Red Terror

For other uses, see Red Terror (disambiguation).

The most common use of Red Terror in English refers to the campaign of mass arrests, deportations, and executions conducted by the Bolshevik government in Soviet Russia from 1918 to 1922. The mass repressions were conducted without judicial process by the secret police organization Cheka, a predecessor of NKVD and KGB.

Some authors use the term "Red Terror" to describe the last six weeks of the "Reign of Terror" of the French Revolution, ending on July 28, 1794 (execution of Robespierre), to distinguish it from the subsequent period of the White Terror (historically this period has been known as the Great Terror (French: la Grande Terreur).

Purpose of the Soviet Red Terror

The stated purpose of this campaign was struggle with counter-revolutionaries labeled as "enemies of the people", although many Russian communists openly proclaimed that Red Terror was needed for extermination of entire social groups or "ruling classes" to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat. Communist leader Grigory Zinoviev declared in September 1918:

"To dispose of our enemies, we will have to create our own socialist terror. For this we will have to train 90 million of the 100 million of Russians and have them all on our side. We have nothing to say to the other 10 million; we will have to get rid of them."

Many people were executed simply for who they are, not for their 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 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"

History

The campaign of mass repressions was initiated as retribution for the assassination of Petrograd Cheka leader Moisei Uritsky, and attempted assassination of Communist leader Vladimir Lenin by Fanya Kaplan on August 30, 1918. The first official announcement, published in Izvestiya, "Appeal to the Working Class" on September 3 1918 called for the workers to "crush the hydra of counterrevolution with massive terror! ... anyone who dares to spread the slightest rumor against the Soviet regime will be arrested immediately and sent to concentration camp" . This was followed by the decree "On Red Terror", issued September 5 1918 by the Cheka. Casualties in the fall of 1918 was between 10,000 and 15,000 based on lists of summarily executed people published in newspaper "Cheka Weekly" and other official press.

This campaign marked the beginning of the Gulag, and some scholars have estimated that 70,000 were imprisoned by September, 1921.

Other repression campaigns by communists

By extension, the term Red Terror came to refer to any acts 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 these other "Red Terrors" include the executions of 590 people accused of involvement in the counterrevolutionary coup against the Hungarian Soviet Republic on June 24, 1919, as well as many acts of violence by the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War and during the Cultural Revolution in China. The bloody campaign that claimed tens of thousands of lives in Eritrea and Ethiopia during the rule of the Derg is also known as the Red Terror in those countries.

Hungarian Red Terror

Red Terror in Hungary (vörösterror) was an ideology, a movement and a set of atrocities during the reign of Hungarian Soviet RepueenFblic. When communists lead by Béla Kun grabbed power with the aid of socialdemocrats and putsched Mihály Károlyi, the leader after the civilian revolution; most radical communists thought that no more amenable chances will be to take absolute power and to realise the utopia of "proletar dictature". So the time has come to showdown with every enemies of communism. Ideologists who strongly propagated these beliefs - the necessity of "revolutional terror" as themself called - were Georg Lukács and Tibor Szamuely (but socialdemocrats in the governmenmt mainly, and strongly opposed these ideas). With the ideological aid of these persons, the bolshevist József Cserny laid up some detachment of 200 people called "Lenin Boys" (Lenin-fiúk), who tried to take control over the countryside, and in Budapest other detachments has been formatted. They orderly organized "requisition patrols" and pocketed goods from civic houses, and they captured and arrested their putative or real enemies. Numerous atrocities, exterminations and crimes have been recorded . These exterminations happened with intense and bizarre cruelty, for example detachments forced the relatives to help the executions, or tormented their victims before or during their agony. Finally, the government itself became fed up with these activities and condemned them as homicide, and detachments must been dismissed . The book of Dr. Albert Váry crown lawyer (1922) documents 590 dead victims of terror, other sources speak about a number between 370 and 587 .

See also

• Decossackization
• Lenin's Hanging Order

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
• Melgounov, Sergey Petrovich (1925) The Red Terror in Russia. London & Toronto: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd.

External Links

• Red Terror Spartacus Schoolnet collection of primary source extracts relating to the Red Terror
• Terrorism or Communism book by Leon Trotsky on the use of Red Terror.
• Down with the Death Penalty! by Yuliy Osipovich Martov, June/July 1918