/terrcomm/ch08b.htm#s6 ''Terrorism and Communism''] Chapter VIII, The Communists at Work, The Terror</ref>
==Historical significance of the Red Terror==
Red Terror was significant as the first of numerous Communist terror campaigns which followed in Russia and many other countres. <ref>{{cite book|last=Andrew |first=Christopher|coauthors=Vasili Mitrokhin|title=The World Was Going Our Way: The KGB and the Battle for the Third World|publisher=Basic Books|year=2005|id=ISBN 0-465-00311-7 }}</ref>. It also unleashed [[Russian Civil War]] according to historian [[Richard Pipes]] <ref name="Pipes"/>. [[Menshevik]] [[Julius Martov]] wrote about Red Terror:
:"The beast has licked hot human blood. The man-killing machine is brought into motion... But blood breeds blood... We witness the growth of the bitterness of [[Russian Civil War|the civil war]], the growing bestiality of men engaged in it." <ref> ''The Black book of Communism'', page 736</ref>.
The term '''Red Terror''' came to refer to other campaigns of violence carried out by communist or communist-affiliated groups. Often, such acts were carried out in response to (and/or followed by) similar measures taken by the anti-communist side in the conflict. See ''[[White Terror]]''.
Examples of the usage of the term "Red Terrors" include
*[[Red Terror (Hungary)]] The executions of 590 people accused of involvement in the counterrevolutionary ''coup'' against the [[Hungarian Soviet Republic]] on [[June 24]], [[1919]].
*[[Red Terror (Spain)]] during the [[Spanish Civil War]].
*[[Red Terror (Ethiopia)]] during [[Mengistu Haile Mariam]]'s rule.
*In China, [[Mao Zedong]] wrote: "Red terror ought to be our reply to these counter-revolutionaries. We must, especially in the war zones and in the border areas, deal immediately, swiftly with every kind of counter-revolutionary activity" - Mao <ref>Denis Twitchett, John K. Fairbank ''The Cambridge history of China'',ISBN 0521243386 [http://books.google.com/books?id=Fxs3ROaIhPMC&pg=PA177&dq=%22red+terror%22+china&sig=y-rytUNykvrz5yEhHX9TnRjLnJg p. 177]</ref>
*The [[Nandigram violence]] in [[Nandigram]], [[West Bengal]] in November 2007 was called "Red Terror" by critics of the actions by the local administration alluding at the [[Communist Party of India (Marxist)|Communist Party of India]] ruling in West Bengal.<ref>[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7114827.stm BBC Article]</ref> The situation was described as one of "Red Terror" by media.<ref name=" TIMESOFINDIANANDIGRAM">{{cite web |title=Red terror continues Nandigram's bylanes|url=http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Red_terror_continues_Nandigrams_bylanes/articleshow/2541772.cms}}</ref>
==See also==
*[[Decossackization]]
*[[Lenin's Hanging Order]]
*[[Mass graves in the Soviet Union]]
*[[Great Purge]]
*[[Khmer Rouge]]
*[[White Terror]]
==Notes==
{{reflist|2}}
==References and further reading==
* Nicolas Werth, Karel Bartosek, Jean-Louis Panne, Jean-Louis Margolin, Andrzej Paczkowski, Stephane Courtois, ''Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression'', [[Harvard University Press]], 1999, hardcover, 858 pages, ISBN 0-674-07608-7. Chapter 4: ''The Red Terror''
* [[Sergei Melgunov|Melgounov, Sergey Petrovich]] (1925) ''The Red Terror in Russia.'' London & Toronto: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd.
==External links==
* [http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSterror.htm Red Terror] Spartacus Schoolnet collection of primary source extracts relating to the Red Terror
* [http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1920/terrcomm/index.htm Terrorism or Communism] book by [[Leon Trotsky]] on the use of Red Terror.
* [http://www.marxists.org/archive/martov/1918/07/death-penalty.htm Down with the Death Penalty!] by [[Julius Martov|Yuliy Osipovich Martov]], June/July 1918
* [http://www.paulbogdanor.com/redterror.pdf The Record of the Red Terror] by [[Sergei Melgunov]]
[[Category:Russian Civil War]]
[[Category:Political repression in the Soviet Union]]
[[Category:Democides]]
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[[ru:Красный террор 1918—1922 годов]]
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