Red Terror

Red Terror
Part of the Russian Civil War
Propaganda poster in Petrograd, 1918: "Death to the Bourgeoisie and its lapdogs – Long live the Red Terror"[1]
Native name Красный террор / Красный терроръ
Krasnyy terror
DateAugust 1918 – February 1922
Duration3–4 years
LocationSoviet Russia
MotivePolitical repression
TargetAnti-Bolshevik groups, clergy, rival socialists, counter-revolutionaries, peasants, and dissidents
Organized byCheka
DeathsEstimate:

The Red Terror (Russian: красный террор, romanizedkrasnyy terror) was a campaign of political repression and executions in Soviet Russia carried out by the Bolsheviks, chiefly through the Cheka, the Bolshevik secret police. It officially started in early September 1918 and lasted until 1922.[5][6] Arising after assassination attempts on Vladimir Lenin along with the successful assassinations of Petrograd Cheka leader Moisei Uritsky and party editor V. Volodarsky[7] in alleged retaliation for Bolshevik mass repressions, the Red Terror was modeled on the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution,[8] and sought to eliminate political dissent, opposition, and any other threat to Bolshevik power.[9]

More broadly, the term can be applied to Bolshevik political repression throughout the Civil War (1917–1922).[10][11][12].

  1. ^ The orthography used on the poster is generally in line with the 1918 Bolshevik reform except for ея, a pre-revolutionary form of её (female pronoun).
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference Lowe was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ McDaniel, James Frank (1976). Political Assassination and Mass Execution: Terrorism in Revolutionary Russia, 1878-1938. University of Michigan. p. 348.
  4. ^ Hingley, Ronald (30 May 2021). "7. The Cheka: 1917–1922". The Russian Secret Police: Muscovite, Imperial Russian and Soviet Political Security Operations 1565–1970. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-000-37135-2. By contrast, the figure of victims quoted by White Russian General Denikin for the years 1918-19 is 1,700,000, which appears to be a considerable exaggeration. W.H.Chamberlain's rough estimate of fifty thousand executed by Cheka during the Civil War must be nearer the truth.
  5. ^ Blakemore, Erin (2 September 2020). "How the Red Terror set a macabre course for the Soviet Union". National Geographic. Archived from the original on February 22, 2021. Retrieved 13 July 2021. The poet was just one of many victims of the Red Terror, a state-sponsored wave of violence that was decreed in Russia on September 5, 1918, and lasted until 1922.
  6. ^ Melgunov (1927), p. 202.
  7. ^ Liebman, Marcel (1975). Leninism under Lenin. London : J. Cape. pp. 313–314. ISBN 978-0-224-01072-6.
  8. ^ Wilde, Robert. 2019 February 20. "The Red Terror." ThoughtCo. Retrieved March 24, 2021.
  9. ^ Cite error: The named reference :0 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  10. ^ Melgunov (1925).
  11. ^ Melgunov (1927).
  12. ^ Cite error: The named reference BlackBook_chptr4 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

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