Terror during the Civil War. Red Terror during the Civil War - history in photographs. Whites and Entente
Red terror - a set of punitive measures carried out Bolsheviks during civil war in Russia (1917–1923) against the social groups proclaimed class enemies , as well as against persons accused of counterrevolutionary activities. It was part of the repressive state policy of the Bolshevik government, was applied in practice both through the implementation of legislative acts and outside the framework of any legislation, served as a means of intimidating both anti-Bolshevik forces and the civilian population
Currently, the term "red terror" has two definitions:
- For some historians, the concept of the Red Terror includes all repressive policies Soviet power , beginning with lynching October 1917. According to their definition, the Red Terror is a logical continuation October revolution , started before white terror and was inevitable, since Bolshevik violence was not directed against the current resistance, but against entire sections of society that were proclaimed outlaws: nobles, landowners, officers, priests, kulaks, Cossacks, etc.
Another part of historians characterizes the Red Terror as an extreme and forced measure; a protective and retaliatory measure, as a reaction against the White Terror, and considers the decision to be the beginning of the Red Terror SNK RSFSR from September 5, 1918 « About the red terror ».
The very concept of "Red Terror" was first introduced by the Socialist-Revolutionary Zinaida Konoplyannikova who told the court in 1906
“The party decided to respond to the white but bloody terror of the government with red terror…
In turn, the term "Red Terror" was then formulated L. D. Trotsky as "a weapon used against a class doomed to perish that does not want to perish."
A new wave of terror in Russia is usually counted from a murder in 1901 SR militant of the Minister of Public Education Nikolai Bogolepov. In total, from 1901 to 1911, about 17 thousand people became victims of revolutionary terror (of which 9 thousand fell on the period revolutions of 1905-1907). In 1907, up to 18 people died on average every day. According to the police, only from February 1905 to May 1906 were killed: governor generals , governors And mayors - 8, vice-governors and advisers to provincial boards - 5, police chiefs , county chiefs and police officers - 21, gendarmerie officers - 8, generals (combatants) - 4, officers (combatants) - 7, bailiffs and their assistants - 79, district guards - 125, police officers - 346, officers- 57, guards - 257, gendarmerie lower ranks - 55, security agents - 18, civilian officials - 85, clergy - 12, rural authorities - 52, landowners - 51, manufacturers and senior employees in factories - 54, bankers and large merchants - 29.
The death penalty in Russia was canceled on October 26, 1917 by the decision Second All-Russian Congress councils of workers' and soldiers' deputies .
November 24, 1917 Council of People's Commissars (SNK) issued Decree "On Court" , according to which workers and peasants were created Revolutionary Tribunals for the struggle against the counter-revolutionary forces in the form of taking measures to protect the revolution and its conquests from them, as well as for solving cases of struggle against looting And predation , sabotage and other abuses of merchants, industrialists, officials and other persons.
On December 6, 1917, the Council of People's Commissars considered the possibility of an anti-Bolshevik strike of employees in government institutions on an all-Russian scale. It was decided to create emergency commission to find out the possibility of combating such a strike by "the most energetic revolutionary measures." Nominated for the post of Commissioner Felix Dzerzhinsky .
On December 7, Felix Dzerzhinsky at a meeting of the Council of People's Commissars made a report on the tasks and rights of the commission. In her activities, she, according to Dzerzhinsky, should have paid attention primarily to the press, "counter-revolutionary parties" and sabotage. It should have been given fairly broad rights: to make arrests and confiscations, to evict criminal elements, to deprive food cards, to publish lists enemies of the people . Council of People's Commissars headed by Lenin, having heard Dzerzhinsky, agreed with his proposals to endow the new body with emergency powers.
At the same time, on December 17, 1917, in his address to the Cadets, L. Trotsky announces the beginning of the stage of mass terror against the enemies of the revolution in a harsher form:
“You should know that within a month the terror will take on very strong forms, following the example of the great French revolutionaries. The guillotine will await our enemies, and not just prison.
The use of shots.
1. All former gendarmerie officers on a special list approved by the Cheka.
2. All gendarmerie and police officers suspicious of their activities, according to the results of the search.
3. All those who have weapons without permission, unless there are extenuating circumstances for the person (for example, membership in a revolutionary Soviet party or a workers' organization).
4. Everyone with found false documents, if they are suspected of counter-revolutionary activities. In doubtful cases, cases should be referred to the final consideration of the Cheka.
5. Exposure of dealings with a criminal purpose with Russian and foreign counter-revolutionaries and their organizations as being on the territory Soviet Russia, as well as outside of it.
6. All active members of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party of the Center and the Right. (Note: active members are members of leading organizations - all committees from central to local city and district; members of combat squads and who are in contact with them on party affairs; performing any assignments of combat squads; serving between individual organizations, etc. d.).
7. All active leaders in the c/revolutionary parties (the Cadets, Octobrists, etc.).
8. The case of executions is necessarily discussed in the presence of a representative of the Russian Party of Communists.
9. Execution is carried out only subject to the unanimous decision of three members of the Commission.
10. At the request of a representative of the Russian Committee of Communists or in case of disagreement among the members of the R.Ch.K. the case is necessarily referred to the decision of the All-Russian Cheka.
II. Arrest followed by imprisonment in a concentration camp.
11. All those who call for and organize political strikes and other active actions to overthrow Soviet power, if they are not subjected to execution.
12. All former officers who are suspicious according to the data of searches and do not have certain occupations.
13. All known leaders of the bourgeois and landlord counter-revolution.
14. All members of the former patriotic and Black Hundred organizations.
15. Without exception, all members of the S.-R. parties. center and rightists, popular socialists, Cadets and other counter-revolutionaries. As regards the rank-and-file members of the party of the Social-Revolutionaries of the Center and the Right workers, the days can be released on receipt that they condemn the terrorist policy of their central institutions and their point of view on the Anglo-French landing and, in general, the agreement with Anglo-French imperialism.
16. Active members of the Menshevik Party, according to the indications listed in the note to paragraph 6.
Examples of the Red Terror:
The newspaper "Socialist Vestnik" dated September 21, 1922 writes about the results of the investigation of torture practiced in the criminal investigation department, which was conducted by the commission of the provincial tribunal of Stavropol, headed by the public prosecutor Shapiro and the investigator-rapporteur Olshansky. The commission found that, in addition to “ordinary beatings”, hangings and “other tortures”, during the Stavropol criminal investigation under the leadership and in the personal presence of the head of the criminal investigation department Grigorovich, a member of the Stavropol Executive Committee, the Provincial Committee of the RCP (b), the deputy head of the local State Political Administration:
1. hot basement- a cell without windows, 3 paces long and one and a half wide, with a floor in the form of two or three steps, where 18 people are placed, as established, men and women, for 2-3 days without food, water and the right to "departure of natural needs ".
2. cold cellar - a pit from a former glacier, where during winter frosts a prisoner stripped “almost naked” is placed and watered, as established, up to 8 buckets of water were used.
3. skull measurement- the head of the interrogated is tied with twine, a stick, a nail, or a pencil is passed through, necessary to narrow the circumference of the whip by rotation, as a result of which the skull is compressed, up to the separation of the scalp along with the hair.
4. killings of prisoners "supposedly while trying to escape"
According to the research of the Italian historian J. Boffa, about 1000 counter-revolutionaries were shot in response to the wounding of V. I. Lenin in Petrograd and Kronstadt.
Women arrested in the course of the fight against the "counter-revolution" were subjected to cruelty - as reported, for example, from the Vologda transit prison, where almost all female prisoners were raped by the prison authorities
According to information published personally by M. Latsis, in 1918 and for 7 months of 1919 8389 people were shot, of which: Petrograd Cheka - 1206; Moscow - 234; Kyiv - 825; VChK 781 people, 9496 people imprisoned in concentration camps, 34334 people in prisons; 13,111 people were taken hostage and 86,893 people were arrested.
Some historians report the execution of 9641 people from 1918 to 1919, and the execution could be carried out as a preventive measure in relation to hostages and other suspicious persons. According to paragraph 37 of the Instruction "Extraordinary local commissions" dated December 1, 1918, Extraordinary commissions were given the right to use execution "in an administrative order, but not judicial" in case of special need
At the same time, terror was directed not only against political opponents, but also against ordinary criminals:
“In the interests of Petrograd and the revolution, it is necessary to declare a red terror to the entire criminal element, who should be declared counter-revolutionaries and only a wall should be punished”
Notable victims of the Red Terror:
Members of the Romanov family:
- Nicholas II (his entire family was killed along with him, Dr. Botkin and servants)
Grand Dukes: Mikhail Alexandrovich, his secretary Englishman Brian Johnson, Nikolai Mikhailovich, Pavel Alexandrovich, Nikolai Konstantinovich, Dmitry Konstantinovich, Nikolai Mikhailovich, Georgy Mikhailovich.
Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna, Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich; princes of imperial blood John Konstantinovich, Konstantin Konstantinovich (junior), Igor Konstantinovich (children of Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich), Prince Vladimir Pavlovich Paley (son of Grand Duke Pavel Alexandrovich from his morganatic marriage with Olga Pistohlkors).
Royal ministers:
A. N. Khvostov, N. A. Maklakov, A. A. Makarov, A. G. Bulygin, A. D. Protopopov, I. G. Shcheglovitov.
Verdict of the Cheka of the 5th Army in the case of Maria Bochkareva. Krasnoyarsk, 1920
Generals:
N. N. Dukhonin, Ya. G. Zhilinsky, N. V. Ruzsky, Radko Dmitriev, P. K. Rennenkampf.
Admirals:
N. A. Nepenin, R. N. Viren, A. M. Shchastny, V. K. Girs
Cultural figures:
Nikolai Gumilyov
According to the Decree of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation No. 9-P dated November 30, 1992, “the ideas of the dictatorship of the proletariat, the red terror, the forcible elimination of the exploiting classes, the so-called enemies of the people and the Soviet government led to the mass genocide of the population of the country in the 20-50s, the destruction of the social structure of civil society, the monstrous incitement of social discord, the death of tens of millions of innocent people"
The civil war was a continuation of the revolution. And revolutions do not arise at the whim of revolutionaries. They, like social earthquakes, are brewing in the bowels of society for a very long time due to the aggravation of social contradictions. And it is not given to anyone to cause them artificially or to prevent them when they are ripe. Revolutions take property from the previously dominant classes, overthrow the old "elite", deprive certain social groups of their privileges. Those who have lost power and property fiercely resist, a civil war begins.
So it was after the victory of the Great October Revolution. Initially, the resistance of the bourgeoisie and landowners, their allies to the Soviet government, was weak, since they were in the minority, and their support - the old state and the army - disappeared. The counter-revolution was able to resist the Soviets with arms in a few places, mainly in the Cossack regions, and was easily suppressed by the small armed forces of the Reds. On April 29, 1918, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee approved the Leninist program for the use of a diversified economy in the period of transition to socialism. It was the basis for a class compromise.
However, the internal counter-revolution received help from outside. The Germans supported the anti-Soviet forces in the areas occupied by German troops. In March-April 1918, military intervention in Russia by the Entente countries began. At the end of May, on the orders of the military council of the Entente, an anti-Soviet rebellion was raised by the Czechoslovak corps, which was then recognized as part of the armed forces of France, located on the Trans-Siberian Railway from Penza to Irkutsk and in Vladivostok. With the help of the Czechoslovaks, Socialist-Revolutionary governments arose in Samara, Novonikolaevsk, Izhevsk, and after the arrival of the Allied squadron - in Arkhangelsk. They began to form their armies. Volunteers in the South and White Cossacks became more active. A full-scale civil war broke out in Russia.
White apologists are silent about the goals of the Entente. And they are well known to historians: the dismemberment of Russia into parts, their transformation into colonies and semi-colonies of Western countries and Japan. W. Churchill cynically admitted in 1932: "It would be a mistake to think that ... we fought for the cause of Russians hostile to the Bolsheviks, on the contrary, the Russian White Guards fought for our cause." So in last years Western imperialists found accomplices in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Ukraine, Georgia, setting up puppet governments there.
In a fierce civil war, the use of terror by all its participants was inevitable. But the terror was both spontaneous, when class enemies destroyed each other without instructions from above, and organized, by the Whites and the Soviet government. The Bolsheviks tried at first to avoid terror. II All-Russian Congress of Soviets abolished the death penalty Arrested enemies of the Soviets were released on parole - not to fight with the new government (for example, generals Krasnov, Marushevsky and others, who did not keep their word, were released). The Soviet government began to use the death penalty against political opponents from June 1918, when the Civil War broke out. The anarchist element manifested itself. The anarchists were temporary companions of the Bolsheviks during the overthrow of the power of the bourgeoisie. But they acted out of control. Thus, under the leadership of the anarchists, the sailors of the Black Sea Fleet destroyed about 500 officers in the Crimea in January 1918. At the same time, anti-Soviet forces also rose spontaneously. In the Cossack regions, the Cossacks, for example, began to destroy non-residents - peasants, demanding the redistribution of all lands, including Cossack ones. In May, the rebellious Orenburg Cossacks captured the village of Alexandrov Gai in the Samara province. The captured Red Army soldiers were immediately shot - 97 people. On the advice of local kulaks, massacres began against supporters of Soviet power. In total, about 800 people were killed.
When the Socialist-Revolutionary governments appeared, the state white terror began. In Samara, during the coup, about 300 people were killed by the whites. During the capture of Syzran by the Czechoslovaks and the army of Samara Komuch - 500, during the capture of Volsk - 800. The Samara government created a punitive body - State guard in addition, the counterintelligence of the Komuch People's Army, Czechoslovaks and Serbs acted. All of them arbitrarily arrested not only supporters of the Soviets, but also, for the slightest suspicion of disloyalty to the whites, they shot anyone they considered necessary without trial. The prisons of the Samara government were overcrowded, so the first concentration camps in the history of Russia appeared on the territory of Komuch - in the Totsk military camps. Used to contain the arrested barges.
The SR West Siberian government unleashed terror in even more cruel forms, on whose territory officers of the old army and White Cossacks actively manifested themselves. In September 1918, the peasants of the Slavgorod district in Altai revolted. They refused to give conscripts to the Siberian army, captured Slavgorod. On September 11, the punitive detachment of Ataman Annenkov arrived in Slavgorod. On this day, the punishers captured, tortured, shot, hanged 500 people. They burned down the village of Black Dol, where the rebel headquarters was.
And how did the governments of white generals behave? I will give examples from Siberia. November 18, 1918 in Omsk was overthrown Directory - Socialist-Revolutionary government. Power passed to the creature of the British - Admiral Kolchak. At the insistence of the Entente, he was declared the Supreme Ruler of Russia. On December 3, 1919, Kolchak signed a decree on the widespread use of the death penalty for an attempt on the health and life of the Supreme Ruler, for the fight against the white regime.
After the coup, Kolchak began to arrest and destroy the Socialist-Revolutionaries they had overthrown. On December 22, a group of Bolsheviks and soldiers attacked a prison in Omsk and freed those arrested. Part of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, about 60 people, decided to return to prison, hoping that the "legitimate power" would justify them. But at night the convoy brought them to the ice of the Irtysh and shot them. In total, in connection with the events of December 22, the Kolchakites killed one and a half thousand people in Omsk, the corpses of the dead were taken out on sledges in bulk, like cattle carcasses.
There were mass arrests in the Urals and Siberia. At the end of 1918, there were 914,000 prisoners in Siberian concentration camps, and 75,000 in prisons. There were also prisons and concentration camps of other white governments. For comparison: in Soviet Russia at that time there were a little more than 42 thousand prisoners, of which 2 thousand were in concentration camps.
Kolchak started plundering the Siberian peasants, the resistance was brutally suppressed. How did the white punishers behave? “Having hung several hundred people on the gates of Kustanai, after shooting a little, we spread to the village,” said the headquarters captain of the dragoon squadron from the Kappel Frolov corps, “... the villages of Zharovka and Kargalinsk were cut into walnut, where for sympathy with Bolshevism, all the men had to be shot from 18 to 55 years old, after which let the “rooster”. Further, the captain reported on the execution of two or three dozen peasants in the village of Borovoye, in which the peasants met the punishers with bread and salt, and the burning of part of this village ...
Kolchak's atrocities set the Siberian peasantry against themselves so much that a powerful partisan movement. 150,000 partisans helped the Red Army expel Kolchak and interventionists from Siberia. Other whiteguard governments behaved just as cruelly. Terror against the supporters of the Reds and the Soviets was used by the interventionists, kulaks, greens, and nationalists.
That is why the Soviet government declared the Red Terror on September 2, 1918, in response to the White Terror. There are statistics about his victims, although they are incomplete. The Cheka and its local commissions shot 6,300 people in September-December 1918 and 2,089 in the first seven months of 1919. Anti-Soviet people do not believe this information and exaggerate it. Of course, executions were also carried out by other Soviet bodies. The White governments did not keep records of the people killed by the White Guards. Although the scale of their terror many times exceeded the size of the red terror. General Grevs, commander of the American interventionist corps in Eastern Siberia, wrote in his memoirs in 1922: “Terrible murders were committed in Eastern Siberia, but they were not committed by the Bolsheviks, as was usually thought. I will not be mistaken if for every person killed by the Bolsheviks, there were a hundred killed by anti-Bolshevik elements. This subjective view characterizes objectively the ratio of the scales of the white and red terror. It should be borne in mind that the whites had to suppress the resistance of the majority of the people, and the reds - the minorities. Finally, the Bolsheviks also showed mercy. Beginning in May 1918, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee announced amnesties for revolutionary holidays to prisoners, primarily peasants and workers involved in anti-Soviet uprisings. I have not seen reports of amnesties by white governments. The Bolsheviks won the most difficult Civil War not because they used terror, but because they were supported, in the end, by the majority of workers and peasants who did not want a return to the bourgeois system, who connected their worldly prospects with Soviet power. 2
On September 5, 1918, the Council of People's Commissars issued a decree on the beginning of the Red Terror. Tough measures to retain power, mass executions and arrests, hostage-taking - this bloody page of history is still controversial.
Red/White Terror
End justifies the means. This phrase, attributed to Machiavelli, was an unspoken justification for the actions of the Bolsheviks during the Red Terror. The Soviet government propagated the myth that the Red Terror was a response to the so-called "White Terror". On September 2, 1918, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee adopted a resolution in which the term "red terror" appeared: "The workers and peasants will respond to the white terror of the enemies of the workers' and peasants' power with massive red terror against the bourgeoisie and its agents." The decree that initiated the mass executions was a response to the murder of Volodarsky and Uritsky, a response to the assassination attempt on Lenin.
"White Terror" and "Red Terror" are phenomena of a different order. The Red Terror was brought under a powerful ideological base, it was an officially legalized crime. S.P. Melgunov in his book “Red Terror” wrote: “It is impossible to shed more human blood than the Bolsheviks did; one cannot imagine a more cynical form than that in which the Bolshevik terror is clothed. This is a system that has found its ideologists; it is a system of systematic implementation of violence, it is such an open apotheosis of murder as an instrument of power, to which no power in the world has ever reached. These are not excesses for which one or another explanation can be found in the psychology of the civil war.
Immediately after the assassination attempt on Lenin, 512 people were shot in Petrograd, there were not enough prisons for everyone, and a system of concentration camps appeared. The legitimate mass nature of the Red Terror could not be compared with the atrocities of the “whites”, which also took place, but were not a legalized means of confrontation, but rather a manifestation of the so-called “atamanism”.
Time of terror
Despite its quite official dating: September 5, 1918 - November 6, 1918, the Red Terror has rather blurred chronological boundaries. The Red Terror was defined by Trotsky as "a weapon used against a class doomed to perish that does not want to perish." Thus, 1901 can already be considered the time of the beginning of the "red", revolutionary terror. From 1901 to 1911, about 17 thousand people became victims of revolutionary terror. On February 21, 1918, the Council of People's Commissars issued a decree "The socialist fatherland is in danger!", which decreed that "enemy agents, speculators, thugs, hooligans, counter-revolutionary agitators, German spies are shot at the scene of the crime." On August 9, 1918, Lenin wrote: “It is necessary to carry out a merciless mass terror against the kulaks, priests and White Guards; the dubious are locked up in a concentration camp outside the city. Decree and implement the complete disarmament of the population, shoot mercilessly on the spot for any hidden rifle. It must be understood that such instructions were given even before the official start of the “Red Terror”, anyone could be considered a fist and a dubious element, the decision on whether a person belonged to counter-revolutionary elements was made “on the ground”. By the end of the Civil War, 50,000 people were in concentration camps. The end of the "Red Terror" is also a very conditional date. Mass repressions of the 30s - can they be attributed to the "Red Terror"? Historians are still arguing about this to this day.
Myths of the Red Terror
The Red Terror gave rise to a lot of myths. So, one of the myths was the myth that "the Reds drowned people in barges." The source of this myth was eyewitnesses of how rebellious officers in Petrograd were forcibly driven onto a barge. Popular rumor turned this barge into a "last resort", while one of those who were on that historic barge (it was one barge) later wrote that they, prisoners on this barge, were taken to Kronstadt, where they could apply for German patronage. Such myth-making existed everywhere and even played into the hands of the Bolsheviks, whose cruel measures eventually stopped any "counter-revolutionary reaction."
Class struggle
The perception of the Red Terror as a class struggle was far from ambiguous.
M. Latsis wrote: “We exterminate unnecessary classes of people. Do not look at the investigation for materials and evidence that the accused acted in word or deed against the Soviets. The first question is what class he belongs to, what is his origin, upbringing, education or profession. These questions should determine the fate of the accused. This is the meaning and essence of the Red Terror.”
The words of Latsis were critically evaluated by Lenin. “Political distrust of the representatives of the bourgeois apparatus is legitimate and necessary. Refusal to use them for the cause of administration and construction is the greatest stupidity, bringing the greatest harm to communism. Anyone who would want to recommend a Menshevik as a socialist, or as a political leader, or even as a political adviser, would be committing an enormous mistake, for the history of the revolution in Russia has conclusively proved that the Mensheviks (and the Socialist-Revolutionaries) are not socialists, but petty-bourgeois democrats capable of serious aggravation of the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, take the side of the bourgeoisie.
Latsis later recalled this episode as follows: "Vladimir Ilyich reminded me that our task is by no means the physical destruction of the bourgeoisie, but the elimination of those causes that give rise to the bourgeoisie."
The number of victims of terror
Data on the number of victims of the Red Terror is another controversial issue. The discrepancies in the numbers are very, very significant: from 135 thousand to 400-500 thousand people. It is significant that such discrepancies are often caused not even by ideological approaches to the very phenomenon of the Red Terror, but by the fact that until now, during archaeological excavations and construction work find mass graves.
"Sun of the Dead" and "Drunken Sun"
One of the most poignant memories of the Red Terror in the Crimea belongs to Ivan Shmelev. In his book The Sun of the Dead, the writer wrote:
“And now I’m walking along a hillock, at the bailiff’s cottage, the horse fell in the winter ... I look - the boys ... What are they doing with bones? I look ... they lie on their belly, they gnaw at their hooves! They gnaw-rumble! Horror took ... pure dogs.
“Andrey Krivoy died from the lower vineyards”, “Odaryuk also died ...” Uncle Andrey froze after a “bath” (a kind of torture), exhausted by hunger. And quite recently, some kind of “brave” sailor yelled at a rally: “Now, comrade workers, we have finished off all the bourgeois ... who, having run away, drowned them in the sea! And now our Soviet power, which is called communism! So Survive! And everyone will even have cars, and we will all live ... So ... we will all sit on the fifth floor and smell roses ... "!
In Soviet literature, the answer to the "Sun of the Dead" by Ivan Shmelev was the story of Fyodor Gladkov "The Drunken Sun". Quote: "We, Komsomol members, should not argue. deviation. Deviations shake the Party. In order not to fall into a deviation, one must remember every letter of the resolutions even in one's sleep."
national question
There can be no unambiguous interpretation of the Red Terror. There is no doubt that it was a bloody page in Russian history. The most bitter disputes are conducted on the basis of the national question. Participation in the revolutionary process of Jews, Latvians, Poles cause nationalist interpretations, leading to debates about some kind of Jewish conspiracy against the Russian people. Gorky wrote: "I explain the cruelty of the forms of the revolution by the exceptional cruelty of the Russian people." The tragedy of the Russian revolution is being played out among “half-wild people.” “When the leaders of the revolution are accused of “atrocity” - a group of the most active intelligentsia - I consider this accusation as a lie and slander, inevitable in the struggle of political parties or - among honest people - as an honest delusion ". "A recent slave" - Gorky noted in another place - became "the most unbridled despot."
The assessment of the “proletarian writer”, of course, is far from being objective, but are those who claim that the Red Terror is the product of a “Jewish conspiracy” right and is it possible to conclude about the Red Terror in a nationalist way?
The intensification of repressive measures became a general trend in the summer of 1918 for both Whites and Reds. Restoring order in the rear and extensive mobilization into the Red Army was accompanied by a tightening of the punitive measures of the Soviet government. The organs of the Cheka mercilessly suppressed the actions of the counter-revolutionaries. During the rebellion in Tambov in mid-June 1918, more than 50 people were shot by local Chekists. After the suppression of the counter-revolutionary uprising in Yaroslavl - more than 400 people. Moscow supported these measures. The number of counter-revolutionaries shot by the Cheka in August in various cities of Russia amounted to 600 people. In addition to the Cheka, repressive measures were carried out by the Revolutionary Tribunals and other emergency judicial bodies. Subsequently, the role of the tribunals in the punitive policy of the Bolsheviks intensified.
The Social Revolutionaries again embarked on individual terror: in June 1918, the editor of Krasnaya Gazeta, V. Volodarsky, was killed in Petrograd; on September 5, the chairman of the Petrograd Cheka, M.S. Uritsky, V.I. Lenin was seriously wounded. In response to the "white terror", the "red terror" was declared: hostages from the "former" were arrested, who were shot in case of new terrorist acts. Most of all 2 600 people. were shot in September. Executions of hostages were also practiced by interventionists and white commanders.
The repressions of the Bolsheviks, in contrast to the White Terror, were regulated. They disorganized the rear less than similar actions of the whites, carried out on the orders of one or another military leader, sometimes spontaneously, but no less cruelly. Communist leaders made no secret of their punitive measures, while their opponents often sought to keep them secret, which undermined the authority of the entire white movement, led to the idea of its weakness. The growth of red repressions in the summer and autumn of 1918 affected only part of the territories controlled by the Soviet government. In the autumn of 1918, the White Terror intensified. In September, ataman B. Annenkov shot 1.5 thousand peasants in the Slavgorod district, and General V. Pokrovsky - 2.5 thousand people. during the occupation of Maikop.
Terrorist actions gave the struggle between the Reds and Whites an even more fierce and irreconcilable character. Citizens of the once united state, but who found themselves on different sides of the "barricades", were now ready to fight to the end - until the enemy was completely annihilated. Bloody battles unfolded near Tsaritsyn - the most important transshipment base for the delivery of bread from southern regions Russia in the central and northern regions of the country. In late 1918 - early 1919, the Cossack troops under the command of Ataman P. Krasnov tried several times to storm the city, the defense of which he actually led. Losses on both sides were very heavy.
In the spring of 1919, the Red Terror reached the regions of the Upper Don, where, in connection with the current military situation, it was decided to pursue a policy of “decossackization”. On January 24, 1919, a directive of the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks appeared, signed by Sverdlov. It spoke of the need for a merciless struggle with all the tops of the Cossacks through their total extermination. It was envisaged: “To carry out mass terror against the rich Cossacks, exterminating them without exception; to carry out merciless mass terror against all Cossacks in general who took any direct or indirect part in the struggle against Soviet power. It is necessary to apply to the average Cossacks all those measures that give a guarantee against any attempts on their part to new actions against the Soviet power. To confiscate bread and make it dump all the surpluses into the indicated points... To take all measures to help the migrating newcomer poor, organizing resettlement where possible. To equalize the newcomers "out of town" to the Cossacks in land and in all other respects. Carry out complete disarmament, shooting everyone who is found to have a weapon after the deadline for surrender ... "
With the sanction of the chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic Trotsky, they wanted to bring the instructions of the center to a cruel finale. In February 1919, the directive of the Don Bureau of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks ordered the physical extermination of at least 100 thousand Cossacks capable of carrying weapons and the destruction of the “tops” of the village (atamans, officers, judges), even those who did not take part in counter-revolutionary actions; the eviction of a significant part of the Cossack families outside the Don region. A wave of repressions hit the villages and farms - many of whose inhabitants had previously welcomed Soviet power. Thousands of people were shot, deprived of their homes and property. In response, a powerful wave of Cossack uprisings arose, which also destroyed thousands of people who sympathized with the Bolsheviks. The bloody confrontation divided the villages, and sometimes even individual families. The policy of "decossackization" objectively contributed to the success of General Denikin's offensive in the South of Russia in the summer of 1919. The punitive actions of the Reds on the Don and the deportation of wealthy Cossacks to the central regions of the country continued after the defeat of the Whites.
Repressive measures, including executions, were practiced directly in the units of the fighting armies. For violation of discipline, desertion, soldiers of Denikin, Kolchak and other white formations were subjected to the death penalty. Lenin considered executions to be necessary, although not the main means of maintaining the combat readiness of the troops. Trotsky assigned an even greater role to repression. Even after the situation on the Eastern Front stabilized in the autumn of 1918, he continued to orient the revolutionary military councils of the armies towards the application of the death penalty to those commanders and commissars in whose units military experts deserted.
"PROVISION OF LOGO BY TERROR"
The Council of People's Commissars, having heard the report of the chairman of the Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution on the activities of this commission, finds that in the given situation, the provision of rear by means of terror is a direct necessity; that in order to strengthen the activities of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission and introduce greater planning into it, it is necessary to send there the largest possible number of responsible party comrades; that it is necessary to secure the Soviet Republic from class enemies by isolating them in concentration camps; that all persons connected with the White Guard organizations, conspiracies and rebellions are subject to execution; that it is necessary to publish the names of all those who were shot, as well as the reasons for applying this measure to them.
RED TERROR IN THE EYEWITNESS EYES
One of the typical hostage announcements , published in the first issue of the "VChK Weekly" (dated September 22, 1918) under the heading "Red Terror":
"Announcement
To all citizens of the city of Torzhok and the county
The mercenaries of capital have turned their hand to the leaders of the Russian proletariat. - In Moscow, the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, Vladimir Lenin, was wounded, Comrade Uritsky was killed in Petrograd. - The proletariat must not allow its leaders to die at the hands of the villainous dirty hands of counter-revolutionary hirelings, and must respond to terror with terror. For the head and life of one of our leaders, hundreds of heads of the bourgeoisie and all its henchmen must fly. Bringing this to the attention of the citizens of the city and county, the Novotorzhskaya Extraordinary Commission notifies that it has arrested and imprisoned - as hostages - the representatives of the bourgeoisie named below and their accomplices: the Right Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks. At the slightest counter-revolutionary action directed against the Soviets, at any attempt on the leaders of the working class, these persons will be immediately shot by the Extraordinary Commission.
Eyewitness impressions on everyone railways November-December 1917 approximately the same. “What a journey! Everywhere executions, everywhere the corpses of officers and ordinary people, even women and children. The revolutionary committees raged at the railway stations, their members were drunk and fired at the carriages to the fear of the bourgeoisie. A little stop, a drunken brutal crowd rushed to the train, looking for officers (Penza-Orenburg) ... The corpses of officers lay all over the way (on the way to Voronezh) ... I was pretty scared, especially when I saw through the window, right in front of the house in the snow, corpses officers, - I examined them with horror, - obviously hacked to death with sabers (Millerovo) ... The train started off. On this terrifying way back—what chilling horror! - in front of our eyes, on the platforms, eight officers were shot. We then saw how fifteen officers were being led, along with the general and his wife, somewhere along the railway track. Less than a quarter of an hour later, gunshots were heard (Chertkovo). The same on st. Volnovakha and others... He was taken out of the car into the station building, took off his shoes and, leaving only in his underpants, was taken to a room where there were already about 20 people in the same form. Nearly all the officers turned up. They learned their fate - execution, as it was the previous day with fifty arrested (Kantemirovka).
Message from the sisters of mercy about the Extraordinary Commission in Kyiv
The Bolsheviks entered Kiev in February 1919, and the very next day the Cheka began its operations, or rather, not even one, but several. The headquarters of the regiments, the district committees, the militia, each individual Soviet institution were, as it were, a branch of the Extraordinary Commission. Each of them arrested and killed. People were taken all over the city. When a person disappeared, it was very difficult to find him, especially since there were no lists of those arrested, and Soviet institutions were very reluctant to give information. The center of investigation and execution was the All-Ukrainian Extraordinary Commission. It had ramifications and departments: the so-called Gubcheka, that is, the Gubernskaya Cheka, the Lukyanovsky prison, the concentration camp, which was located in the old transit prison. Determining the relationship and even the number of these institutions is not easy. They were placed in different parts of the city, but mainly in Lipki, in elegant mansions, which are many in Kyiv.
The All-Ukrainian Extraordinary Commission (VUCHK) occupied Popov's large mansion at the corner of Yelizavetinskaya and Yekaterininskaya. It had a basement where the murders took place. In general, massacres were committed near, so to speak, government offices and places of detention. The cries and groans of the murdered were heard not only in the places of detention, but also in the hall where the investigators met, and resounded throughout Popov's house. Around the VUCHK, a whole block was occupied by various departments of the Soviet Inquisition. Across the road, in Lipsky Lane, lived the most important commissars. In this house there were orgies intertwined with murder and blood. On the other side of the street was the commandant's office, in the courtyard of which one house was set aside for prisoners. Executions were sometimes carried out against this house in the yard. Prisoners from Yelizavetinskaya Street were also brought there, where, in the so-called Special Department, those arrested for political crimes were kept. These houses, surrounded by gardens, and the whole quarter around them, turned under the rule of the Bolsheviks into a realm of horror and death. A little further, on Institutskaya Street, in the house of the governor-general, the Provincial Extraordinary Commission (abbreviated as Gubcheka) was set up. It was headed by Ugarov. The people of Kiev associate the most terrible pages of the Bolshevik dungeons with his name.
The activities of the Extraordinary Commission cannot be introduced into any logical schemes. Arrests were carried out completely arbitrarily, most often on the basis of denunciations of personal enemies. Dissatisfied employees, servants who want to take revenge on their masters for something, selfish views on the property of the arrested - everything could serve as a pretext for arrest, and then execution. But the basis, the ideology of the Cheka, was the theory of class struggle, or rather, class extermination. This was repeatedly stated by the Bolshevik press, this was carried out in special magazines of the Cheka, such as, for example, in the newspaper Krasny Mech.
Popularity was almost always paid for in prison. In addition, there were cases of mass arrests of people by profession, and not only officers, but bank employees, technicians, doctors, lawyers, etc. Sometimes Soviet employees also ended up in prison.
The sisters of mercy, who observed the life of Chechnya for seven months, never saw a Soviet employee arrested for violence against a human person or for murder. For immoderate robbery, for a quarrel with comrades, for fleeing from the front, for excessive indulgence towards the bourgeois - that's what Soviet employees fell into the hands of the Chechens.
“Murder is always legal for the commissar,” the sister emphasized bitterly, “they can kill their enemies without hindrance.”
To conduct business under the Cheka there was an institute of investigators. In the All-Ukrainian Cheka, it was divided into five inspections. Each had about twenty investigators. Above the inspection was a board of six people. Among its members were men and women. There were almost no educated people. There were sailors, workers, half-educated students. The investigators themselves did not execute. They just signed the sentences. They, like the commandants, were subordinate to the commissars from the Cheka.
The duties of the jailers, as well as the execution of sentences, were assigned to the commandants. The Bolsheviks gave this special military name to the institute of executioners. The official duties of the commandants and their assistants were to supervise the prisoners and organize executions. Usually they killed the prisoners with their own hands.
the officially announced policy of the Soviet state to combat counter-revolution, speculation and crime ex officio in September-November 1918, which provided for a set of extremely cruel repressive measures outside the judicial system. In a broader sense, the Red Terror refers to the entire repressive policy of the Bolsheviks during the Civil War of 1917-1922. By definition of the chairman of the Cheka F.E. Dzerzhinsky, the main component of the Red Terror is “the intimidation, arrests and destruction of the enemies of the revolution on the basis of their class affiliation or their role in the past pre-revolutionary periods” (Interview with an employee of Ukrrost on May 9, 1920).
The issue of deploying terror against "enemies of the revolution", forcing civil servants to perform their duties (fighting sabotage), suppressing political opponents, etc. rose to the agenda immediately after the Bolsheviks seized power. Unable to use other methods, the new government immediately switched to a punitive policy, at the same time warning its opponents that it would intensify it if the resistance did not stop. December 2, 1917 L.D. Trotsky publicly stated: “There is nothing immoral in the fact that the proletariat is finishing off a falling class. This is his right. You are indignant ... at the mild terror that we direct against our class opponents, but know that not later than in a month this terror will take on more formidable forms, modeled on the terror of the great revolutionaries of France. Not a fortress, but a guillotine will be for our enemies.”
However, in 1918 the situation only became more complicated and constantly aggravated, resistance to the Bolsheviks grew everywhere. Decree "The socialist fatherland is in danger!" dated February 21, 1918, provided that "enemy agents, speculators, thugs, hooligans, counter-revolutionary agitators, German spies are shot at the scene of the crime." At the same time, the conflict between the Bolsheviks and the Left SRs deepened, with the latter traditionally paying great attention to terror and terrorist acts. The conflict ended in July with riots in Moscow, Yaroslavl and Simbirsk. Even before that, the Central Executive Committee established the Supreme Revolutionary Tribunal, which, by its very first decision on June 13, 1918, restored the death penalty. At the V All-Russian Congress of Soviets, which took place at the beginning of July 6, 1918, L.D. Trotsky urged the delegates to adopt a resolution: "All agents of foreign imperialism who will call for an offensive and resist the Soviet authorities with weapons in their hands, to be shot on the spot." The congress, however, limited itself to a resolution that agitators would be "punished according to the laws of war." At the same congress, speaking with a report on the activities of the Central Executive Committee, its chairman, the Bolshevik Ya.M. Sverdlov, defending the restoration of the death penalty, pointed out that earlier (in 1917-1918) the death penalty was widely used, but without its official introduction, said: “We can point not to the weakening of terror in relation to all enemies of Soviet power, by no means to weakening, but, on the contrary, to the sharpest increase in mass terror against the enemies of Soviet power ... The widest circles labor Russia... will treat with full approval such measures as chopping off the head, as the execution of counter-revolutionary generals and other counter-revolutionaries. Already after the end of the congress (June 26, 1918) V.I. Lenin wrote to G.E. Zinoviev: "We must encourage the energy and mass character of terror against counter-revolutionaries."
On the need for mass terror by secret order V.I. Lenin insisted constantly. For example, on August 8, 1918, he wrote to G.F. Fedorov: “In Nizhny, obviously, a White Guard uprising is being prepared. It is necessary to exert every effort, to make up a trio of dictators (You, Markin, etc.), immediately inflict mass terror, shoot and take out hundreds of prostitutes who solder soldiers, former officers, etc. ” The next day, he repeated his idea in a telegram to the Penza Gubernia Executive Committee: “It is necessary to carry out a merciless mass terror against the kulaks, priests and White Guards; doubtful ones to be locked up in a concentration camp outside the city.”
Official Red Terror
The events of August 30, 1918 became the immediate reason for the official announcement of the Red Terror in Soviet Russia. On this day, the chairman of the Petrograd Cheka, M.S. Uritsky was killed by a member of the neo-populist Party of People's Socialists L.I. Kannegiser, and Moscow V.I. Lenin was wounded by a shot from a revolver, according to the official version, a member of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party F.E. Kaplan. In the evening of the same day, Ya.M. Sverdlov signed the Appeal of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee to all Soviets, which stated: "The working class will respond to attempts against its leaders with even greater rallying of its forces, will respond with merciless mass terror against all enemies of the Revolution." On September 2, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee adopted a Resolution on the Red Terror, where the same positions were repeated: "The workers and peasants will respond to the white terror of the enemies of the workers' and peasants' power with massive red terror against the bourgeoisie and its agents."
The official document, in accordance with which the Red Terror was declared in Soviet Russia, was the Decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR of September 5, 1918, which read:
“The Council of People’s Commissars, having heard the report of the Chairman of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution, Profiteering and Crime ex officio on the activities of this Commission, finds that in this situation, providing rear services through terror is a direct necessity; that in order to strengthen the activities of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution, Profiteering and Crime ex officio and to introduce greater planning into it, it is necessary to send there the largest possible number of responsible party comrades; that it is necessary to secure the Soviet Republic from class enemies by isolating them in concentration camps; that all persons connected with the White Guard organizations, conspiracies and rebellions are subject to execution; that it is necessary to publish the names of all those who were shot, as well as the reasons for applying this measure to them ”(Code of Laws. No. 19. Section 1. Art. 710, 05.09.18). The resolution was signed by People's Commissar of Justice D.I. Kursky, People's Commissar for Internal Affairs G.I. Petrovsky and manager of affairs of the SNK V.D. Bonch-Bruevich.
In development of the decisions of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars, a whole series of instructions and regulatory instructions of the All-Russian Cheka were issued for their concrete implementation. One of the instructions indicated that execution should be used from former gendarmerie and police officers, up to active members of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party of the Center and right and "revolutionary parties (Kadets, Octobrists, etc.)". Including all suspicious "according to the data of searches and not having certain occupations" former officers, all members of "former patriotic and Black Hundred organizations", etc. were subject to imprisonment in a concentration camp.
In the Weekly of the Cheka, published on November 1, 1918, one of its leaders, M.I. Latsis described the Red Terror system as follows: “We are no longer fighting against individuals, we are destroying the bourgeoisie as a class. Do not look in the case for accusatory evidence about whether he rebelled against the Soviet with weapons or words. Your first duty is to ask him what class he belongs to, what is his origin, what is his education and what is his profession. These questions should decide the fate of the accused. This is the meaning and essence of the Red Terror.”
After the adoption of the resolution, a wave of mass executions swept across the country. In the first days of September, 512 people were shot in Petrograd - former officials, officers, professors, etc. (in total, as part of the official red terror in Petrograd, about 800 people were executed).
The most important component of the red terror was the factor of intimidation, not punishment, which was served, incl. executions of hostages, who often had nothing to do with the events for which they were shot. So, for example, in response to the execution by the commander of the 11th Red Army on October 21, 1918 in Pyatigorsk, I.L. Sorokin, a group of leaders of the Central Executive Committee of the North Caucasian Soviet Republic and the regional committee of the RCP (b), in the first days of November, 106 hostages were shot there, incl. generals and senior officials of the Russian Empire.
Formally, the provision on the Red Terror was in effect for two months and its regime was terminated by the proposal of L.B. Kamenev by the Decree of the VI All-Russian Congress of Soviets of November 6, 1918 "On Amnesty". The resolution itself did not mention the term "Red Terror", but the release of some of the hostages and prisoners in itself was contrary to the spirit of the Decree of the Council of People's Commissars "On the Red Terror".
Mass terror
The suppression of counter-revolution, "class enemies", political opponents - such as imprisonment in concentration camps, hostage, executions both in court and out of court, in Soviet Russia began earlier and ended later than the official operation of the Red Terror regime and actually acted throughout the entire period of the Civil War. war. Moreover, from the very beginning, the bodies of Soviet justice were focused not on sentencing for acts in a legal manner, but on mass terror. Thus, the chairman of the Revolutionary Military Tribunal of the RSFSR in 1918-1919. K.Kh. Danishevsky wrote: “Military tribunals are not and should not be guided by any legal norms. These are punishing bodies created in the course of the most intense revolutionary struggle.
The leadership of the repressions and punitive policy of the Bolshevik government was carried out by the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution, Profiteering and Crime ex officio (VChK), incl. and September-October 1918. Already in December 1917, the Cheka, in order to fight the counter-revolution, received the right to arrest and confiscate, evict criminal elements, deprive food cards, publish lists of enemies of the people, etc.
The leaders of the Soviet state themselves were aware that the amnesty of November 1918 by no means meant the end of the Red Terror. So, on May 17, 1922, V.I. Lenin wrote to the People's Commissar of Justice D.I. Kursky that “The Court must not eliminate terror; to promise this would be self-deception or deceit, but to substantiate and legitimize it ... ".
The number of victims of the Red Terror is unknown. Thus, the commission operating in the Armed Forces of the South of Russia determined the number of deaths from the Red Terror at more than 1.7 million people. At the same time, M.I. Latsis in his book (1920) indicated the number of victims in 1918 and for 7 months of 1919 - 8389 people shot (as well as more than 13 thousand taken hostage, about 87 thousand arrested, more than 9 thousand prisoners in concentration camps and 34 thousand - to prisons); later Latsis pointed out that in 1918, according to the decision of the Cheka, 6300 people were shot, and in 1919 - 3456. Modern researcher O.B. Mozokhin, referring to the documents of the Cheka, indicates the figure "no more than 50 thousand people." However, most often the question is what the researchers mean by the term "victims" and what period is attributed to the Red Terror.
