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==World War II and aftermath==
==World War II and aftermath==
From 1941 on, [[Stalin]] was willing to strike back against the [[Eastern Front (World War II)#Operation Barbarossa: Summer 1941|invading Axis forces]] at all costs and led the war with extreme brutality, including against his own soldiers.<ref name="Merridale, Ivan's War"> Catherine Merridale, ''Ivan's War, the Red Army 1939-1945'', London: Faber and Faber, 2005, ISBN 0-5712-1808-3</ref><ref name="Not so friendly">[http://www.rmc.ca/academic/conference/iuscanada/papers/goette_sovietpaper.pdf ''Not-So-Friendly Fire''], Queen’s University, Canada</ref> The Red Army took much higher casualties than any other military force during World War II, in part because of high manpower attrition and inadequate time for training.<ref>[http://www-cgsc.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/glantz2/glantz2.asp CSI Report No. 11]: Soviet Defensive Tactics at Kursk</ref> Faced with badly equipped [[infantry]] units barely capable of standing up against [[machine guns]], [[tanks]] and [[artillery]], the tactics of Soviet commanders were often based on mass infantry attacks, inflicting heavy losses on their own troops. This tactic was also used for clearing minefields, which were ‘attacked’ by waves of infantry soldiers in order to clear them.<ref>David Glantz, Barbarossa: Hitler's Invasion of Russia 1941 (2001) ISBN 0-7524-1979-X </ref><ref>David Glantz, Stumbling Colossus: The Red Army on the Eve of World War (1998) ISBN 0-7006-0879-6</ref><ref>[http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/reviewsw63.htm Review of "Stumbling Colossus"] </ref><ref name="Merridale, Ivan's War"> Catherine Merridale, ''Ivan's War, the Red Army 1939-1945'', London: Faber and Faber, 2005, ISBN 0-5712-1808-3</ref> In accordance with the orders of Soviet High Command, retreating soldiers or even soldiers who hesitated to advance faced being shot by rearguard [[SMERSH]] units:
[[Order № 270|Stalin’s order No 270]] of August 16, 1941, states that in case of retreat or surrender, all officers involved were to be shot on the spot and all enlisted men threatened with total annihilation as well as possible reprisals against their families.<ref name="Not so friendly"> [http://www.rmc.ca/academic/conference/iuscanada/papers/goette_sovietpaper.pdf ''Not-So-Friendly Fire''], Queen’s University, Canada</ref>.<ref>[http://www.hrono.ru/dokum/194_dok/19410816.html Order No 270 in Russian language on hrono.ru] </ref><ref name="Merridale, Ivan's War"> Catherine Merridale, ''Ivan's War, the Red Army 1939-1945'', London: Faber and Faber, 2005, ISBN 0-5712-1808-3</ref>


==Post-Stalin era (1953-1991)==
==Post-Stalin era (1953-1991)==

Revision as of 01:23, 2 August 2008

File:Magadan, 09.06 019.jpg
Mask of Sorrow monument in the Russian Far Eastern city of Magadan, in memory of the Gulag prisoners that died in the Dalstroi labor camps

Soviet political repressions was a de facto and de jure system of prosecution of people who were or perceived to be enemies of the Soviet system. From the beginning its theoretical basis were the theory of Marxism about the class struggle and the resulting notion of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Its legal basis was formalized into the Article 58 in the code of RSFSR and similar articles for other Soviet republics.

The term "repression", "terror", and other strong words were normal working terms with respect to the internal politics of the early Soviet state, reflecting the fact that the dictatorship of the proletariat was supposed apply ruthless force to suppress the resistance of the social classes which Marxism considered antagonistic to the class of proletariat. This phraseology was gradually abolished after destalinization, but the system of persecution for political views and activities remained until the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

The numerous victims of extrajudicial punishment were called the enemies of the people. The punishment by the state included summary executions, torture, sending innocent people to Gulag, involuntary settlement, and stripping of citizen's rights. Usually, all members of a family, including children, were punished as "traitor of Motherland family members". The repressions have been conducted by Cheka, OGPU and NKVD in several consecutive waves known as Red Terror, Collectivisation, Great Purge, Doctor's Plot, and others. The secret police forces conducted massacres of prisoners at numerous occasions. The repressions were practiced in Soviet republics and at the territories "liberated" by Soviet Army during World War II, including Baltic States and Eastern Europe [1].

State repression led to uprisings, which were brutally suppressed by military force, like the Tambov rebellion, Kronstadt rebellion, or Vorkuta Uprising. During Tambov rebellion, Bolshevik military forces widely used chemical weapons against villages with civilian population and rebels.[2] Most prominent citizens of villages were often taken as hostages and executed if the resistance fighters did not surrender. [3]

Loss of life

According to the Guiness Book of Records, 66.7 million people were killed in the Soviet Union by state persecution from October 1917 through 1959 - under Lenin, Stalin, and Khrushev [4]. However the exact number of victims may never be known and remains a matter of debates among historians. The result depends on the period of time and the criteria and methods used for the estimates. For example, the number of victims under Joseph Stalin's regime vary from 8 to 61 million [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]

Genocide

Ukrainian Famine Victim, 1933

Entire nations have been collectively punished by the Soviet Government for alleged collaboration with the enemy during World War II. In legal terms, the word "genocide" may be appropriate because specific ethnic groups were targeted. At least nine of distinct ethnic-linguistic groups, including ethnic Germans, ethnic Greeks, ethnic Poles, Crimean Tatars, Balkars, Chechens, and Kalmyks, were deported to remote unpopulated areas of Siberia and Kazakhstan. The ethnicity-targeted population transfers in the Soviet Union led to millions of deaths due to the inflicted hardships.[11]Koreans and Romanians were also deported. Mass operations of the NKVD were needed to deport hundreds of thousands of people.

The deaths of millions of people during the Soviet famine of 1932-1933 was caused intentionally by confiscating all food and blocking the migration of starving population by the Soviet government. [11]. The overall number of peasants who died in 1930–1937 from hunger and repressions during collectivisation (including in Kavkaz and Kazakhstan) was at least 14.5 million.[11] More than a million of people died earlier during other droughts and famines in Russia and the USSR.

Red Terror

Main article: Red Terror

Russian Civil War

Main article: Russian Civil War

Collectivization

Main article: Collectivization in the USSR

Great Terror

Main article: Great Terror

Population transfers

Main article: Population transfer in the Soviet Union

World War II and aftermath

From 1941 on, Stalin was willing to strike back against the invading Axis forces at all costs and led the war with extreme brutality, including against his own soldiers.[12][13] The Red Army took much higher casualties than any other military force during World War II, in part because of high manpower attrition and inadequate time for training.[14] Faced with badly equipped infantry units barely capable of standing up against machine guns, tanks and artillery, the tactics of Soviet commanders were often based on mass infantry attacks, inflicting heavy losses on their own troops. This tactic was also used for clearing minefields, which were ‘attacked’ by waves of infantry soldiers in order to clear them.[15][16][17][12] In accordance with the orders of Soviet High Command, retreating soldiers or even soldiers who hesitated to advance faced being shot by rearguard SMERSH units: Stalin’s order No 270 of August 16, 1941, states that in case of retreat or surrender, all officers involved were to be shot on the spot and all enlisted men threatened with total annihilation as well as possible reprisals against their families.[13].[18][12]

Post-Stalin era (1953-1991)

After Stalin's death, the suppression of dissent was dramatically reduced and took new forms. The internal critics of the system were convicted for anti-Soviet agitation or as "social parasites". Others were labeled as mentally ill, having sluggishly progressing schizophrenia and incarcerated in "Psikhushkas", i.e. mental hospitals used by the Soviet authorities as prisons[19]. A few notable dissidents were sent to internal or external exile, as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Vladimir Bukovsky, and Andrei Sakharov.

References

  1. ^ Anton Antonov-Ovseenko Beria (Russian) Moscow, AST, 1999. Russian text online
  2. ^ B.V.Sennikov. Tambov rebellion and liquidation of peasants in Russia, Publisher: Posev, 2004, ISBN 5-85824-152-2 Full text in Russian
  3. ^ Courtois, Stephane; Werth, Nicolas; Panne, Jean-Louis; Paczkowski, Andrzej; Bartosek, Karel; Margolin, Jean-Louis & Kramer, Mark (1999). The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-07608-7
  4. ^ Yevgenia Albats and Catherine A. Fitzpatrick. The State Within a State: The KGB and Its Hold on Russia - Past, Present, and Future], 1994. ISBN 0-374-18104-7, page 107.
  5. ^ Ponton, G. (1994) The Soviet Era.
  6. ^ Tsaplin, V.V. (1989) Statistika zherty naseleniya v 30e gody.
  7. ^ Nove, Alec. Victims of Stalinism: How Many?, in Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives (edited by J. Arch Getty and Roberta T. Manning), Cambridge University Press, 1993. ISBN 0-521-44670-8.
  8. ^ Bibliography: Courtois et al. The Black Book of Communism
  9. ^ Davies, Norman. Europe: A History, Harper Perennial, 1998. ISBN 0-06-097468-0.
  10. ^ Bibliography: Rummel.
  11. ^ a b c Robert Conquest (1986) The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-505180-7.
  12. ^ a b c Catherine Merridale, Ivan's War, the Red Army 1939-1945, London: Faber and Faber, 2005, ISBN 0-5712-1808-3
  13. ^ a b Not-So-Friendly Fire, Queen’s University, Canada Cite error: The named reference "Not so friendly" was defined multiple times with different content (see the help page).
  14. ^ CSI Report No. 11: Soviet Defensive Tactics at Kursk
  15. ^ David Glantz, Barbarossa: Hitler's Invasion of Russia 1941 (2001) ISBN 0-7524-1979-X
  16. ^ David Glantz, Stumbling Colossus: The Red Army on the Eve of World War (1998) ISBN 0-7006-0879-6
  17. ^ Review of "Stumbling Colossus"
  18. ^ Order No 270 in Russian language on hrono.ru
  19. ^ The Soviet Case: Prelude to a Global Consensus on Psychiatry and Human Rights. Human Rights Watch. 2005

See also

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