The Red Terror

The Red Terror

Facts
1. Reds forced priests, military officers, factory owners, lawyers, stock brokers, former Tsarist officials and members of the aristocracy to work in gangs and shovel snow or clear the city streets of rubbish.
2. Kharkov Cheka used the ‘glove trick’ was where a prisoner’s hand was held in boiling water until the skin came off ‘like a glove’
3. In Voronezh prisoners were rolled about in spiked barrels
4. In Tsaritsyn and Kamyshin they used blunt saws to sever the bones of prisoners
5. In Kiev, pipes filled with rats sealed at one end were placed against a victim’s stomach and heated up, the rats driven to gnaw at the prisoner’s body.
  1. Kiev Chekists were also known to put prisoners into coffins with a rotting corpse, bury them alive, then dig them up later.
6. Red Guard even killed those with clean fingernails and smooth hands
7. White officers had their epaulettes nailed into their shoulders, or were ‘roasted’ against the side of a ship’s furnace.
8. Cocaine and alcohol abuse was high amongst members of the political police. A delivery of liquor to a Cheka HQ was seen as a sign of upcoming executions.
Perspectives
1. Pipes says, “the Red Terror was not a reluctant response to the actions of other but a ….measure designed to nip in the bus any thoughts of resistance to the dictatorship.” He views wilful, systematic repression of all potential opponents as the principal Bolshevik intention.
2. June 1918, Dzerzhinsky establishes: “We stand for organised terror…The Cheka is obliged to defend the revolution and conquer the enemy even if its sword does by chance sometimes fall on the heads of the innocent.”
3. Sverdlov publishes a release following the attempt on Lenin's life, stating that, “The working class will never answer assassination attempts on its leaders by still greater consolidation of its forces and by ruthless mass terror against all enemies of the Revolution… Maintain order and organisation! Everybody must remain at their posts! Close ranks!”
4. Chekist Latsis, “We are not waging war against individual persons. We are exterminating the bourgeoisie as a class.”
5. Commissar of Justice, Nikolai Krylenko, agued “We must execute not only the guilty. Execution of the innocent will impress the masses even more.”
Causes
1. 1. Assassination attempt on Lenin, 30 August - Fanya Kaplan executed by the Cheka 3 days later. Motivates Sverdlov to institute September Decree, "On Red Terror", giving the Cheka power to execute anyone "involved in White Guard organisations, conspiracies and rebellions."
2. 2. One of Dzerzhinsky’s deputies, Yakov Peters, declared “the Bullet was directed not only against Comrade Lenin but also the working-class as a whole.” On the same day, August 30; Cheka boss Moisei Uritsky, was assassinated by a young military Cadet, too.
3. Sought to bring about class war; destroying the Kulaks, Bourgeoisie, anyone who opposes communism.
4. 3. Since starting as a temporary institution, the Cheka has continued to grown with the threats of 1918 (German Invasion, Assassination,) and is now a power hungry, killing machine.
Consequences
1. 8,500 summary executions in 1918 alone
  1. 85,000+ arrested, imprisoned, interrogated, detained, or sent to prison/labour camps
2. Historians believe more than 100,000 people were killed during the Red Terror, not including the number killed during the Civil War

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