When was the decree on the red terror adopted. The Council of People's Commissars issued a decree on the Red Terror

Revolutionary terror was not some strategic invention of the Bolsheviks. It was resorted to back in 1793 by the Jacobin revolutionaries and the revolutionary government of France, who deliberately pursued a policy of open terror, under the pretext of fighting for a new morality and "saving the fatherland." This word is translated in Latin as horror, fear. Terror has always been used as a means of intimidating opponents through physical violence.

Not a single change of power could do without him. Even when, in the silence of the bedroom, they strangled the kings with a pillow, or poured poison into food, there were no casualties. Following the slaughtered, his advisers, ministers, and favorites were destroyed under various pretexts (or sent to long-term imprisonment). If you change the power, then change it. Here all means are good.

So with regard to terror, he was not a pioneer or founder. He just knew world history and Roman law. He understood that softness is not capable of leading to victory. Was he bloodthirsty, as some historians want to show - we will try to figure this out.

• Some historians include in the concept of "Red Terror" all the repressive activities of the Bolsheviks, opposed to certain segments of the population: nobles, officers tsarist army, consisting of the same nobles, Cossacks, kulaks, intelligentsia, priests, industrialists, etc.
• The other part defines the Bolshevik terror as a retaliatory measure that forced people to defend themselves against white and international opposition to the new government, and considers the decision of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR of September 5, 1918 "On the Red Terror" to be the beginning of the Red Terror.

The initiator of this action was F.E. Dzerzhinsky, who believed that "terror is necessary as a deterrent, in the form of arrests and destruction of the enemies of the revolution on the basis of their class affiliation."
In this article, we will adhere to the second point of view, although if you pay attention to the opinion of the first, then the Bolshevik terror of the revolutionaries can be divided into periods:

1. Pre-revolutionary terror, or the expropriation of the expropriators. Exes meant banal robberies, which did not always turn out to be bloodless.
2. The terror of the revolution of 1905-1907;
3. Revolutionary terror in 1917;
4. And post-revolutionary, marked by the years 1918-1923;
5. Food distribution.

Now no one can give exact figures on how many people died at the hands of the Bolsheviks, because the statistics are smeared:

• The terror of anarchists, socialist-revolutionaries and other parties that have become counter-revolutionary. And by the way, some historians give out the actions of anarchists and socialist-revolutionaries who managed to get into food detachments, government bodies, for the terrorist actions of the Bolsheviks. That is why some criminal actions are now presented as Bolshevik ones;
• wars - World War I and civil;
• white terror - it also cannot be discounted;
• famine and outbreaks, now and then epidemics.

Opponents of Bolshevism seek to attribute to the Bolsheviks all the crimes committed during this period. This is a tactic of the enemies of Russia, who do not care how, but only to denigrate the history of the Russian state, to expose it as a barbaric, illiterate country of savages. On the other hand, the crimes of the Bolsheviks are also undeniable. Along with real enemies, they killed many innocent people.

On August 30, 1918, Lenin committed, belonging to the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. All three bullets ended up in Ilyich's chest. The injury was severe. On the morning of the same day, MS Uritsky, chairman of the Petrograd Cheka, was killed in Petrograd. The Socialist-Revolutionary Party used a favorite method of struggle - the physical elimination of opponents on the sly. Although later its leaders swore to the Bolsheviks that they were not involved in these assassinations.

But the Bolshevik government responded to these acts by declaring the Red Terror and issued the following resolution:

“The All-Russian Central Executive Committee gives a solemn warning to all the serfs of the Russian and allied bourgeoisie, warning them that for every attempt on the leaders of the Soviet government and the bearers of the ideas of the socialist revolution, all counter-revolutionaries will answer ... white terror The workers and peasants will respond to the enemies of the worker-peasant power with massive red terror against the bourgeoisie and its agents.

This meant the introduction of hostage, when completely different people should be held accountable for the actions of some people. The resolution of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee opened the way for the adoption of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee's resolution on the Red Terror on September 5.

The resolution became a declaration of the Red Terror and created the foundations for the repressive policy of the communist regime: the creation of concentration camps to isolate "class enemies", the destruction of all oppositionists involved in conspiracies and rebellions. The Cheka was empowered to take hostages, pass sentences and carry them out.

Soon after the decision was issued, the press reported on the execution of 29 counter-revolutionaries who were not involved in the assassination attempts on Lenin and Uritsky - including

• former Minister of the Interior Russian Empire A. Khvostov, who had already been imprisoned for "misappropriation of state money";
• former Minister of Justice I. Shcheglovitov. “Cold and cruel, this tall, rosy-cheeked old man, always smiling and ready to smile, invariably rejected all petitions for pardon or indulgence.” He was arrested during the February revolution, he was distinguished by anti-Semitic views.
• Minister of the Interior, an ardent monarchist, who at one time advocated the dissolution of the State Duma N. A. Maklakov. He was also imprisoned since the February bourgeois revolution.
• Archpriest of the Russian Orthodox Church Vostorgov Ivan Ivanovich. There was a faint hope that at least this one turned out to be an accidental victim of the "bloodthirsty" Bolsheviks. An, no. He was a monarchist, participated in political movements and meetings, despite the prohibition of the synod to engage in politics. He supported the bourgeois provisional government, but rejected the revolution of the Bolsheviks, called on the flock to oppose the Bolsheviks. And for this he was also imprisoned.

So, not only for belonging to the “counter-revolutionary” classes and social movements, the first hostages of the “Red Terror” were shot, but also for the obvious crimes for which they were in fortresses and prisons. According to some reports, 500 hostages were shot in Moscow.

Decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR of 09/05/1918 "On the Red Terror"

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 by means of 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 make it more planned, it is necessary to send there possible more 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 White Guard organizations, conspiracies and rebellions are to be shot; 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.

People's Commissar of Justice D.KURSKY

People's Commissar for Internal Affairs G. PETROVSKY

Manager of the Affairs of the Council of People's Commissars V. BONC - BRUEVICH

Secretary of the Sov.Nar.Kom. L. FOTIEVA

Back in 1901, Lenin wrote:

“In principle, we have never renounced and cannot renounce terror. This is one of the military actions that can be quite suitable and even necessary at a certain moment of the battle, with a certain state of the troops and under certain conditions.

The history of the CPSU, concerning the first years of the establishment of Soviet power, says:

"The proletariat of Russia had to resolutely suppress the resistance of numerous enemies who, in the struggle against Soviet power, organized conspiracies, rebellions, resorted to sabotage, slander, provocation, and bribery of the vacillating and unstable."

The Red Terror, as a set of punitive measures, was presented as a response to the White Terror, to the sabotage of the instructions and demands of the new government.

The Bolsheviks actively used violence and terror against "class enemies" even earlier, before the proclamation of the well-known decree. But it is September 5, 1918 that is considered the beginning of the Red Terror.

Lenin demanded the use of cruelty in relation to the counter-revolutionary elements, but not its senseless revelry.

On August 8, V. I. Lenin writes to G. F. Fedorov about the need to “establish a revolutionary order”:

In Nizhny, it is clear that a White Guard uprising is being prepared. It is necessary to exert every effort, to form a trio of dictators (You, Markin, and others), to instigate mass terror at once, to shoot and take out hundreds of prostitutes who solder soldiers, former officers, etc.

Not a minute of delay...

We must act with might and main: mass searches. Executions for possession of weapons. Mass export of Mensheviks and unreliable. Change of guards at warehouses, put reliable ones.

They say that Raskolnikov and Danishevsky from Kazan went to you.

Read this letter to your friends, answer me by telegraph or telephone.

It should not be forgotten that in the first revolutionary years there were no legal laws and codes. The new government rejected the royal laws, they did not have time to create new ones. Partly because there was still a time of lawlessness. They were yet to be created. And while there were no fundamental documents, everyone reserved the right to judge in their own way.

The death penalty was abolished on October 26, 1917 by the decision of the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. It should be noted that this was the first attempt in the world to abolish the death penalty. In Europe, the abolition of the death penalty will be discussed only after half a century - in 1978, the death penalty will be abolished in Spain.

However, the abolition of the death penalty at that moment was premature. Rampant crime, sabotage, disobedience to decrees forced the restoration of capital punishment by the Decree of June 13, 1918. From that day on, shooting was used according to the verdicts of the revolutionary tribunals. And they used their right...

On September 5, 1918, the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR issued a resolution "On the Red Terror". The resolution stated that the Council of People's Commissars, “having heard the report of the Chairman of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution, finds that in this situation, the provision of rear by terror is a direct necessity; 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 ... ".

Under this resolution, which opened a new chapter in the history of mutually destructive civil war in Russia, the signatures were put by People's Commissar of Justice D. Kursky, People's Commissar of Internal Affairs G. Petrovsky and the manager of the Council of People's Commissars V. Bonch-Bruevich.

Actually, on September 2, 1918, the chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, Yakov Sverdlov, announced the beginning of the "Red Terror" campaign. Formally, the "Red Terror" was a response to the assassination attempt on the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars Vladimir Ulyanov-Lenin on August 30 and the murder on the same day of the chairman of the Petrograd Cheka, Moses Uritsky.

However, in fact, bloody reprisals against their political opponents came into use by the Bolsheviks from the very first days of the coup, committed by them on October 25 (November 7, according to a new style), 1917. Although just on October 26, by the decision of the II Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies (the same one at which Lenin announced the accomplished proletarian revolution), the death penalty in Russia was abolished. Lenin himself, as Leon Trotsky said in his memoirs, was very dissatisfied with this decision, and "visionarily" told his comrades in the Central Committee and the Council of People's Commissars that a revolution without the death penalty was impossible. Actually, back in September 1917, in his work “The Threatening Catastrophe and How to Fight It,” he pointed out that “without the death penalty in relation to the exploiters (i.e., landowners and capitalists), any revolutionary government can hardly manage ".

Private order in those places where the establishment Soviet power there was armed resistance, her opponents began to be shot back in November-December 1917. In fairness, we point out that the opponents of the Bolsheviks did not hesitate to resort to similar measures. So, during the October battles of 1917 in Moscow, Colonel Ryabtsev, who commanded the forces of supporters of the Provisional Government, shot in the Kremlin more than 300 unarmed soldiers of the 56th reserve regiment, who he suspected of sympathizing with the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks, immediately after their victory in Moscow, shot several hundred cadets and students opposing them. However, Viktor Nogin, who led the Moscow Revolutionary Committee, stopped unauthorized executions and released the remaining opponents on all four sides. Later, he even accused his comrades in the Central Committee and SNK of “political terror unworthy of the party of revolutionaries,” and for such idealism he was sent by Lenin to a lower level of the party hierarchy.

Meanwhile, resistance to the measures of the Soviet government in different regions of the country began to gain momentum, and the Bolsheviks increasingly had to resort to force of arms to suppress it. In January 1918, the Bolsheviks shot on the streets of Petrograd a peaceful demonstration of supporters of the Constituent Assembly that they dispersed. In the same place, where the resistance was of an armed nature, no one was holding back the executions.

After the troops of the German Kaiser Wilhelm launched an offensive along the entire line of the former front in February 1918, Lenin insisted on the adoption of the famous decree “The Socialist Fatherland is in danger!”. Here, the death penalty was directly introduced without trial for the commission of crimes by "enemy agents, speculators, rioters, hooligans, counter-revolutionary agitators, German spies."

In May 1918, Lenin proclaimed " crusade for bread”, decreed the creation of the Prodarmia (where he planned to send 90% of all the armed forces available to the SNK), which was supposed to take “surplus” food from the peasant population by force. This decree also provided for the execution on the spot of those who would oppose the withdrawal of these "surpluses". It should be noted that the beginning of a full-scale civil war turned out to be more connected with the implementation of this decree than with the Czechoslovak rebellion or the campaign of the Volunteer Army of General Denikin in the Kuban.

In this situation, on June 13, 1918, the Council of People's Commissars adopted a decree on the restoration of the death penalty. From that moment on, execution could be applied according to the verdicts of the revolutionary tribunals. On June 21, 1918, the first revolutionary tribunal sentenced to death was Admiral Shchastny. He, having taken the initiative, took the ships to Kronstadt Baltic Fleet, preventing the Germans from capturing them, after which Trotsky, who by that time had become the Commissar of the Navy, announced that Shchastny had saved the fleet in order to gain popularity among the sailors and then send them to overthrow the Soviet regime.

As the activities of the Bolsheviks aroused more and more protests among various sections of the population, the Soviet leadership had to improve its ingenuity in measures to suppress it more and more. So, for example, on August 9, 1918, Lenin sent instructions to the Penza Gubispolkom: “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.” Then comes the following "parting word": "Decree and implement the complete disarmament of the population, shoot on the spot mercilessly for any concealed rifle." In the complete works of V. I. Lenin, there are similar instructions for other cities and provinces.

Among the measures to restore order and prevent resistance, sabotage and counter-revolution, it was also decided to start taking hostages among potential opponents of Soviet power and their families. The chairman of the Cheka, Dzerzhinsky, motivated this measure by the fact that it was “the most effective: taking hostages among the bourgeoisie, based on the lists you compiled to recover the indemnity imposed on the bourgeoisie ... the arrest and imprisonment of all hostages and suspects in concentration camps.”

Lenin developed this proposal and proposed a list of measures for its practical implementation: “I propose not to take “hostages”, but to appoint them by name according to the volosts. The purpose of the appointment is precisely the rich, because they are responsible for the contribution, they are responsible with their lives for the immediate collection and dumping of surplus grain in each volost.

Such proposals caused shock even among many Bolsheviks, who considered them “barbaric”, but Lenin answered them: “I reason soberly and categorically. What is better - to imprison a few dozen or hundreds of instigators, guilty or innocent, conscious or unconscious, or to lose thousands of Red Army soldiers and workers? The first is better. And let me be accused of any mortal sins and violations of freedom - I plead guilty, and the interests of the workers will benefit.

Of course, there was a fair amount of demagoguery in these words of the proletarian leader. By the summer of 1918, the workers often began to oppose the Soviet regime - in Izhevsk, Votkinsk, Samara, Astrakhan, Ashkhabad, Yaroslavl, Tula, etc. The Bolsheviks suppressed their speeches no less cruelly than any other "counter-revolution".

However, after the implementation of the decision of the Council of People's Commissars on the "Red Terror", emergency commissions, revolutionary tribunals, revolutionary committees and other bodies of Soviet power (up to the red command of individual units) received the right to crack down on everyone who was considered potential opponents of Soviet power, without even finding out the specific guilt of that or any other accused.

On November 1, 1918, one of the leaders of the Cheka, Martin Latsis, in the Red Terror magazine, explained the activities carried out as follows: “We are not waging war against individuals. We are exterminating the bourgeoisie as a class. Do not look at the investigation for materials and evidence that the accused acted in deed or word against the Soviet regime. The first question we must ask him 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.”

Similarly to Latsis, the chairman of the Revolutionary Military Tribunal of the RSFSR, Karl Danishevsky, stated: “Military tribunals are not guided and should not be guided by any legal norms. These are punitive organs created in the course of the most intense revolutionary struggle.

However, the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, Petrovsky, considered it necessary to somehow regulate the activities of his comrades and issued instructions on whom to apply extrajudicial executions to. This list included:

"one. 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 example, membership in a revolutionary Soviet party or 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, both on the territory of Soviet Russia and outside it.

6. All active members of the party of socialist revolutionaries of the center and 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 the affairs of the party; performing any assignments of combat squads, serving between individual organizations, etc.).

7. All active figures in the counter-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.

No less wide was the list of categories to be placed in concentration camps.

However, even this long list did not include all possible enemies, and the leadership of the RCP (b) also developed separate “targeted” campaigns to eliminate “socially alien” classes - the Cossacks (“Decossackization”) and the clergy.

So, on January 24, 1919, at a meeting of the Orgburo of the Central Committee, a directive was adopted that marked the beginning of mass terror and repression in relation to "all Cossacks in general who took any direct or indirect part in the fight against Soviet power." The resolution of the Donburo of the RCP (b) of April 8, 1919 posed “an urgent task of the complete, rapid, decisive destruction of the Cossacks as a special economic group, the destruction of its economic foundations, the physical destruction of the Cossack bureaucracy and officers, in general, all the tops of the Cossacks, actively counter-revolutionary, spraying and the neutralization of the ordinary Cossacks and the formal liquidation of the Cossacks.

The Ural Regional Revolutionary Committee also issued an instruction in February 1919, according to which the Cossacks should be "outlawed, and they are subject to extermination." In pursuance of the instructions, the existing concentration camps were used and a number of new places of deprivation of liberty were organized. In a memorandum to the Central Committee of the RCP (b) a member of the Cossack department of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee Ruzheinikov at the end of 1919, it was reported that the 25th division of the Red Army (under the command of the legendary Chapaev. - Note KM.RU), when moving from Lbischensk to the village of Skvorkina, burned all the villages along 80 versts in length and 30–40 in width. By the middle of 1920, the Ural army was actually completely destroyed.

In the spring of 1920, “a member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Kafront Comrade. Ordzhonikidze ordered: the first - to burn the village of Kalinovskaya; the second - to give the villages of Yermolovskaya, Zakan-Yurtovskaya, Samashkinskaya, Mikhailovskaya always former subjects of Soviet power to the mountainous Chechens. Why should the entire male population of the above villages from 18 to 50 years old be loaded into trains and sent under escort to the North for hard forced labor, the elderly, women and children should be evicted from the villages, allowing them to move to farms and villages to the North. “We definitely decided to evict 18 villages with a population of 60,000 on the other side of the Terek,” Ordzhonikidze himself later reported. He clarified: "The villages of Sunzhenskaya, Tarskaya, Field Marshal's, Romanovskaya, Yermolovskaya and others were liberated from the Cossacks and transferred to the highlanders - Ingush and Chechens."

It must be pointed out that Comrade Sergo was not at all engaged in amateur activities, but acted within the framework of the directive of Comrade Lenin. The latter pointed out in the directive of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP (b): “On the agrarian issue, it is necessary to return to the highlanders of the North Caucasus the lands taken from them by the Great Russians at the expense of the kulak part of the Cossack population and instruct the Council of People’s Commissars to immediately prepare an appropriate decree.”

Lenin also kept the reprisals against the clergy under his personal control. On May 1, 1919, a secret Directive of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee No. 13666/2 was issued to the Chairman of the All-Russian Cheka F.E. Nar. Commissars need to do away with priests and religion as soon as possible. Priests must be arrested as counter-revolutionaries and saboteurs, shot mercilessly and everywhere. And as much as possible. Churches are to be closed. Seal the premises of the temples and turn them into warehouses.”

Considering the national composition of the Bolshevik elite, it should be noted that the so-called “fight against anti-Semitism” became an essential component of the “Red Terror”, which from the very beginning was an important goal of the punitive policy of the Bolsheviks (that is why they were immediately called the Judeo-Bolsheviks). Already in April 1918, a circular was issued with an order to stop "the Black Hundred anti-Semitic agitation of the clergy by taking the most decisive measures to combat counter-revolutionary activities and agitation." And in July of the same year, the all-Union decree of the Council of People's Commissars signed by Lenin on the persecution of anti-Semitism: “counter-revolutionaries in many cities, especially in the front line, are conducting pogrom agitation ... The Council of People's Commissars orders all Councils of Deputies to take decisive measures to root out the anti-Semitic movement. Pogromists and those leading pogromist agitation are ordered to be outlawed, which meant execution. (And in the Criminal Code adopted in 1922, Article 83 prescribed for "incitement of national hatred" punishment up to execution.)

The "anti-Semitic" July execution decree began to be even more zealously applied in conjunction with the September decree on the "Red Terror". Among the well-known figures, the first victims of these two combined decrees were Archpriest John Vostorgov (accused of serving the holy infant Gabriel of Bialystok, martyred by the Jews), Bishop Ephraim (Kuznetsov) of Selenginsky, priest-“anti-Semite” Lutostansky with his brother, N. A. Maklakov (former Minister of the Interior, proposed to the Tsar in December 1916 to disperse the Duma), A.N. Khvostov (leader of the right-wing faction in the 4th Duma, former Minister of the Interior), I.G. of the Russian people, one of the organizers of the investigation in the "Beilis case", chairman of the State Council) and Senator S. P. Beletsky (former head of the Police Department).

Thus identifying "anti-Semitism" with counter-revolution, the Bolsheviks themselves identified their power with the Jewish one. Thus, in the secret resolution of the Bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League "On the issue of combating anti-Semitism" dated November 2, 1926, the "increasing anti-Semitism" was noted, which is used by "anti-communist organizations and elements in the struggle against the Soviet authorities." Yu. Larin (Lurie), a member of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of National Economy and the State Planning Committee, one of the authors of the project to transfer the Crimea to the Jews and “one of the initiators of the campaign against anti-Semitism (1926-1931)”, devoted a whole book to this - “Jews and Anti-Semitism in the USSR”. He defined "anti-Semitism as a means of camouflaged mobilization against the Soviet regime ... Therefore, there is opposition to anti-Semitic agitation required condition to increase the defense capacity of our country” (emphasis added in the original), states Larin and insists on the application of Lenin’s decree of 1918: “Put “active anti-Semites” outside the law, i. shoot”… At the end of the 1920s, only in Moscow, about every ten days, there was a trial for anti-Semitism; they could be judged for the mere spoken word "Jew".

According to some historians, from 1918 to the end of the 1930s. in the course of repressions against the clergy, about 42,000 clergymen were shot or died in places of deprivation of liberty. Similar data on the statistics of executions are given by the St. Tikhon Theological Institute, which analyzes repressions against clergy on the basis of archival materials.

The total number of victims of the "Red Terror" (however, for the sake of justice, we point out, as well as the terror of the "White", nationalist regimes, "Green", Makhnovist and other rebellions) is not possible to establish.

According to the decision of the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation No. 9-P of 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 Soviet power 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"



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, the time of the beginning of "red", revolutionary terror can be considered as early as 1901. 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 - 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 mass graves are still found during archaeological excavations and construction work.

"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, comrades of the working people, 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 Ivan Shmelev's "The Sun of the Dead" was Fyodor Gladkov's story "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-savage people.” “When the leaders of the revolution, a group of the most active intelligentsia, are accused of “atrocity”, I consider this accusation as a lie and slander, inevitable in the struggle political parties or - among honest people - as a conscientious error. "A recent slave," Gorky remarked in another place, has become "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?

September 5, 1918 - the day the decree "On the Red Terror" was signed. On this day, the Bolsheviks who seized power in Russia legalized murder and violence, elevating terror to the rank of state policy. Looting, torture, lynching, executions, rape accompanied the Soviet government from the first days, although it is worth noting that this orgy of arbitrariness began in February 1917, after the fall of the monarchy and the transfer of power into the hands of left.

From the very first days February Revolution a wave of violence swept over the naval bases of the Baltic Fleet, Helsingfors (now Helsinki) and Kronstadt. From March 3 to March 15, 1917, 120 officers became victims of sailor lynching in the Baltic, of which 76 were killed (45 in Helsingfors, 24 in Kronstadt, 5 in Revel and 2 in Petrograd). According to eyewitnesses, “the brutal beating of officers in Kronstadt was accompanied by the fact that people were surrounded with hay and, doused with kerosene, burned; they put people still alive in coffins together with the people who had been shot earlier, they killed fathers in front of their sons. Among the dead were the commander of the Baltic Fleet, Adrian Nepenin, and the chief commander of the Kronstadt port, the hero of Port Arthur, Admiral Robert von Wieren. Never, in any of naval battles First World War, the command staff of the Baltic Fleet did not suffer such serious losses as in these terrible days.

After the October coup, terror took on larger forms, since Bolshevik violence was directed not against the current resistance, but against entire sections of society that were proclaimed outlaws: nobles, landowners, officers, priests, kulaks, Cossacks, scientists, industrialists, etc. . P.

A Russian officer killed by the communists. Irkutsk, December 1917

Sometimes the murder of the leaders of the Kadet Party, deputies of the Constituent Assembly, lawyer F.F. Kokoshkin and doctor A.I. Shingarev on the night of January 6-7, 1918 is considered the first act of the Red Terror.

Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR Vladimir Lenin and the leadership of the Communist Party opposed softness in response to the actions of counter-revolutionaries, "encouraging the energy and mass character of terror" called "quite correct revolutionary initiative of the masses", as V.I. Lenin writes in his letter to Zinoviev on June 26, 1918:

Only today we heard in the Central Committee that the workers in St. Petersburg wanted to respond to the assassination of Volodarsky with mass terror, and that you ... withheld. I object strongly! We compromise ourselves: even in the resolutions of the Soviet of Deputies we threaten with mass terror, and when it comes down to it, we slow down the revolutionary initiative of the masses, which is quite correct. It's impossible! The terrorists will consider us rags. Archival time. We must encourage the energy and mass character of terror against the counter-revolutionaries.

At the V All-Russian Congress of Soviets, Y.M. Sverdlov spoke with a report to the Congress on the activities of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee on July 5, 1918. In the context of the deepening crisis of the Bolshevik government, Sverdlov in his report called for "mass terror", which must be carried out against the "counter-revolution" and "enemies of the Soviet government" and expressed confidence that "the whole of working Russia will react with full approval to such a measure as the execution of counter-revolutionary generals and other enemies of the working people." Congress officially approved this doctrine.

As early as September 1917, in his work The Impending Catastrophe and How to Fight It, Lenin stated that:

... without the death penalty in relation to the exploiters (that is, the landlords and capitalists), any revolutionary government can hardly manage.

For the first time, the words "red terror" were heard in Russia after August 30, 1918, when an attempt was made on the life of the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars Vladimir Lenin in Petrograd (although terrorism has always been the only way for the left to fight for power, it is enough to recall the activities of the Socialist-Revolutionary bombers). A few days later, an official report appeared that the attempt was organized by the Left Socialist-Revolutionary Party, and the activist of this party, Fanny Kaplan, shot at the "leader of the world proletariat". Under the pretext of revenge for the blood of their leader, the Bolshevik Party plunged the country into the abyss of red terror.

Immediately after the assassination attempt on Lenin, the chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (VTsIK), Yakov Sverdlov, signed a resolution on the transformation of the Soviet Republic into a military camp. Here is what Martin Latsis, a member of the collegium of the Cheka, wrote at that time in an instruction sent to the provinces for provincial Chekists: “For us, there is not and cannot be the old foundations of morality and “humanity” invented by the bourgeoisie for the oppression and exploitation of the “lower classes.” Everything is allowed for us, because we were the first in the world to raise the sword not in the name of enslavement and oppression of anyone, but in the name of emancipation from oppression and slavery of all...

The sacrifices that we demand are salvific sacrifices, sacrifices that pave the way to the Bright Kingdom of Labor, Freedom and Truth. Blood? Let the blood, if only it can paint the grey-white-black standard of the old bandit world scarlet. For only the complete, irrevocable death of this world will save us from the rebirth of the old jackals, those jackals with whom we end, end, almond, and we can’t end once and for all ... The Cheka is not an investigative board and not a court. It destroys without trial or isolates from society, imprisoning them in a concentration camp. At the very beginning, it is necessary to show extreme severity, inexorability, straightforwardness: that the word is the law. The work of the Cheka should extend to all those areas of public life where the counter-revolution has taken root, beyond military life, for food work, for public education, for all positive economic organizations, for sanitation, for fires, for public communications, etc., etc. "

However, calls for terror sounded from the lips of the leader of the Bolsheviks from the first months of his stay in power, which was the reason for attempts to eliminate this enraged maniac.

On August 8, 1918, V.I. Lenin wrote to G.F. Fedorov about the need for mass terror to “establish revolutionary order.”

In Nizhny, obviously, a White Guard uprising is being prepared. It is necessary to exert every effort, to form a trio of dictators (You, Markin, and others), to instigate mass terror at once, to shoot and take out hundreds of prostitutes who solder soldiers, former officers, etc.

Not a moment's delay.

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 concealed rifle.

Izvestia of the Penza Gubchek publishes the following information:

"For the murder of Comrade Yegorov, a Petrograd worker sent as part of the food detachment, 152 White Guards were shot. Other, even more severe measures will be taken against those who dare to encroach on the iron hand of the proletariat in the future."

As already mentioned, in the light of the policy of suppressing the enemies of the revolution, the Cheka local authorities received the broadest powers, which at that time were not in any power structure. Any person, on the slightest suspicion, could be arrested and shot by the Chekists, and no one had the right to even ask them what kind of charge was brought against him.

The wide scope of the Bolshevik terror is due to the fact that almost all segments of the Russian population were against the Bolsheviks and perceived them as usurpers of power, so Lenin and the company understood that the only chance to retain power was to physically destroy everyone who did not agree with their policies.

The wording of the direction of the activities of the punitive organs of revolutionary power, published in the newspaper Izvestia of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, is quite widely known. The first chairman of the Revolutionary Military Tribunal of the RSFSR K. Danishevsky said:

“Military tribunals are not and should not be governed by any legal norms. These are punishing organs created in the course of the most intense revolutionary struggle.

The largest of the first actions of the Red Terror was the execution in Petrograd of 512 members of the elite (former dignitaries, ministers, professors). This fact is confirmed by the report of the Izvestia newspaper dated September 3, 1918 about the execution of more than 500 hostages by the Cheka of the city of Petrograd. According to the official data of the Cheka, about 800 people were shot in Petrograd during the Red Terror.

According to the research of the Italian historian J. Boffa, about 1000 people were shot in Petrograd and Kronstadt in response to the wounding of V.I. Lenin.

In September 1918, G. Zinoviev makes the following statement:

You need to be like a military camp, from which detachments can be thrown into the village. If we do not increase our army, our bourgeoisie will massacre us. After all, they have no other way. We can't live on the same planet with them. We need our own socialist militarism to overcome our enemies. We must carry with us 90 million [ions] out of a hundred that inhabit Soviet Russia. The rest cannot be spoken to - they must be destroyed.

At the same time, the Central Committee of the RCP (b) and the Cheka are developing a joint instruction with the following content:

Shoot all counter-revolutionaries. Grant the districts the right to shoot independently… Take hostages… set up small concentration camps in the districts… Tonight the Presidium of the Cheka will consider the cases of the counter-revolution and shoot all obvious counter-revolutionaries. The same should be done by the district Cheka. Take measures to ensure that the corpses do not fall into unwanted hands ...

The Red Terror was announced on September 2, 1918 by Yakov Sverdlov in an appeal to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and confirmed by a resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of September 5, 1918 as a response to the assassination attempt on Lenin on August 30, as well as to the murder on the same day by Leonid Kannegiser of the chairman of the Petrograd Cheka, Uritsky.

The official publication of the Petrosoviet, Krasnaya Gazeta, commenting on the murder of Moses Solomonovich Uritsky, wrote:

“Uritsky was killed. We must respond to the single terror of our enemies with mass terror ... For the death of one of our fighters, thousands of enemies must pay with their lives.

“... so that pity does not penetrate into them, so that they do not flinch at the sight of a sea of ​​enemy blood. And we will release this sea. Blood for blood. Without mercy, without compassion, we will beat the enemies by tens, hundreds. Let there be thousands of them. Let them choke on their own blood! Not spontaneous, mass slaughter, we will arrange for them. We will pull out the true bourgeois moneybags and their henchmen. For the blood of Comrade Uritsky, for the wounding of Comrade. Lenin, for the attempt on Comrade. Zinoviev, for the unavenged blood of comrades Volodarsky, Nakhimson, Latvians, sailors - let the blood of the bourgeoisie and its servants be shed - more blood!

Thus, for the blood of the Nakhimsons and Latvians, it was decided to drown the Russian aristocracy and the "White Guards" in blood, although the Russian military, and even more so the "bourgeois", had nothing to do with the attempt on Lenin or the murder of Uritsky - the Jew Kaplan shot at Lenin from the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, the murderer of Uritsky is also a Jew, but from the party of the Socialist-Revolutionaries.

The "Decree on Red Terror" itself read:

COUNCIL OF PEOPLE'S COMMISSIONERS OF THE RSFSR

RESOLUTION

ABOUT "RED TERROR"

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, the provision of rear by 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.

People's Commissar for Internal Affairs G. PETROVSKY

Managing Director of the Council of People's Commissars Vl. BONC-BRUEVICH

SU, No. 19, Division 1, Art. 710, 09/05/18.

After its announcement, a delighted Dzerzhinsky declared:

"The laws of September 3 and 5 finally endowed us with legal rights to what some party comrades have objected to until now, to end immediately, without asking anyone's permission, with the counter-revolutionary bastard."
The well-known researcher of the Bolshevik terror Roman Gul noted: "... Dzerzhinsky raised a" revolutionary sword "over Russia." Spanish Inquisition, and terror of all reactions. Having connected the terrible hard times of its history with the name of Dzerzhinsky, Russia bled for a long time.

The well-known Chekist M.Ya. Latsis defined the principle of the Red Terror as follows:

"We are not waging war against individuals. We are exterminating the bourgeoisie as a class. Do not look at the investigation for materials and evidence that the accused acted in deed or word against the Soviet regime. The first question that we must ask him 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. "

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.

At the same time, in October 1918, Y. Martov, the leader of the Menshevik Party, stated that since the beginning of September there had been “more than ten thousand” victims of the repressions of the Cheka during the Red Terror.

"in the last days of August, two barges filled with officers were sunk and their corpses were thrown into the estate of one of my friends, located on the Gulf of Finland; many were tied in twos and threes with barbed wire."
And if in Moscow and Petrograd the number of those killed lends itself to at least some account, you can find evidence of the stars of the KGB executioners, then in the remote corners of Russia the red terror took uncontrollable forms. The self-proclaimed "chekushki", consisting of former criminals, parasitic alcoholics and all kinds of outcasts, did any lawlessness, reveling in power and impunity, under the guise of "fighting the bourgeoisie" killing everyone who they personally did not like, often with the aim of taking possession of the property of the murdered, or even just to satisfy their own sadistic needs.

A separate topic is the attitude of the Red Army to the captured White soldiers. For white officers, red ones beat out epaulettes with nails on their shoulders, and for Cossacks on their feet, stripes were cut out with knives. During the capture of Astrakhan, for example, prisoners and dissatisfied were drowned by whole barges in order to save cartridges. People were thrown alive into blast furnaces and burned in the furnaces of locomotives. It got to the point that it was considered a special chic among the Reds to coat boots with human fat ...

Entertainment Chekists

In parallel with the murders of Russian military and intelligentsia, the Bolsheviks carried out terror against the Russian Orthodox Church and killed clergy and believers.

On November 8, 1917, Archpriest John Kochurov of Tsarskoye Selo was subjected to prolonged beatings, then he was killed by being dragged along the sleepers railway tracks. In 1918, three Orthodox priests in the city of Kherson were crucified on a cross. In December 1918, Bishop Feofan (Ilmensky) of Solikamsk was publicly executed by periodically dipping into an ice hole and freezing, being hung by the hair, in Samara, the former Bishop of Mikhailovsky Isidor (Kolokolov) was impaled, as a result of which he died. Bishop Andronik (Nikolsky) of Perm was buried alive in the ground. Archbishop Joachim (Levitsky) of Nizhny Novgorod was executed, according to undocumented data, by public hanging upside down in the Sevastopol Cathedral.

In 1918, 37 clergy were executed in the Stavropol diocese, including Pavel Kalinovsky, 72 years old, and priest Zolotovsky, 80 years old.

Bishop of Serapul Ambrose (Gudko) was executed by tying a horse to the tail; in Voronezh in 1919, 160 priests were simultaneously killed, headed by Archbishop Tikhon (Nikanorov), who was hanged on the Royal Doors in the church of the Mitrofanov Monastery. In early January 1919, among others, Bishop Platon (Kulbush) of Revel was brutally murdered.

In August 1919, when the troops of the Volunteer Army liberated the vast territories of Russia from the Reds, and the investigation and publication of the facts of the crimes of the Bolsheviks began, it was reported that there were so-called “human slaughterhouses” of the provincial and district Cheka in Kyiv:

The whole ... the floor of the large garage was already covered with ... several inches of blood, mixed into a terrifying mass with brains, skull bones, tufts of hair and other human remains .... the walls were spattered with blood, brain particles and pieces of head skin stuck to them next to thousands of bullet holes ... a chute a quarter of a meter wide and deep and approximately 10 meters long ... was filled with blood all the way to the top ... Next to this place of horrors in 127 corpses of the last massacre were hastily buried in the garden of the same house ... all the corpses had their skulls crushed, many even had their heads completely flattened ... Some were completely headless, but their heads were not cut off, but ... came off ... we came across another older one in the corner of the garden a grave containing about 80 corpses…there were corpses with their bellies torn open, others had no limbs, some were completely chopped off. Some had their eyes gouged out… their heads, faces, necks and torsos were covered with stab wounds… A few had no tongues… There were old people, men, women and children. One woman was tied with a rope to her daughter, a girl of eight years old. Both had gunshot wounds.

In the provincial Cheka, we found a chair (the same was in Kharkov) of the kind of dentist, on which there were still straps with which the victim was tied to it. The entire cement floor of the room was covered with blood, and the remnants of human skin and head skin with hair stuck to the bloodied chair ... In the county Cheka it was the same, the same floor covered with blood with bones and brain, etc. ... In this room, the deck was especially striking , on which the head of the victim was laid and broken with a crowbar, directly next to the deck there was a pit, in the form of a hatch, filled to the top with a human brain, where, when the skull was crushed, the brain immediately fell.

No less cruel are the tortures used by the so-called "Chinese" Cheka in Kyiv:

Torture was tied to a wall or pole; then an iron pipe a few inches wide was firmly tied to it at one end ... A rat was planted in it through another hole, the hole was immediately closed with a wire mesh and fire was brought to it. Driven by heat to despair, the animal began to eat into the body of the unfortunate person in order to find a way out. Such torture lasted for hours, sometimes until the next day, while the victim died.

In turn, the Kharkiv Cheka under the leadership of Saenko reportedly used scalping and “removing the gloves from the hands”, the Voronezh Cheka used to skate naked in a barrel studded with nails. In Tsaritsyn and Kamyshin "bones were sawn". In Poltava and Kremenchug, the clergy were impaled. In Yekaterinoslav, crucifixion and stoning were used, in Odessa, officers were tied with chains to boards, inserted into the furnace and roasted, or torn in half by winch wheels, or lowered in turn into a cauldron of boiling water and into the sea. In Armavir, in turn, “mortal whisks” were used: a person’s head on the frontal bone is girded with a belt, the ends of which have iron screws and a nut, which, when screwed, squeezes the head with a belt. In the Oryol province, freezing of people by pouring cold water at low temperatures is widely used.

Information about the use of torture during interrogations penetrates the revolutionary press, since this measure, of course, was unusual for many Bolsheviks. In particular, the newspaper "Izvestia" dated January 26, 1919, No. 18 publishes an article "Is it really a medieval dungeon?" with a letter from a random injured member of the RCP (b), who was tortured by the investigative commission of the Sushchevo-Mariinsky district in Moscow:

"I was arrested by accident, just in the place where ... fake kerenki were fabricated. Before the interrogation, I sat for 10 days and experienced something impossible ... Here people were beaten until they lost consciousness, and then they carried them unconscious right into the cellar or refrigerator, where they continued beat with a break of 18 hours a day. It affected me so much that I almost lost my mind. "

On October 6, 1918, the 3rd issue of the "VChK Weekly" publishes an article dedicated to the "Lockhart Case" "Why are you almondy?", The author of which was the Chairman of the Nolinsk Cheka:

"Tell me - why did you not subject ... Lockhart to the most subtle tortures in order to obtain information, addresses, of which such a goose must have a lot? Tell me, why, instead of subjecting him to such tortures, from the mere description of which a chill of horror would seize the counter- revolutionaries, tell me why he was allowed to leave Che.K. instead?
And this despite the fact that N. A. Maklakov, I. G. Shcheglovitov, S. P. Beletsky, A. N. Khvostov, John Vostorgov, Bishop Ephraim (Kuznetsov), and many other people were shot on September 5, 1918 , who had been in prison for a long time, and, accordingly, had nothing to do with the attempt on Lenin or Lockhart's plans.

John Ioannovich Vostorgov (1867 - 1918), archpriest, Black Hundreds, holy martyr.
Commemorated on September 4 (August 23), in the Cathedrals of the New Martyrs and Confessors of the Church of Russia and Moscow Saints.

This is very short description criminal activity of the red invaders in the Russia they captured in the first year of the reign of Lenin and his gang. All the atrocities of the Bolsheviks cannot be described within the framework of one article, and such a goal was not set. For those who want to learn more about the history of the Red Terror, I recommend website of the historian Sergei Volkov where comprehensive information is collected. But even what has been said above is enough to understand that the communist regime was the most bloody and anti-human regime in the world.

Actually, Lenin is guilty of 2.5 million deaths in our country. These are the results of the Red Terror sanctioned by him. Adding here the victims of the civil war unleashed by the Bolsheviks and the artificial famine arranged to suppress the peasant anti-Soviet resistance, we get completely different figures. The terror that began during Lenin's lifetime continued after his death - decossackization, dispossession, forced collectivization, Stalin's purges are a continuation of the policy he started, and then Lenin is guilty of 60 million deaths in our country.

So why are there still monuments to this bloodthirsty tyrant on the streets of Russian cities, and the streets of cities bear his name cursed by millions?

Everyone is now well aware of the methods by which the Bolsheviks suppressed peasant uprisings - an example of the use of chemical weapons against the Tambov rebels, it is known how many priests were killed and temples destroyed by the communists. It is known about the unprecedented massacre organized by the Bolsheviks in the Crimea, after the retreat of the Russian army of Wrangel from there. Murder royal family, genocide of the Cossacks, famine, wars ...

We must give the crimes of communism an unequivocal legal and moral assessment so that this will never happen again.


Memorial to the victims of the Red Terror in Rostov-on-Don

18.04.2013 18:53

Sergey2013

09/05/1918. - The Council of People's Commissars issued a decree on the "Red Terror".

In essence, this decree was nothing new - the state class terror began with the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks. They abolished the very concept of a person's personal guilt, asserting class and even class guilt. Everyone who faithfully served the former legitimate government, worked conscientiously and got rich under the "old regime", who had the misfortune of being born into a "non-working" family, was declared an enemy...

But the repressions took on a special scope after the SR Kanegisser killed the chairman of the Petrograd Cheka, Uritsky, on August 30, 1918 in Petrograd, and Lenin was wounded in Moscow on the same day. On September 1, Krasnaya Gazeta proclaimed: "For the blood of Lenin and Uritsky, let streams of blood be shed - more blood, as much as possible." (Isn't it strange that these assassinations took place on the same day and that Kaplan was immediately destroyed without investigation, like Kanegisser, but his Orthodox Jewish family was released from prison abroad. Considering the disagreements described above [in the book of the VTR] in the Bolshevik at the top, a multi-purpose provocation is not ruled out here.)

As if in response, on September 5, the Council of People's Commissars issues a decree on the "Red Terror". But it was obvious that this was only a "legitimization" of the previous practice - only on a larger scale. Even before, there could be no punishment for the murder of a "bourgeois" or "counter-revolutionary" by a Red Army soldier, but now such extrajudicial murders were given the highest sanction and an appropriate organization.

A member of the board of the Cheka, Latsis (Sudrabs), issued a printed instruction in the Chekist weekly "Red Terror": "Do not look in the case for accusatory evidence about whether he rebelled against the Soviet with weapons or words. First of all, you should 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."

Hundreds of "class enemies" - tsarist officials, professors, military men - were immediately shot in Petrograd. A system of hostages from the civilian population (bourgeoisie) is introduced, who are shot by the hundreds after each murder of a Bolshevik. This is also becoming a common method of management: on February 15, 1919, the Defense Council orders "to take hostages from the peasants so that if the snow is not cleared, they will be shot" ... In combination with the policy of "war communism", predatory food requisitioning and anti-church By the policy of the Bolsheviks, the red terror in the countryside led everywhere to mass peasant uprisings.

Another instrument of mass terror is being used more and more: concentration camps. Against the background of the mass executions of hostages, at first it looks mild, because Lenin applies it to the "doubtful": "Perform a merciless mass terror against kulaks, priests and White Guards; lock up the doubtful in a concentration camp outside the city." Then the decree on the "Red Terror" legitimizes this type of repression on a sweeping "class" basis: "It is necessary to secure the Soviet Republic from class enemies by isolating them in concentration camps." Monasteries were often used as camps. The most terrible was the Solovetsky concentration camp, where dozens of bishops were tortured.

Red terror

Considering the national composition of the Bolshevik elite, it should be noted that the so-called "fight against anti-Semitism" became an essential component of the "Red Terror", which from the very beginning was an important goal of the punitive policy of the Bolsheviks (that's why they were immediately called the Judeo-Bolsheviks). Already in April 1918, a circular was issued with an order to stop "the Black Hundred anti-Semitic agitation of the clergy by taking the most decisive measures to combat counter-revolutionary activities and agitation." And in July of the same year, the all-Union decree of the Council of People's Commissars signed by Lenin on the persecution of anti-Semitism: "counter-revolutionaries in many cities, especially in the front line, are conducting pogrom agitation ... The Council of People's Commissars orders all Soviets to take decisive measures to root out the anti-Semitic movement. Pogromists and leaders pogrom agitation is prescribed to be outlawed," which meant execution. (And in the Criminal Code adopted in 1922, Article 83 prescribed for "incitement of national hatred" punishment up to execution.)

The "anti-Semitic" July execution decree began to be even more zealously applied in conjunction with the September decree on the "Red Terror". Among the well-known figures, the first victims of these two combined decrees were Archpriest John Vostorgov (accused of serving the holy infant Gabriel of Bialystok, martyred by the Jews), Bishop Ephraim (Kuznetsov) of Selenginsky, priest-"anti-Semite" Lutostansky with his brother, N.A. Maklakov (former Minister of the Interior, proposed to the Tsar in December 1916 to disperse the Duma), A.N. Khvostov (leader of the right-wing faction in the 4th Duma, former Minister of the Interior), I.G. Shcheglovitov (Minister of Justice until 1915, patron of the Union of the Russian People, one of the organizers of the investigation into the "Beilis case", chairman of the State Council) and Senator S.P. Beletsky (former head of the Police Department).

Thus identifying "anti-Semitism" with counter-revolution, the Bolsheviks themselves identified their power with the Jewish one. Thus, in the secret resolution of the Bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Leninist Young Communist League "On the question of combating anti-Semitism" dated November 2, 1926, the "increasing anti-Semitism" was noted, which is used by "anti-communist organizations and elements in the struggle against the Soviet authorities." Yu. Larin (Lurie), a member of the Presidium of the Supreme Council of National Economy and the State Planning Commission, one of the authors of the project to transfer the Crimea to the Jews and "one of the initiators of the campaign against anti-Semitism (1926-1931)", devoted a whole book to this - "Jews and Anti-Semitism in the USSR". He defined "anti-Semitism as a means of camouflaged mobilization against the Soviet regime... Therefore, counteracting anti-Semitic agitation is an indispensable condition for increasing the defense capability of our country" (highlighted in the original), states Larin and insists on the application of Lenin's decree of 1918: "Set up" active anti-Semites outside the law", i.e. to shoot"... At the end of the 1920s, only in Moscow, about every ten days, there was a trial for anti-Semitism; they could be judged for the mere spoken word "Jew".

Used material from the book "To the Leader of the Third Rome" (ch. III-3: "This is how communism began"). There are also links to the sources of the quoted citations and documents.

In the territories temporarily recaptured in 1919 by the White armies, the horrendous extent of the Red Terror was documented by the commissions of inquiry. They were published and formed the basis, for example, of the well-known book by S.P. Melgunov "Red Terror in Russia 1918-1923".

Mass terror and the class struggle of the proletariat according to Lenin

Terrorist acts as a means of political struggle first began to be practiced in Russia from the mid-60s of the XIX century, when in 1866 D. Karakozov attempted to kill Alexander II. The most famous terrorists were A. Zhelyabov, S. Perovskaya, S. Khalturin, S. Kravchinsky, G. Goldenberg.

On March 1, 1887, an attempt was made on Alexander III. Among the organizers of the attempt on the life of the king was A. Ulyanov (Lenin's older brother).

From the very beginning of the 20th century, the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Bolsheviks engaged in terror. Lenin approved of these terrorist acts. On August 2, 1918, in Izvestia, signed by Lenin, a "List of persons who are supposed to erect monuments in Moscow and other cities of the RSFSR" was published. Among the names on the list are terrorists - the killers I. Kalyaev, N. Kibalchich, A. Zhelyabov, S. Khalturin, S. Perovskaya.

All terrorist acts committed by both Narodnaya Volya and Socialist-Revolutionaries before 1905 were episodic. Mass terror originates from October 1905. Its initiator and ideological leader was Lenin. It was under his leadership that the Bolsheviks carried out genocide against their own people.

Having made a state counter-revolutionary coup and seized power, Lenin set a course for the creation of a state of civilized slavery, called communism. Terror and violence committed by the Bolsheviks in the course of establishing power and building the so-called communist society, were the main means and methods of achieving their goal.

On December 7 (20), 1917, by Decree of the Council of People's Commissars No. 21, a punitive terrorist organization, the Cheka, was created in the country. "The Cheka was created, exists and works, - noted the Central Committee of the RCP (b) - only as direct organs of the party, according to its directives and under its control." Since that time, terror and violence against the general population of the country, regardless of their class and social affiliation, have been elevated to the rank of state policy. The leaders of the Cheka did not forget the words of their leader: "A good communist is at the same time a good Chekist."

The well-known researcher of Bolshevik terror Roman Gul noted: “... Dzerzhinsky raised a“ revolutionary sword ”over Russia. In terms of the improbability of the number of deaths from the communist terror, the October Fouquier-Tinville surpassed the Jacobins, and the Spanish Inquisition, and the terror of all reactions. Associating with the name Dzerzhinsky's terrible hard times in its history, Russia bled for a long time.

The so-called nationalization of banks became a predatory act of the Soviet government. The author of this ominous document was Lenin. The Bolshevik government expropriated the entire Russian population, regardless of the size of the contribution, everything clean. It did not spare anyone: neither the workers, nor the peasants, nor those who defended the fatherland with weapons in their hands. It was an open and impudent bandit action, directed against the broad strata of the Russian population.

The next step of the Soviet government was the introduction of surplus appropriation. The author of this criminal act, which led to a fratricidal civil war, was the same Lenin. On May 9, 1918, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee adopted a "Decree on granting emergency powers to the People's Commissar of Food to combat the rural bourgeoisie, who hide grain stocks and speculate with them."

The working peasantry was subjected to cruel terror: "... the owners of grain, who have surplus grain and do not take it out to stations and places of collection and dumping, are declared enemies of the people and are imprisoned for a term of at least 10 years, confiscation of all property and exile forever from the community."

It was a terror, to which the peasantry and the Cossacks responded with mass uprisings. They were brutally suppressed. These large-scale terrorist actions were led by "fiery revolutionaries":

I.V. Stalin, Ya.M. Sverdlov, L.D. Trotsky, F.E. Dzerzhinsky, M.N. Tukhachevsky, I.E. Yakir, I.P. Uborevich, M.V. Frunze, K.E. Voroshilov, S.M. Budyonny, I.I. Khodorovsky, I.T. Smilga and other Bolsheviks of the Leninist Guard.

In a letter to Lenin from Tsaritsyn, Stalin confirms: "You can be sure that we will not spare anyone ... but we will still give bread."

Simultaneously with the terror and robbery of the peasants, Lenin began to put into practice the agrarian policy he had developed. It consisted in reinserting the peasants, forcibly driving them into large collective farms. Kombeds took away from the hard-working peasants (called kulaks) 50 million hectares of land, which was about a third of the then agricultural land. The liquidation of the kulaks was one of the largest terrorist actions period of "war communism". Subsequently, it was only completed by a diligent student of Lenin - I. Stalin.

3.7 million peasants became victims of this action: they were taken out of places inhabited for centuries and left to their fate in the remote regions of Siberia and Kazakhstan. There, many tragically ended their lives.

The Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, committed the gravest crime against the Cossacks, qualified as genocide. On the basis of the Circular Letter of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) dated January 24, 1919, mass robberies and executions of Cossacks were carried out, they were expelled from their native places inhabited for centuries. The document "To all responsible comrades working in the Cossack regions", dated January 23, 1919, signed by Sverdlov, said: "It is necessary, given the experience of the year of the civil war with the Cossacks, to recognize the only right thing is the most merciless struggle against all the tops of the Cossacks by their total extermination :

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.

Sverdlov could not sign such a responsible document without coordinating it with Lenin. There is every reason to believe that the main provisions included in the Circular Letter came from Lenin.

The closest associates participated in the organization of repressive and terrorist actions against the peasantry and the Cossacks. Lenin: Stalin Kalinin, Dzerzhinsky, Sklyansky, Ordzhonikidze, Krzhizhanovsky, Lunacharsky, Krestinsky, Voroshilov, Budyonny, Frunze, Sokolnikov, Kursky, Avanesov, Sereda, Gittis, Tukhachevsky, Mekhonoshin, Rogachev, Dybenko, Krylenko, Beloborodov, Danishevsky, Bazilevich, Gerasimov , Vesnik... Hundreds of thousands of ruined human lives, crippled destinies are on their conscience.

Lenin did everything possible to wipe out the rebellious population of the Don, Kuban, and Urals from the face of the earth. He decided to resettle millions of workers and peasants from other provinces to the Don. It was a criminal act directed against an entire nation and calculated for its complete destruction.

In general, over 4 million Cossacks were repressed in the country during the years of the civil war

Lenin brutally cracked down on his political rivals. Having declared the Cadets enemies of the people, the Bolsheviks began to physically exterminate them without trial or investigation. At the end of November 1917, the Kadet Party was beheaded; thousands of its members of the Central Committee were arrested and shot. Now it was the turn of the SRs. They represented the majority in the Soviets. Lenin dissolved the Constituent Assembly, the majority of whose deputies were Socialist-Revolutionaries. He knew perfectly well that otherwise he would not be able to hold on to power. The execution of peaceful demonstrators who came out in support of the Constituent Assembly on January 5, 1918, became a cynical act of the greatest political provocation.

In the struggle against the Bolsheviks, the Socialist-Revolutionaries had a clear advantage. On July 6, 1918, the power of the Bolsheviks hung in the balance. It is not known how this struggle would have ended if the latter had not resorted to the help of hired (paid!) Latvian riflemen. After July 6, Lenin proceeds to the complete extermination of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the liquidation of their party. With no less cruelty, Lenin cracked down on the Mensheviks.

Lenin, trying to "scientifically" substantiate the use of terror by the Bolsheviks, writes: "The scientific concept of dictatorship means nothing more than a power unrestricted by anything, by no laws, not constrained by any absolutely rules, based directly on violence." And Lenin's closest ally, Trotsky, in turn, gave a clear definition to the concept "The Red Terror is a weapon used against a class doomed to perish that does not want to perish."

The head of the Cheka apparatus, M. Latsis, on the basis of the theoretical provisions of the Bolshevik leaders, develops a methodology for investigating and interrogating those arrested: “We do not wage war against individuals. We exterminate the bourgeoisie as a class. "Soviet power. The first question we must ask him is what class he belongs to, what origin, upbringing, education or profession he is. These questions must determine the fate of the accused. This is the meaning and essence of the Red Terror." This briefing by the Bolshevik executioner-commissar needs no comment.

Here are just a few facts about the activities of the Cheka. In the city prison of Yekaterinograd from August 1920 to February 1921, about 3,000 people were shot. For 11 months, about 25 thousand people were killed in the Odessa Cheka. The newspapers published the names of almost 7,000 executed from February 1920 to January 1921. In Odessa, there were 80,000 more in places of detention.

In September 1920, an uprising of the military garrison was brutally suppressed in Smolensk, during which approximately 1,200 soldiers were shot.

Sevastopolskiye Izvestia publishes a list of the first victims of terror; "1634 people were executed, including 78 women". It is reported that "Nakhimovsky Prospekt is hung with the corpses of officers, soldiers and civilians, arrested in the street and then, hastily, executed without trial." In Sevastopol and Balaklava, according to witnesses of the Cheka, up to 29 thousand people were shot. In general, 50 thousand people were shot in the Crimea. The old Genoese wells were filled with executed soldiers and officers. Many workers also became victims of the Bolshevik terror.

According to M.V. Fofanova in the Crimea, the Bolsheviks shot the wounded, sick soldiers and officers of the White Army in the Crimea right in the infirmaries, hospitals and sanatoriums. They shot and doctors, nurses and orderlies. Old men, women and even infants were shot. The city's prisons were filled with hostages. The streets were littered with the corpses of the executed, among whom were children. During the investigation, Fofanova established: in Kerch, the Bolsheviks took the captured soldiers and officers on barges to the open sea and drowned them. The victims of the Bolshevik terror in the Crimea numbered in the tens of thousands.

There was no province, county, village, where the Bolshevik executioners would not leave a bloody trail. During the years of the Soviet regime, all classes without exception became objects of persecution. social groups Russian society. But, perhaps, the most massive, catastrophic repressions fell upon those who represented the very foundation and soul of our people - the Russian peasantry.

The widespread armed uprisings of the peasants were of such magnitude that they are now called the "peasant war". In 1918 alone (according to far from complete data) there were 245 major peasant uprisings, and small peasant unrest numbered in the hundreds.

The culmination of the struggle was the uprising led by A.S. Antonov in the Tambov province in 1919-1921 and the subsequent uprisings in Western Siberia and throughout Russia (in 118 districts in total).

To suppress peasant uprisings, the regular army was used - its infantry, cavalry, artillery units, even aviation. M. Tukhachevsky was appointed responsible for the "liquidation of gangs". The institute of hostages operated everywhere, for which the elderly, women with infants and children from one to ten years old were kept in concentration camps in anticipation of their fate. Against the rebels hiding in the forests of the Tambov region, Tukhachevsky gave the order to use poisonous gases. From the Order of the Commander of the Tambov Province Troops No. 0116 dated June 12, 1921:

"I order:

The forests where the bandits hide must be cleared poisonous gases, to accurately calculate that a cloud of suffocating gases spread throughout the forest, destroying everything that was hiding in it.
The Artillery Inspector shall immediately submit to the field the required number of cylinders with poisonous gases and the necessary specialists.
To the head of the combat sections persistently and energetically carry out this order.
Report the measures taken. Commander of the troops Tukhachevsky, Chief of Staff of the troops of the General Staff Kakurin.

The war against the peasantry was marked by extreme cruelty. The losses on the part of the poorly armed peasants were enormous. The number of those killed was in the hundreds of thousands.

The above facts of the death and suffering of millions of innocent people are undoubtedly on Lenin's conscience. Dissatisfied with three years of communist rule, the sailors of Kronstadt rebelled in early March 1921. On March 8, the Izvestiya newspaper wrote: “The moral bondage created by the communists is the most vile and criminal of all: they laid hands on inner world workers, forcing them to think only in their own way, attaching workers to the machines, creating a new slavery. Life itself under the rule of the communist dictatorship has become more terrible than death:

The Soviet government drowned the Kronstadt uprising in blood. With the help of hired killers - "internationalists" (Latvians, Chinese, Bashkirs, Hungarians, etc.), 11 thousand rebels were destroyed.

The country was covered with a network of concentration camps. Only in the Oryol province in the 20s there were 5 concentration camps. Hundreds of thousands of Russian citizens passed through them. In only one camp number 1 for 4 months in 1919, 32,683 people visited. The number of concentration camps grew steadily. If in November 1919 there were only 21 of them, then in November 1920 there were already 84.

Lenin (together with Trotsky) was the organizer of the first concentration camps in Russia. In the words of A. Solzhenitsyn, Lenin can rightfully be considered the founder of the Gulag Archipelago. So, in a telegram sent on August 9, 1918 to the Penza Provincial Executive Committee, he demands "to carry out a merciless mass terror against kulaks, priests and White Guards; to lock up doubtful people in a concentration camp outside the city."

The Bolshevik government created an artificial famine in the country. For example, when there was a crop failure in many provinces of Russia in 1921, and good potato harvests in the central regions, the government did not send it to the starving provinces in order to save people's lives. It ordered to hand over the potato harvest to Glavspirt.

The Bolshevik government of Lenin during the period under review deliberately destroyed the population of Russia. In fact it was genocide

Only in 1918-1920 more than 10 million people died, and the victims of the terrible famine of 1921-1922. amounted to another five million people." In total, more than 15 million people died during the years of the civil war.

In 1921-1922, the country was engulfed by a terrible famine and a cholera epidemic. In the information report of the GPU on the Samara province of January 3, 1922, we read: "... Starvation is observed, corpses are dragged from the cemetery for food. It is observed that children are not carried to the cemetery, leaving them for food ...".

About the artificial famine, in particular in Petrograd, writes in his diary the maid of honor of the Empress A. Vyrubova: “The Bolsheviks banned the import of provisions to Petrograd, soldiers guarded at all railway stations and took away everything they brought. Markets were looted and searched; ".

A terrible famine raged in the country, millions of people died, and the Soviet government at that time exported grain abroad. On December 7, 1922, the Politburo adopts a criminal resolution: "To recognize as state necessary the export of grain in the amount of up to 50 million poods."

Regularly sending tens of millions of poods of grain to Germany and providing them with a multi-million army of hired "internationalists", the Soviet government savagely robbed the peasants, thereby deliberately passing the death sentence on many millions of Russian citizens

Here are some facts from the funds of the former Central Party Archive of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism under the Central Committee of the CPSU. In 1921, the Soviet government allocated only 125,000 "wooden" rubles for the transportation of Red Cross cargo to help the starving provinces. Meanwhile, in September of the same year, at the request of the Presidium of the Cheka, he allocated 1,800,000 rubles in gold currency for the purchase of 60 thousand sets of leather uniforms for Chekists of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) abroad.

In these famine years, the Bolshevik leaders lived in grand style. Here is the testimony of Trotsky's wife, N. Sedova: "...Red caviar was in abundance... It is not only in my memory that the first years of the revolution are colored with this unchanging caviar."

The mass repressions carried out on Lenin's orders are incomparable. Here are just some of the facts. From 1826 to 1906, that is, for 80 years of the tsarist regime, 612 people were sentenced to death by the decision of the courts. And from June 1918 to February 1919, only in the territory of 23 provinces, according to far from complete information, 5496 people were shot by the verdict of the Cheka.

Commissioner of the People's Commissariat for Food, A.K. Lenin advises Paikeys "to appoint your superiors and shoot conspirators and vacillators, without asking anyone and without allowing idiotic red tape."

In cruelty, Lenin surpassed the most notorious Jacobins. A note sent by the courier chairman of the Executive Committee of the Penza province V.V. Kuraev, Chairman of the Council of Deputies E.B. Bosch and the chairman of the Penza Provincial Party Committee A.E. Minkin on August 11, 1918, vivid evidence of what was said:

"... Comrades! The uprising of the five volosts of the kulaks must lead to merciless suppression. This is required by the interest of the entire revolution, for now the "last decisive battle" with the kulaks has been taken. An example must be given.

Hang (definitely hang so that the people can see) at least 100 notorious kulaks, rich men, bloodsuckers.
Publish their names.
Take away all their bread.
Appoint hostages - according to yesterday's telegram. Make it so that for hundreds of miles around the people see, tremble, know, shout: they are strangling and will strangle the bloodsuckers - kulaks.

Wire receipt and execution. Your Lenin.

P.S. Find better people."

The truly satanic scale of Lenin's crimes against the people of Russia does not fit in the mind and cannot be described in human language.