Back Rooi Terreur Afrikaans الإرهاب الأحمر Arabic Qırmızı terror Azerbaijani Чырвоны тэрор Byelorussian Terror Roig (Rússia) Catalan Rudý teror Czech Roter Terror German Ερυθρά Τρομοκρατία (Σοβιετική Ένωση) Greek Ruĝa teroro Esperanto Terror Rojo (Rusia) Spanish

Red Terror

This article is about the Red Terror in Russia. For other uses, see Red Terror (disambiguation).
Not to be confused with Great Terror, Red Scare, or Red Purge.
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, Soviet Ukraine, Bolshevik-occupied Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Finland
MotivePolitical repression
TargetAnti-Bolshevik groups, clergy, rival socialists, counter-revolutionaries, peasants, and dissidents
Organized byCheka
DeathsEstimate:
  • 50,000 to 200,000, or possibly more (main Western historians)
  • 1,200,000 (Vadim Erlikhman)[2]
  • 1,766,188 (Charles Saroléa)[3]
  • 2,000,000 (Sergei Volkov)[4]

The Red Terror (Russian: красный террор, romanized: krasnyy terror) was a campaign of political repression and executions in Soviet Russia and Soviet Ukraine, as well as occupied territories in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Finland, which was 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 and Trotsky 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] The decision to enact the Red Terror was also driven by the initial 'massacre of their "Red" prisoners by the office-cadres during the Moscow insurrection of October 1917', allied intervention in the Russian Civil War and the large-scale massacres of Reds during the Finnish Civil War in which 10,000 to 20,000 revolutionaries had been killed by the Finnish Whites.[7]

More broadly, the term is usually applied to Bolshevik political repression throughout the Civil War (1917–1922),[10][11][12] as distinguished from the White Terror carried out by the White Army (Russian and non-Russian groups opposed to Bolshevik rule) against their political enemies, including the Bolsheviks.

  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 Erlikhman was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Melgunov (2008), p. 171 & 570.
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference Volkov was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  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. ^ a b 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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