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Oppression under Lenin and Stalin
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Oppression under Lenin and Stalin notes, including the Red Terror, Cheka, White bridages, trials and Ryutin Affair
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Oppression under the SovietsDate @November 17, 2022
Topic Opposition
Leader Lenin Stalin
Type Homework
Red Terror
- The Red Terror was a Bolshevik ordered campaign of intimidation, arrests, violence
and executions. It began in mid-1918 following an assassination attempt on Vladimir
Lenin and was carried out chiefly by the Cheka.
Cheka:
The Cheka was formed in the wake of the October 1917
revolution, as a small agency to investigate and deal with threats
to the new regime. It was to be the “sword and shield of the
revolution”, defending the new regime against its enemies
within. Its first leader was Felix Dzerzhinsky.
As opposition to the Bolshevik regime grew through 1918, so did
the size and power of the Cheka. Between 1918 and 1920, the
Cheka ballooned from a couple of hundred investigators to a
bureaucratic and paramilitary behemoth containing more than
100,000 agents.
- The Red Terror was a determined campaign that sought to eliminate opposition,
political dissent and threats to Bolshevik power.
- Cheka agents targeted any individual or group considered a threat to Bolshevik
rule or policies. Among the victims of the Red Terror were tsarists, liberals, non-
Bolshevik socialists, members of the clergy, kulaks (affluent peasants), foreigners
Oppression under the Soviets 1
, and political dissidents of all stripes.
- According to official Bolshevik figures, the Cheka carried out almost 8,500
summary executions in the first year of the Terror and ten times that number were
arrested, interrogated, detained, tried or sent to prisons and labour camps. The true
numbers of extra-legal killings were undoubtedly much higher, possibly approaching
six figures.
- August 1918 was a critical month in the formalisation and expansion of the Terror.
Infuriated by the formation of White brigades and resistance and burgeoning
uprisings among the peasants, Lenin called for a “ruthless mass terror” and a
“merciless smashing” of counter-revolutionary activity.
White Brigades:
The White armies (also known as the ‘White Guards’ or ‘Whites’)
were counter-revolutionary groups that participated in
the Russian Civil War. These White armies fought against
the Bolshevik Red Army for control of Russia. Their political and
military effectiveness was hamstrung by divided leadership,
disparate motives and inability to offer hope for the future.
- On August 9th, the Bolshevik leader issued his famous ‘hanging order‘, instructing
communists in Penza to execute 100 dissident peasants as a public deterrent.
- The first victims of the Red Terror were the Socialist-Revolutionaries, of which
Kaplan herself had been associated. Over the next few months, more than 800 SR
members were executed, while thousands more were driven into exile or detained in
labour camps.
- The Terror was soon expanded to include anyone who might pose a threat to the
Bolshevik party or its policies: former tsarists, liberals, Mensheviks, members of the
Russian Orthodox church, foreigners, anyone who dared to sell food or goods for
profit.
Trial of the SRs
- The SRs were agrarian socialists and supporters of a democratic socialist Russian
republic. The ideological heirs of the Narodniks, the SRs won a mass following
Oppression under the Soviets 2
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