Red terror. Civil War On the Red Terror Resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of 1918
September 5, 1918 is the day the decree “On 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. Robberies, torture, lynchings, executions, and rape accompanied Soviet power from the first days, although it is worth noting that this orgy of tyranny 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 of the February Revolution, a wave of violence overwhelmed the naval bases of the Baltic Fleet in Helsingfors (now Helsinki) and Kronstadt. From March 3 to March 15, 1917, 120 officers became victims of sailor lynchings in the Baltic, of whom 76 were killed (in Helsingfors - 45, in Kronstadt - 24, in Reval - 5 and Petrograd - 2). According to eyewitnesses, “The brutal beating of officers in Kronstadt was accompanied by the fact that people were covered with hay and, doused with kerosene, were burned; they put someone still alive in coffins along with 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 Wiren. Never, in any of the naval battles of the First World War, did the command staff of the Baltic Fleet suffer such serious losses as in these terrible days.
After the October Revolution, terror took on more widespread forms, since Bolshevik violence was directed not against the existing resistance, but against entire sections of society that were declared outlaws: nobles, landowners, officers, priests, kulaks, Cossacks, scientists, industrialists, etc. . P. 
Russian officer killed by communists. Irkutsk, December 1917
Sometimes the first act of the Red Terror is considered to be the murder of the leaders of the Cadet Party, deputies of the Constituent Assembly, lawyer F.F. Kokoshkin and doctor A.I. Shingarev on the night of January 6-7, 1918.
Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR Vladimir Lenin and the leadership of the Communist Party spoke out against softness in responses to the actions of counter-revolutionaries, “encouraging the energy and mass character of terror”, called “a completely 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 in St. Petersburg the workers wanted to respond to the murder of Volodarsky with mass terror and that you ... restrained it. I strongly protest! We are compromising ourselves: even in the resolutions of the Council of Deputies we threaten with mass terror, but when it comes down to it, we slow down the revolutionary initiative of the masses, which is quite correct. This is impossible! Terrorists will consider us wimps. It's arch-war time. It is necessary to encourage the energy and mass character of terror against counter-revolutionaries.
At the V All-Russian Congress of Soviets, Ya. M. Sverdlov spoke 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 Bolshevik power, Sverdlov in his report called for "mass terror", which must be carried out against the “counter-revolution” and “enemies of Soviet power” and expressed confidence that “the whole of labor Russia will react with full approval to such a measure as the execution of counter-revolutionary generals and other enemies of the working people.” The Congress officially approved this doctrine.
Back in September 1917, in his work “The Impending Catastrophe and How to Fight It,” Lenin stated that:
...it is unlikely that any revolutionary government can do without the death penalty in relation to exploiters (that is, landowners and capitalists).
The words “red terror” were first heard in Russia after August 30, 1918, when an assassination attempt took place in Petrograd on the life of the Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars, Vladimir Lenin (although terrorism has always been the only way for the left to fight for power, just remember the activities of the Socialist Revolutionary bombers). A few days later, an official message appeared that the assassination attempt was organized by the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party, and that the “leader of the world proletariat” was shot by an activist of this party, Fanny Kaplan. Under the pretext of revenge for the blood of their leader, the Bolshevik Party plunged the country into the abyss of the Red Terror.
Immediately after the assassination attempt on Lenin, the chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (VTsIK) Yakov Sverdlov signed a resolution to turn the Soviet Republic into a military camp. This is what Martin Latsis, a member of the Cheka board, wrote at that time in instructions sent to local authorities for provincial security officers: “For us there are not and cannot be the old principles of morality and “humanity” invented by the bourgeoisie for the oppression and exploitation of the “lower classes.” Everything is allowed to us, for 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 we demand are saving sacrifices, sacrifices that pave the way to the Bright Kingdom of Labor, Freedom and Truth. Blood? Let it be blood, if only it can paint the grey-white-black standard of the old robber world scarlet. For only the complete irrevocable death of this world will save us from the revival of the old jackals, those jackals with whom we end, end, end, and cannot 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 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 must extend to all those areas of public life where counter-revolution has taken root, to military life, to food work, to public education, to all positive economic organizations, to sanitation, to fires, to public communications, etc., etc. "
However, calls for terror sounded from the lips of the Bolshevik leader from the first months of his being in power, which served as the reason for attempts to eliminate this enraged maniac.
On August 8, 1918, V.I. Lenin writes to G.F. Fedorov about the need for mass terror to “establish revolutionary order.”
In Nizhny, a White Guard uprising is clearly being prepared. We must exert all our efforts, form a troika of dictators (you, Markin, etc.), immediately impose mass terror, shoot and take away hundreds of prostitutes who solder soldiers, former officers, etc.
Not a minute of delay.
It is necessary to carry out merciless mass terror against the kulaks, priests and White Guards; doubtful ones are locked up in a concentration camp outside the city.
Decree and implement the complete disarmament of the population, shoot on the spot mercilessly for any hidden rifle.
“Izvestia of Penza Gubchek” publishes the following information:
“For the murder of Comrade Egorov, a Petrograd worker sent as part of a food detachment, 152 White Guards were shot. Other, even more severe measures will be taken against those who dare in the future to encroach on the iron hand of the proletariat.”
As already mentioned, in light of the policy of suppressing the enemies of the revolution, local Cheka bodies received the broadest powers, which no other power structure had at that time. Any person on the slightest suspicion could be arrested and shot by the security officers, and no one had the right to even ask them what charge was brought against him.
The wide scope of the Bolshevik terror was 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 company understood that the only chance to retain power was to physically destroy everyone who did not agree with their policies.
The formulation of the direction of the activities of the punitive bodies of the revolutionary government, published in the newspaper Izvestia All-Russian Central Executive Committee, is quite widely known. The first chairman of the Revolutionary Military Tribunal of the RSFSR, K. Danishevsky, stated:
“Military tribunals are not and should not be guided by any legal norms. These are punitive bodies created in the process of intense revolutionary struggle.”
The largest of the first actions of the Red Terror was the execution in Petrograd of 512 representatives 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 the Cheka in the city of Petrograd over 500 hostages. According to official data from the Cheka, a total of about 800 people were shot in Petrograd during the Red Terror.
According to the research of the Italian historian G. Boffa, in response to the wounding of V.I. Lenin, about 1000 people were shot in Petrograd and Kronstadt.
In September 1918, G. Zinoviev made a corresponding statement:
You need to be like a military camp from which detachments can be sent into the village. If we do not increase our army, our bourgeoisie will slaughter us. After all, they have no second choice. We cannot live on the same planet with them. We need our own socialist militarism to overcome our enemies. We must carry with us 90 million out of a hundred people inhabiting Soviet Russia. You cannot talk to the rest - they must be destroyed.
At the same time, the Central Committee of the RCP (b) and the Cheka are developing joint instructions with the following content:
Shoot all counter-revolutionaries. Give the districts the right to shoot on their own... Take hostages... set up small concentration camps in the districts... Tonight the Presidium of the Cheka will consider the affairs of the counter-revolution and shoot all obvious counter-revolutionaries. The district Cheka should do the same. Take measures to prevent corpses from falling into unwanted hands...
The Red Terror was declared 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 Petrograd Soviet, Krasnaya Gazeta, commenting on the murder of Moisei Solomonovich Uritsky, wrote:
“Uritsky was killed. We must respond to the isolated terror of our enemies with mass terror... For the death of one of our fighters, thousands of enemies must pay with the lives of theirs.”
“... so that pity does not penetrate them, so that they do not tremble 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 our enemies in dozens, hundreds. Let there be thousands of them. Let them drown in their own blood! We will not arrange a spontaneous massacre 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 certainly not the “bourgeoisie,” had anything to do with the assassination attempt on Lenin or the murder of Uritsky - the Jewish woman Kaplan shot at Lenin from the Socialist Revolutionary Party, the killer of Uritsky is also a Jew, but from the Socialist Revolutionary Party.
The “decree on red terror” itself read:
COUNCIL OF PEOPLE'S COMMISSARS 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 in Office on the activities of this Commission, finds that in this situation, ensuring the rear through terror is a direct necessity; that in order to strengthen the activities of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for the fight against counter-revolution, profiteering and crime in office and to introduce greater planning into it, it is necessary to send there as many responsible party comrades as possible; 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 subject to execution; that it is necessary to publish the names of all those executed, as well as the reasons for applying this measure to them.
People's Commissar for Internal Affairs G. PETROVSKY
Manager of Affairs of the Council of People's Commissars Vl. BONCH-BRUEVICH
SU, No. 19, department 1, Art. 710, 09/05/18.
After his proclamation, the delighted Dzerzhinsky declared:
“The laws of September 3 and 5 finally gave us the legal rights to do what some party comrades had previously objected to, to put an end to the counter-revolutionary scum immediately, without asking anyone’s permission.”
The famous researcher of Bolshevik terror Roman Gul noted: “...Dzerzhinsky raised the “revolutionary sword” over Russia. In terms of the incredible number of deaths from communist terror, the “October Fouquier-Tinville” surpassed the Jacobins, the Spanish Inquisition, and the terror of all reactions. Having associated the terrible hard times of its history with the name of Dzerzhinsky, Russia will remain for a long time drenched in blood."
The famous security officer M.Ya. Latsis defined the principle of red terror as follows:
“We are not waging war against individuals. We are exterminating the bourgeoisie as a class. Do not look for materials and evidence during the investigation that the accused acted in deed or word against the Soviet regime. The first question we must ask him is which 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; Kievskaya - 825; Cheka 781 people, 9496 people imprisoned in concentration camps, prisons - 34334; 13,111 people were taken hostage and 86,893 people were arrested.
At the same time, in October 1918, Yu. Martov, the leader of the Menshevik Party, stated that there were “more than ten thousand” victims of Cheka repressions during the Red Terror since the beginning of September.
“in the last days of August, two barges filled with officers were sunk and their corpses were thrown out on 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 is amenable to at least some accounting, one can find evidence of the famous KGB executioners, then in the remote corners of Russia the Red Terror took uncontrollable forms. Self-proclaimed “chekushki”, consisting of former criminals, alcoholic parasites and all sorts of outcasts, committed any lawlessness, reveling in power and impunity, under the guise of “fighting the bourgeoisie”, killing everyone they personally did not like, often with the aim of taking possession of the property of the murdered person, or even simply to satisfy their own sadistic needs.
A separate topic is the attitude of the Red Army soldiers towards captured White soldiers. The Reds knocked out the shoulder straps of the white officers with nails on their shoulders, and cut out the stripes on the Cossacks’ legs with knives. During the capture of Astrakhan, for example, prisoners and dissatisfied people were drowned in whole barges in order to save ammunition. People were thrown alive into blast furnaces and burned in locomotive furnaces. It got to the point that it was considered special chic among the Reds to smear their boots with human lard... 
Entertainment for security officers
In parallel with the murders of Russian military personnel and intellectuals, the Bolsheviks carried out terror against the Russian Orthodox Church and killed clergy and believers.
On November 8, 1917, Tsarskoe Selo Archpriest Ioann Kochurov was subjected to prolonged beatings, then he was killed by being dragged along the railroad ties. In 1918, three Orthodox priests in the city of Kherson were crucified on the cross. In December 1918, Bishop Feofan (Ilmensky) of Solikamsk was publicly executed by periodically dipping into an ice hole and freezing while hanging 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. 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 Ambrose (Gudko) of Serapul was executed by tying him to the tail of a horse; in Voronezh in 1919, 160 priests were simultaneously killed, led by Archbishop Tikhon (Nikanorov), who was hanged on the Royal Doors in the church of the Mitrofanovsky Monastery. At the beginning of January 1919, among others, Bishop Platon (Kulbush) of Revel was brutally murdered.
In August 1919, when the troops of the Volunteer Army liberated vast territories of Russia from the Reds, and the investigation and publication of facts about the crimes of the Bolsheviks began, the existence of so-called “human slaughterhouses” of the provincial and district Cheka was reported in Kiev:
The entire... floor of the large garage was already covered... with several inches of blood, mixed into a terrifying mass with the brain, cranial bones, tufts of hair and other human remains.... the walls were spattered with blood, on them, next to thousands of holes from bullets, particles of brain and pieces of head skin were stuck... a gutter a quarter of a meter wide and deep and approximately 10 meters long... was filled with blood all the way to the top... Near this place of horrors in in the garden of the same house, 127 corpses of the last massacre were hastily buried superficially... all the corpses had crushed skulls, many even had their heads completely flattened... Some were completely headless, but the heads were not cut off, but... torn off... we came across another older one in the corner of the garden a grave in which there were approximately 80 corpses... corpses lay with their bellies torn open, others had no members, some were completely chopped up. Some had their eyes gouged out... their heads, faces, necks and torsos were covered with puncture wounds... Several had no tongues... There were old people, men, women and children. One woman was tied with a rope to her daughter, a girl about eight years old. Both had gunshot wounds.
In the provincial Cheka we found a chair (the same was in Kharkov) like a dentist’s, on which there were still the straps with which the victim was tied to it. The entire cement floor of the room was covered in blood, and the remains of human skin and head skin with hair stuck to the bloody chair... In the district Cheka it was the same thing, the same floor covered in blood with bones and brains, etc.... In this room, the deck was especially striking , on which the victim’s head was placed and broken with a crowbar, directly next to the block there was a hole, like a hatch, filled to the top with 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 of Kiev:
The tortured person was tied to a wall or pole; then an iron pipe several inches wide was tightly tied to it at one end... Through the other hole a rat was placed in it, the hole was immediately closed with a wire mesh and fire was brought to it. Driven into despair by the heat, the animal began to eat into the unfortunate man’s body in order to find a way out. This torture lasted for hours, sometimes until the next day, while the victim died.
Reportedly, in turn, the Kharkov Cheka under the leadership of Sayenko used scalping and “removing gloves from the hands,” while the Voronezh Cheka used naked skating in a barrel studded with nails. In Tsaritsyn and Kamyshin they “sawed the bones.” In Poltava and Kremenchug, clergy were impaled. In Ekaterinoslav, crucifixion and stoning were used; in Odessa, officers were tied with chains to boards, inserted into a firebox and fried, or torn in half by the wheels of winches, or lowered one by one into a cauldron of boiling water and into the sea. In Armavir, in turn, “mortal crowns” were used: a person’s head on the frontal bone is surrounded by a belt, the ends of which have iron screws and a nut, which, when screwed, compresses the head with the belt. In the Oryol province, freezing people by pouring cold water at a low temperature is widely used.
Information about the use of torture during interrogations penetrates the revolutionary press, since this measure, naturally, was unusual for many Bolsheviks. In particular, the newspaper Izvestia dated January 26, 1919 No. 18 publishes the article “Is it really a medieval dungeon?” with a letter from a random victim member of the RCP (b), who was tortured by the investigative commission of the Sushchevo-Mariinsky district in Moscow:
“I was arrested by accident, right in the place where... they were fabricating fake Kerenks. Before the interrogation, I sat for 10 days and experienced something impossible... Here they beat people until they lost consciousness, and then carried them unconscious straight to the cellar or refrigerator, where they continued beat 18 hours a day intermittently. It affected me so much that I almost went crazy."
On October 6, 1918, the 3rd issue of the “VChK Weekly” published an article dedicated to the “Lockhart Case”, “Why are you being almond-shaped?”, the author of which was the Chairman of the Nolinsk Cheka:
“Tell me, why didn’t you subject...Lockhart to the most refined tortures in order to obtain information, addresses, which such a goose should have a lot of? Tell me, why, instead of subjecting him to such torture, from the mere description of which a cold of horror would have seized the counter- revolutionaries, tell me why, instead, they allowed him to leave the Che.K. Enough of the blasphemy!... A dangerous scoundrel has been caught... Extract everything that is possible from him and send him to the next world."
And this despite the fact that back on September 5, 1918, N. A. Maklakov, I. G. Shcheglovitov, S. P. Beletsky, A. N. Khvostov, Ioann Vostorgov, Bishop Efrem (Kuznetsov), and many other persons were shot , who had already been in prison for a long time, and, accordingly, had nothing to do with the assassination attempt on Lenin or Lockhart’s plans.
Ioann Ioannovich Vostorgov (1867 - 1918), archpriest, Black Hundred member, martyr.
Commemorated September 4 (August 23), in the Councils of New Martyrs and Confessors of the Russian Church and Moscow Saints.
This is a very brief description of the criminal activities of the Red occupiers 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 in one article, and such a goal was not set. For those who want to get acquainted with the history of the Red Terror in more detail, I recommend website of historian Sergei Volkov , where comprehensive information is collected. But what has been said above is enough to understand that the communist regime was the bloodiest and most inhumane regime in the world.
Actually, Lenin is responsible for 2.5 million deaths in our country. These are the results of the Red Terror he sanctioned. Adding here the victims of the civil war unleashed by the Bolsheviks and the artificial famine organized to suppress peasant anti-Soviet resistance, you get completely different figures. The terror that began during Lenin’s life continued after his death - decossackization, dispossession, forced collectivization, Stalin’s purges are a continuation of the policies he began, 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 why do city streets bear his name, cursed by millions?
Everyone now knows well the methods by which the Bolsheviks suppressed peasant uprisings - a sufficient example of the use of chemical weapons against the Tambov rebels, it is known how many priests were killed by the Communists and churches were destroyed. We know about the unprecedented massacre carried out by the Bolsheviks in Crimea after the retreat of Wrangel’s Russian army from there. Murder of the royal family, genocide of the Cossacks, famine, wars...
We are obliged to give the crimes of communism an unambiguous legal and moral assessment so that this will never happen again. 
Memorial to the victims of the Red Terror in Rostov-on-Don
“The All-Russian Central Executive Committee gives a solemn warning to all the slaves of the Russian and allied bourgeoisie, warning them that for every attempt on the life of the leaders of Soviet power and the bearers of the ideas of the socialist revolution, all counter-revolutionaries will be responsible... The workers and peasants will respond with massive red terror against the bourgeoisie and its agents.” This meant the introduction of hostage system, when completely different people should be held accountable for the actions of some people. The All-Russian Central Executive Committee resolution paved the way for the adoption of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee resolution on the Red Terror on September 5.
The resolution created the foundations of 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 given the authority to take hostages, pass sentences and carry them out.
The execution of 29 counter-revolutionaries who were obviously not involved in the assassination attempts on Lenin and Uritsky was immediately announced - including the former Minister of Internal Affairs of the Russian Empire A. Khvostov, the former Minister of Justice I. Shcheglovitov and others. In the first days of the September Red Terror in Petrograd More than 500 people died. Throughout Soviet Russia, thousands of people were executed, some of whom were guilty only of belonging to “counter-revolutionary” classes and social movements - entrepreneurs, landowners, priests, officers, members of the Cadet Party, peasants taken hostage.
Resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR dated 09/05/1918 "On Red Terror"
COUNCIL OF PEOPLE'S COMMISSARS OF THE RSFSR
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 in Office on the activities of this Commission, finds that in this situation, ensuring the rear through terror is a direct necessity; that in order to strengthen the activities of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for the fight against counter-revolution, profiteering and crime in office and to introduce greater planning into it, it is necessary to send there as many responsible party comrades as possible; that it is necessary to protect the Soviet Republic from class enemies by isolating them in concentration camps, that all persons involved in White Guard organizations, conspiracies and rebellions are subject to execution; that it is necessary to publish the names of all those executed, 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 Council of People's Commissars V. BONCH - BRUEVICH
Secretary of the Sov.Nar.Com. L. FOTIEVA
The ideological inspirer of the plan to save the Royal Family was Bishop of Kamchatka NESTOR (Anisimov). St. Patriarch Tikhon himself blessed him for this good deed. Bishop Nestor's closest assistant was attorney V.S. Polyansky.
One of the main persons responsible for the operation was the captain of the Sumy Hussar Regiment, Mikhail Sergeevich LOPUKHIN (grandson of Alexei Lopukhin, a friend of M.Yu. Lermontov)
Through two officers - R.'s brothers, sent to Tobolsk in September 1917, it was possible to contact the Emperor and obtain His consent to carry out the operation. But at the same time, an indispensable condition was set: the Sovereign himself, together with the Heir, must be hidden on the territory of Russia, and the Empress and the Grand Duchesses must be taken to Japan
The plan for the liberation of the Royal Family was as follows: a group of officers led by Staff Captain K. Sokolov travels to Tobolsk to reconnaissance of the situation, establish connections with local monarchists and prepare transportation means. The second group under the command of A.E. Trubetskoy must get to the city of Troitsk to prepare everything necessary for the meeting of the Sovereign with the Heir. To the detachment of A.E. Trubetskoy included 16-year-old volunteer N.G. LERMONTOV (descendant of the great poet). A detachment led by M.S. Lopukhin, numbering 30 people, was supposed to conduct reconnaissance of the Yekaterinburg-Tyumen Troitsk-Omsk region. ...
Bishop Nestor blessed them with the icon of the Mother of God “Quiet My Sorrows,” and on the night of the same day Sokolov and the group left for Yekaterinburg. Upon arrival, they discovered that the provincial house in which the Royal Family was kept under arrest had a strong, well-armed guard of 350-400 people, and all power in the city belonged to the soviets... January 10/23, 1918 a group of six officers led by A.E. Trubetskoy left in the direction of Troitsk. On January 17/30, having arrived in Chelyabinsk, they learned that Troitsk had been captured by the Bolsheviks...
In mid-February, a telegram was received recalling everyone to Moscow, since the task turned out to be impracticable. The failure of the operation to rescue the Emperor and His Family was extremely difficult for everyone. Shortly before his death, Metropolitan Nestor said with bitterness: “We did everything we could to rescue the Emperor. Nothing worked.”
In the summer of 1918 M.S. Lopukhin and his friends were arrested and imprisoned in Butyrka prison. After the arrest of Mikhail Sergeevich, his older sister A.S. Golitsyna managed to meet with P.G. Smidovich, whose brother-in-law was once a tutor in the Lopukhin family, and gave an excellent review of Mikhail Sergeevich. P.G. Smidovich promised to bail M.S. Lopukhin, but on the condition that he gives his honest officer's word not to fight the Soviet regime. Anna Sergeevna conveyed this condition to her brother, but received the answer: “I took an oath to the Emperor and WILL BE LOYAL TO HIM TO THE END.”
August 23/September 5, 1918 M.S. Lopukhin and 41 other people were shot on the edge of the Fraternal Cemetery near the village of Vsekhsvyatskoye. Among them was a wonderful priest and theologian, Father John Vostorgov. Who blessed everyone and read the departure and main prayers during the funeral service.
In the 30s, the Brotherly Cemetery was razed and a park was laid out in its place. At the end of the 1990s, through the efforts of the “Special Cossack Detachment,” a memorial plaque made of gray granite was installed in the fence of the Church of All Saints (next to the Sokol metro station). The names of M.S. are embossed on it. Lopukhin and V.N. Belyavsky.
For us, descendants, heroism, nobility and willingness to give life for our Sovereign and Fatherland, shown by M.S. LOPUKHIN, V.N. Belyavsky, V.S. Trubetskoy, A.E. Trubetskoy, K. Sokolov, N.G. LERMONTOV, A. and D. Solov and others are a wonderful example of serving a high ideal. Eternal memory to them!
The king did not sign the abdication even in the face of the threat of the death of his children! Everyone should know about this feat of the Romanov family! The Tsar is a model for all Russian officers! "Work, brothers!"
Exactly one hundred years ago, a decree of the Council of People's Commissars declared the Red Terror. Legally, it existed for only two months, in fact - about 40 years. Subsequently, it existed until perestroika in much milder forms, such as placing dissenters (by that time they had ceased to be called counter-revolutionaries) in psychiatric hospitals or prisons.
On the issue of class terror, the Bolsheviks were guided by the Paris Commune. There, as you know, it all ended with the revolutionaries starting to take hostages and shoot them in response to the actions of the government. However, by Soviet standards they shot very few people, but this was precisely what the Bolsheviks considered their main mistake. “They didn’t shoot much.” If they had killed more, perhaps they would have remained in power.
The Bolsheviks were not going to make such mistakes, although the situation did not immediately turn into big blood. This was not due to the humanity and peace-loving nature of the Bolsheviks, but to the fact that they still could not get used to the levers of control after seizing power.
Already at the beginning of December 1917, the Bolsheviks created a specialized organization, the purpose of which was to fight counter-revolution in all forms. The Chekists, in turn, immediately raised the question of “revolutionary guillotines,” which Trotsky then promised to all opponents of the revolution.
In February, the Council of People's Commissars granted the right to extrajudicial executions to the Cheka against “counter-revolutionary agitators and enemy agents.” At the same time, de jure the death penalty did not exist in the country. It was formally restored only in June 1918. But in most cases, if they wanted to kill someone, they did not deal with legal issues - the war would write everything off.
Starting in August, the Bolsheviks de facto openly switched to class terror with all that it entailed - hostage-taking, executions, concentration camps. The bourgeoisie was declared the main counter-revolutionary class, so it was better not to appear on the street wearing glasses.
The assassination attempt on Lenin and the murder of Uritsky became only reasons to finally legitimize the practice of comprehensive terror and silence the small number of Bolsheviks (in the person of Kamenev and partly Bukharin, who protested against the Cheka, but for different reasons), who opposed mass executions and the omnipotence of the Cheka .
The Red Terror was initially declared by the head of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, Sverdlov, and confirmed by a resolution of the Council of People's Commissars three days later:
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 in Office on the activities of this Commission, finds that in this situation, ensuring the rear through terror is a direct necessity; that in order to strengthen the activities of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for the fight against counter-revolution, profiteering and crime in office and to introduce greater planning into it, it is necessary to send there as many responsible party comrades as possible; 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 subject to execution; that it is necessary to publish the names of all those executed, as well as the reasons for applying this measure to them.
Although the resolution formally dealt only with active members of White Guard organizations, in fact the terror was chaotic and its direction depended solely on the mood, as well as the likes and dislikes of the local perpetrators. Who could, on the basis of this decree, kill any person, and nothing would happen to them for it, with rare exceptions.
The Red Terror came in waves. The first is the Civil War. The second - the mid-20s - early 30s, when the surviving “formers” reached their hands, the third wave began after the murder of Kirov, its apogee was the Great Terror, when they began to bring down each other. The fourth wave began after the war, but was already localized and not as massive as in previous times. We can say that under Khrushchev the active phase ended, since people stopped being shot for politics, although they were imprisoned right up to perestroika. So, in one phase or another, the Red Terror lasted for 70 years.
Caress... the only way that is possible in dealing with a living creature. Terror cannot do anything with an animal, no matter what stage of development it is at. This is what I have asserted, am asserting, and will continue to assert. They are in vain to think that terror will help them. No, no, no, it won’t help, no matter what it is: white, red and even brown! Terror completely paralyzes the nervous system.
Sergei Nikolaevich Bulgakov
On August 30, 1918, the chairman of the Petrograd Cheka Uritsky was killed in Petrograd by the Socialist Revolutionary Kanegisser, 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 assassination attempts took place on the same day and that Kaplan was immediately destroyed without investigation, like Kanegiesser, but his Orthodox Jewish family was released from prison abroad.
5.09.1918. - The Council of People's Commissars issued a decree on the “Red Terror”. In essence, this decree was nothing new - 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 estate guilt. They declared enemies of everyone who faithfully served the previous legitimate government, worked conscientiously and got rich under the “old regime”, who had the misfortune of being born into a “non-working” family...
Hundreds of “class enemies” - tsarist officials, professors, and military personnel - were immediately shot in Petrograd. A system of hostages from the civilian population (bourgeoisie) is introduced, shot in the hundreds after each murder of a Bolshevik. This also becomes a common method of management: on February 15, 1919, the Defense Council orders “to take hostages from the peasants with the understanding that if the snow is not cleared, they will be shot”... In combination with the policy of “war communism”, predatory surplus appropriation and anti-church The Bolshevik policy of the Red Terror in the countryside led everywhere to massive peasant uprisings.
Another instrument of mass terror is increasingly being used: concentration camps. Against the background of mass executions of hostages, at first it looks soft, because Lenin applies it to the “dubious”: “Carry out merciless mass terror against the kulaks, priests and White Guards; those who are dubious will be locked up 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.” Often monasteries were set aside for camps. The most terrible was the Solovetsky concentration camp, where dozens of bishops were tortured.
These words were first 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. A few days later, an official message appeared that the assassination attempt was organized by the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party, and that the leader of the world proletariat was shot by an activist of this party, Fanny Kaplan. Under the pretext of revenge for the blood of their leader, the Bolshevik Party plunged the country into the abyss of the Red Terror.
Although no evidence of the involvement of Kaplan and the left Socialist Revolutionaries in the assassination attempt on Lenin was presented to the people, the government took full advantage of the incident at the Michelson plant to unleash an unprecedented wave of suppression of everyone who did not agree with the policies of the Soviet regime.
On September 3, 1918, Fanny Kaplan was shot without trial in the courtyard of the Moscow Kremlin. She took her secret to the grave. Yes, this woman certainly made history. After all, they wrote about it in all Soviet textbooks. There was even such a film. “Lenin in 1818”, where in one of the scenes an angry crowd of workers at Mikhelson’s plant tore apart “Lenin’s killer”. But its inglorious end serves as a good example of what can be fraught with a departure from tradition and a passion for the ideas of “universal equality and happiness.”
Immediately after the assassination attempt on Lenin, the chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (VTsIK) Yakov Sverdlov signed a resolution to turn the Soviet Republic into a military camp. This is what Martin Latsis, a member of the Cheka board, wrote at that time in instructions sent to local authorities for provincial security officers: “We are not fighting against individuals. We are exterminating the bourgeoisie as a class. Do not look for evidence during the investigation that the accused acted in deed or word against the Soviet authorities. The first question you must ask him is what origin, upbringing, education or profession he is. These questions should determine the fate of the accused. This is the meaning and essence of the Red Terror."
Resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR dated 09/05/1918 on the Red Terror
COUNCIL OF PEOPLE'S COMMISSARS OF THE RSFSR
RESOLUTION
dated September 5, 1918
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 in Office on the activities of this Commission, finds that in this situation, ensuring the rear through terror is a direct necessity; that in order to strengthen the activities of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for the fight against counter-revolution, profiteering and crime in office and to introduce greater planning into it, it is necessary to send there as many responsible party comrades as possible; that it is necessary to protect the Soviet Republic from class enemies by isolating them in concentration camps, that all persons involved in White Guard organizations, conspiracies and rebellions are subject to execution; that it is necessary to publish the names of all those executed, 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
Business manager
Council of People's Commissars
V.BONCH - BRUEVICH
In turn, the term “red terror” was then formulated by L.D. Trotsky. as “a weapon used against a class doomed to destruction that does not want to perish.” As already mentioned, in light of the policy of suppressing the enemies of the revolution, local Cheka bodies received the broadest powers, which no power structure had at that time. Any person on the slightest suspicion could be arrested and shot by the security officers, and no one had the right to even ask them what charge was brought against him. As a result, at the end of 1918, a unique justice system of its kind, the “troika,” was created in Soviet Russia and operated for some time.
Not only St. Petersburg and Moscow responded for the assassination attempt on Lenin with hundreds of murders. This wave swept throughout Soviet Russia - both in large and small cities, towns and villages. Information about these murders was rarely reported in the Bolshevik press, but in the Weekly we will find mention of these provincial executions, sometimes with a specific indication: shot for the attempt on Lenin. Let's take at least some of them.
“A criminal attempt on the life of our ideological leader, Comrade. Lenin - reports the Nizhny Novgorod Che.K. - encourages you to abandon sentimentality and with a firm hand to carry out the dictatorship of the proletariat ... “Enough words!” ... “Because of this” - the commission “shot 41 people from the enemy camp.” And then there was a list that included officers, priests, officials, a forester, a newspaper editor, a guard, etc., etc. On this day, up to 700 hostages were taken in Nizhny, just in case. "Slave. Kr. Lower Liszt explained this: “We will respond to every murder of a communist or attempted murder by shooting the hostages of the bourgeoisie, for the blood of our comrades, killed and wounded, demands revenge.”
After the October Revolution, the Bolshevik government abolished the judicial system of the Russian Empire and instead introduced revolutionary tribunals throughout the country, which acted in relation to the defendants only from class positions. For example, in Samara, the Bolshevik Vladimir Zubkov, a printing worker by profession, was elected as the first chairman of the revolutionary tribunal. At his appointment, the chairman of the Samara provincial executive committee, Valerian Kuibyshev, spoke, who in his report said that “the revolutionary court should become a weapon in the fight against speculators, thieves, robbers and persons who do not comply with the decisions of the Soviet government.” Zubkov remained in this position until April 10 of the same year, when he was transferred to another job, and Francis Venzek was approved in his place. Subsequently, during the capture of Samara by the Czechoslovak corps on June 8, 1918, Vencek was beaten to death by a crowd.
From the end of November 1918, judicial reform began in the country, when the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, by its decision, approved the “Regulations on the People's Courts of the RSFSR.” According to this document, local justice should henceforth be carried out by a judge and two people's assessors. But the most interesting thing is that the All-Russian Central Executive Committee did not cancel the activities of the revolutionary tribunals. Cases of counter-revolutionary acts and speeches, sabotage, discrediting Soviet power, banditry, murders and assassination attempts remained within their competence. robberies, robberies, forgeries, crimes in office, espionage, speculation. counterfeiting banknotes. major theft of state property and other serious crimes. And the people's courts ultimately received only criminal and administrative cases that were insignificant in their gravity.
And in this difficult situation, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, with its new decision, placed the punishing sword of revolutionary justice also in the hands of local representatives of the All-Russian Cheka. Thus, a unique situation arose in the country, which previously had no analogues in the history of world justice, when three state structures had the right to bring a citizen to justice and punish him at once: people's courts, revolutionary tribunals and divisions of the All-Russian Emergency Commission. It is clear that such a situation in the end simply could not but lead to unjustified cruelty and blatant arbitrariness of the security officers.
The use of executions.
1. All former gendarmerie officers according to 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. Anyone who has a weapon without permission, unless there are extenuating circumstances (for example, membership in a revolutionary Soviet party or workers' organization).
4. Anyone with detected false documents, if they are suspected of counter-revolutionary activities. In doubtful cases, cases should be referred to the Cheka for final consideration.
5. Exposure of criminal relations with Russian and foreign counter-revolutionaries and their organizations, both located on the territory of Soviet Russia and outside it.
6. All active members of the Socialist Revolutionary Party of the center and right. (Note: active members are considered to be members of leading organizations - all committees from central to local city and district; members of combat squads and those who have relations with them on party affairs; carrying out any assignments of combat squads; serving between individual organizations, etc.) d.).
7. All active figures in revolutionary parties (cadets, Octobrists, etc.).
8. The case of executions must be discussed in the presence of a representative of the Russian Party of Communists.
9. The execution is carried out only if there is a unanimous decision of three members of the Commission.
10. At the request of a representative of the Russian Committee of Communists or in the event of a disagreement among the members of the R.C.C., the case must be referred to the All-Russian Cheka for decision.
II. Arrest followed by imprisonment in a concentration camp.
11. All those calling and organizing political strikes and other active actions to overthrow Soviet power, unless they are shot.
12. All former officers who are suspicious according to the search data and do not have a specific occupation.
13. All famous leaders of the bourgeois and landowner counter-revolution.
14. All members of former patriotic and Black Hundred organizations.
15. All members of the Socialist-Revolutionary parties without exception. center and right, people's socialists, cadets and other counter-revolutionaries. As for the rank-and-file members of the Social Revolutionary Party of the Center and the right-wing workers, days can be released on receipt that they condemn the terrorist policies of their central institutions and their point of view on the Anglo-French landing and, in general, the agreement with Anglo-French imperialism.
16. Active members of the Menshevik Party, according to the characteristics listed in the note to paragraph 6.
Mass searches and arrests must be carried out among the bourgeoisie, the arrested bourgeoisie must be declared hostages and imprisoned in a concentration camp, where forced labor must be organized for them. In order to terrorize the bourgeoisie, the eviction of the bourgeoisie should also be used, giving the shortest possible period of time (24-36 hours) to leave...”
According to the resolution of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, the KGB leadership was not obliged to transfer the materials it collected to the court, but could independently determine the punishment for the detainee - up to and including execution on the spot. Only their immediate superior leadership had the right to control the actions of local Cheka bodies. At the same time, detainees were executed without trial and often even without investigation. Many archives contain lists of those executed during this period, which have now been partially declassified and are awaiting their researchers.
During the period of the Red Terror, the district authorities of the Soviet government had to rescue their illegally detained employees from the Cheka. For example, in the Bugulminsky district of the Samara region, the chairman of the local executive committee, Bakulin, was so concerned about the arbitrariness that was happening within the walls of the district Cheka that in mid-February 1919 he sent a telegram to Samara with a request to urgently send representatives of the provincial party committee to him. His message, in particular, said the following: “...delay may cause undesirable phenomena that could adversely affect the peace of the district.” However, the commission from Samara was still late, since literally the next day after the telegram, Bakulin himself was arrested with with the wording “due to open opposition to Cheka employees.” As a result, the chairman of the provincial executive committee, Valerian Kuibyshev, was forced to personally handle his release.
Another example from the realities of that time, which now looks tragicomic. During 1918 and early 1919, the Samara Gubernia Cheka several times arrested the head of the provincial archives bureau, Sergei Khovansky, and the provincial executive committee then demanded his release. And all the guilt of the detainee lay in Khovansky’s noble origin. He more than once caused extreme irritation of the security officers by the fact that he invariably signed all the documents he compiled at the request of the gubchek with his full title: “Prince Khovansky.”
Of course, the complete lack of control by the security officers constantly led to numerous cases of extrajudicial killings on the ground. So, in January 1919, a joint commission of the Samara Provincial Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, the Provincial Executive Committee and the Samara Provincial Chek arrived in the district center of Pugachev. The purpose of her visit was to investigate the facts of gross violations of the law in the district Cheka, which was headed by T.I. Bochkarev. It turned out that during December alone, local security officers opened 65 cases “on facts of counter-revolutionary activity” and arrested 51 people. Of these, Bochkarev independently passed extrajudicial verdicts in 26 cases, and almost all of those under investigation were immediately shot by him personally. Among others, he shot the priest Khromonogov, who allowed himself to be publicly indignant at the arbitrariness that was happening within the walls of the county emergency commission. As a result, Bochkarev was relieved of his position, but he did not bear any other responsibility.
On April 15, 1919, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee issued a Decree “On forced labor camps,” and on May 17, 1919, a Decree. In August 1919, the presence in Kyiv of the so-called “human slaughterhouses” of the provincial and district Cheka was reported. Only in February 1919, with a new decision, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee deprived the Cheka of the right to independently pass sentences on the cases it investigated: from that moment, by decision of the Council of People's Commissars, this function was transferred to the revolutionary tribunals. Thus, the period of Red Terror officially ended in Soviet Russia. However, this did not mean at all that repression and lawlessness had ceased in the RSFSR by that time.
Information about the use of torture during interrogations penetrates the revolutionary press, since this measure, naturally, was unusual for many Bolsheviks. In particular, the newspaper Izvestia dated January 26, 1919 No. 18 publishes the article “Is it really a medieval dungeon?” with a letter from a random victim of the RCP (b), who was tortured by the investigative commission of the Sushchevo-Mariinsky district in Moscow.
The largest action of the Red Terror was the execution in Petrograd of 512 representatives 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 the Cheka in the city of Petrograd over 500 hostages. According to official data from the Cheka, a total of about 800 people were shot in Petrograd during the Red Terror. According to the research of the Italian historian G. Boffa, in response to the wounding of V.I. Lenin, about 1000 counter-revolutionaries were shot in Petrograd and Kronstadt.
Formally, the Red Terror was stopped on November 6, 1918. According to some sources, during 1918 the Cheka repressed 31 thousand people, of which 6 thousand were shot. At the same time, in October 1918, Yu. Martov, the leader of the Menshevik Party, stated that there were “more than ten thousand” victims of Cheka repressions during the Red Terror since the beginning of September. However, even in 1922, V.I. Lenin declared the impossibility of ending terror and the need for its legislative regulation, as follows from his letter to the People's Commissar of Justice Kursky dated May 17, 1922: " The court must not eliminate terror; to promise this would be self-deception or deception, but to justify and legitimize it in principle, clearly, without falsehood and without embellishment. It is necessary to formulate it as broadly as possible, because only revolutionary legal consciousness and revolutionary conscience will set the conditions for application in practice, more or less broadly. With communist greetings, Lenin."
According to R. Conquest, in total, according to the verdicts of the revolutionary tribunals and extrajudicial meetings of the Cheka in 1917-1922. 140 thousand people were shot. A modern researcher of the history of the Cheka, O. B. Mozokhin, based on archival data, criticized this figure. According to him, “with all the reservations and exaggerations, the number of victims of the Cheka can be estimated at no more than 50 thousand people.” Also, based on a study of the minutes of the meetings of the Extraordinary Commissions, he notes that sentences to military detention were the exception rather than the rule and the majority of those executed were executed for ordinary crimes.
