Red Terror?

[Idealism]

Was the red terror justified? is it really "an atrocity" as the mainstream media would have me believe?

[Sasha]

yes and no, no and yes

[teenagebricks]

Terror is rarely justified, it doesn't matter if it's red, black, or green, but naturally the media are always going to make any form of terror sound a million times worse than it actually is.

[Tower of Bebel]

It was an atrocity, no doubt. Sometimes it resembled pure chaos and reflected the state of emergency that ruled the young republic. Self-appointed red guards occasionally shot everyone who opposed the soviet government one way or another. But that doesn't make it less "human". We need to understand what happened and why it happened. In the eyes of many Bolsheviks it was justified because their lives depended on its success; on the other hand its success was accompanied by the downfall of the revolution. So while from a certain angle it was justified, it shouldn't be supported uncritically. Justification is one thing, but theoreticizing over it is another thing (cf. the democracy-versus-dictatorship debate).

[STJ]

All terror does is turn people off to what you are trying to say. Look at what Nazi skinheads do with beating people up and ask yourself does that help or hurt your cause.

[bailey_187]

Considering what the White Terror did to the Finnish Socialist Workers' Republic, yes

[Killfacer]

Considering what the White Terror did to the Finnish Socialist Workers' Republic, yes

So now we base the actions of the left on how they compare the actions of the right?

[ComradeOm]

So now we base the actions of the left on how they compare the actions of the right?I doubt bailey_187 was making a moral comparison, which isn't particularly useful, but rather pointing out that 'Red Terror' is inevitably a reaction to 'White Terror' or the threat of such. I'm sure that we can all appreciate the principle of 'Get the other bastard before he gets you'

[Os Cangaceiros]

I doubt bailey_187 was making a moral comparison, which isn't particularly useful, but rather pointing out that 'Red Terror' is inevitably a reaction to 'White Terror' or the threat of such. I'm sure that we can all appreciate the principle of 'Get the other bastard before he gets you'

True, but it's important that people don't get caught up in hysteria induced by real (or imagined) threats.

The slogan that I've heard morons in the U.S. utter in regards to terrorism in the Middle East applies here: "Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out." It's the same general principle of liquidating the "opposition" before they "get you".

[BobKKKindle$]

If by "red terror" you mean the political repression of reactionary parties during the Civil War by the Cheka, then yes, it was a justified response to the threat of counter-revolution. The first thing that needs to be made clear about the Cheka is that it was not part of the Bolshevik party and was not used by the Bolsheviks as a means of destroying all political opposition and creating a one-party state - it actually originated from the military-revolutionary committee that was responsible for organizing and carrying out the October Revolution, and before it was formally created in December 1917 it already existed as a committee of VTsIK (the main legislative body of the emerging Soviet state, situated above the regional Soviets, and responsible for electing the main executive organ, Sovnarkom, of which Lenin was the elected leader) which was responsible for combating sabotage and examining those who were arrested on charges of counter-revolutionary activities.

[NecroCommie]

It is somewhat justified if my oppinion is asked. I would not try to recreate it as it is very easy to use it as a propaganda weapon against us.

If we compare white and red terror in my region (1918), here are the differences:

- White terror:
- Organized and most often calculated mass murders of all who would not agree with the white government. All who would treat reds as humans were executed without any proper trial on sight.

- Red terror:
- Mostly personla revenges, perhaps supported by the individual units. Ex maids or servants taking revenge on bosses who treted them badly = most of the time they got what was coming to them.

[ComradeR]

I'm not defending the use of terror but sometimes extreme situations require extreme measures in order to survive.

The slogan that I've heard morons in the U.S. utter in regards to terrorism in the Middle East applies here: "Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out." It's the same general principle of liquidating the "opposition" before they "get you".
I must point out the situation in civil war Russia were quite different from the current situation regarding the US and the M.E. The US is using fear to rally it's people towards it's imperialist aims while revolutionary Russia was fighting for it's very survival against a very real threat.

[Os Cangaceiros]

I'm not defending the use of terror but sometimes extreme situations require extreme measures in order to survive.

I must point out the situation in civil war Russia were quite different from the current situation regarding the US and the M.E. The US is using fear to rally it's people towards it's imperialist aims while revolutionary Russia was fighting for it's very survival against a very real threat.

I'm not saying that it's the same situation. At all. I'm just saying that you have to be careful, even in situations of real danger, not to resort to fullscale "better-safe-than-sorry" measures. This sort of thinking only benefits the deeply paranoid and deranged (a.k.a. people like Stalin, for whom loyalty meant that you were obviously hiding something).

[ComradeOm]

This sort of thinking only benefits the deeply paranoid and deranged (a.k.a. people like Stalin, for whom loyalty meant that you were obviously hiding something).Which would make sense if 'Red Terror' was ever a top-down initiative. Instead it has always been a grassroots response to revolutionary circumstances

[Revy]

Wikipedia seems to have a lot to say about it. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror)

Of course, they use as one of their primary sources, "the Black Book of Communism" :thumbdown:

[Idealism]

Wikipedia seems to have a lot to say about it. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror)

Of course, they use as one of their primary sources, "the Black Book of Communism" :thumbdown:

Not only that but in The Cheka: Lenin’s Political Police by George Leggett
He refers to Lenin as "the self-appointed Marxist Messiah" and the civil war "bitter class war of Lenin's making."
Also, The Red Terror in Russia, its other main reference, is written by a former Kadet
:thumbdown:

[Revy]

Not only that but in The Cheka: Lenin’s Political Police by George Leggett
He refers to Lenin as "the self-appointed Marxist Messiah" and the civil war "bitter class war of Lenin's making."
Also, The Red Terror in Russia, its other main reference, is written by a former Kadet
:thumbdown:



At these times, there were numerous reports that Cheka interrogators employed tortures (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torture) of "scarcely believable barbarity". Allegedly, people were tied to planks and slowly fed into furnaces; the skin was peeled off victims' hands to produce "gloves"; naked people were rolled around in barrels studded with nails; "in Kiev, cages of rats were fixed to prisoners' bodies and heated until the rats gnawed their way into the victims' intestines."[18] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror#cite_note-17)
Executions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment) took place in prison cellars or courtyards, or occasionally on the outskirts of town, during the Red Terror and Russian civil war (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_civil_war). After the condemned were stripped of their clothing and other belongings, which were shared among the Cheka executioners, they were either machine-gunned in batches or dispatched individually with a revolver. Those killed in prison were usually shot in the back of the neck as they entered the execution cellar, which became littered with corpses and soaked with blood. Victims killed outside the town were conveyed by lorry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorry), bound and gagged, to their place of execution, where they sometimes were made to dig their own graves.[19] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror#cite_note-18)
According to Edvard Radzinsky (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edvard_Radzinsky), "it became a common practice to take a husband hostage and wait for his wife to come and purchase his life with her body".[3] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror#cite_note-Radzinsky-2) The Pyatigorsk (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyatigorsk) Cheka (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheka) organized a "day of Red Terror" to execute 300 people in one day. They ordered local Communist Party organizations to draw up execution lists. According to one of the chekists (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekism), "this rather unsatisfactory method led to a great deal of private settling of old scores... In Kislovodsk (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kislovodsk), for lack of a better idea, it was decided to kill people who were in the hospital".[2] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror#cite_note-Black-1)
Members of the clergy were subjected to particularly brutal abuse. According to documents cited by the late Alexander Yakovlev (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Nikolaevich_Yakovlev), then head of the Presidential Committee for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repression, priests, monks and nuns were crucified, thrown into cauldrons of boiling tar, scalped, strangled, given Communion with melted lead and drowned in holes in the ice.[20] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror#cite_note-Yakovlev-19) An estimated 3,000 were put to death in 1918 alone.[20] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror#cite_note-Yakovlev-19)


What is this, from a Saw movie? So imaginative....

[communard resolution]

Wiki says,


From its founding, the Cheka was an important military and security arm of the Bolshevik communist government. In 1921 the Troops for the Internal Defense of the Republic (a branch of the Cheka) numbered 200,000. These troops policed labor camps, ran the Gulag system, conducted requisitions of food, liquidated political opponents (on both the right and the left), put down peasant rebellions, riots by workers, and mutinies in the Red Army, which was plagued by desertions.

Is this accurate?


Wiki says,


In an attack on twenty-six anarchist political centres, forty anarchists were killed by Cheka forces, and 500 arrested and jailed. At the direction of Lenin and Trotsky, the Cheka and Red Army state security forces (later renamed the OPGU), shot, arrested, imprisoned, and executed thousands of persons, regardless of whether or not they had actually planned rebellion against the communist government. Most of the survivors were later deported to Siberian labor camps.

Is this true?

[ComradeOm]

For what its worth, I talk a bot about the evolution of the Cheka in this thread (http://www.revleft.com/vb/red-terror-t99752/index.html?t=99752&highlight=cheka)

[Y Chwyldro Comiwnyddol Cymraeg]

No, with the exception of in defence of a workers council against attack but then that isnt terror its self defence.

Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction of all. The law of an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind. It is immoral because it seeks to annihilate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends by defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (213)
I think there are plenty of good people in America, but there are also plenty of bad people in America and the bad ones are the ones who seem to have all the power and be in these positions to block things that you and 1 need. Because this is the situation, you and I have to preserve the right to do what is necessary to bring an end to that situation, and it doesn't mean that I advocate violence, but at the same time I am not against using violence in self-defense. I don't even call it violence when it's self-defense. I call it intelligence.
Malcolm X (313)

[Black Sheep]

Bureaucracy fucked up, the General secretary fucked up,the communist party members fucked up.

Many people dead from the whites' invasion, economic difficulties, short-planned collectivisation and industrialization, many mistakes, saboteurs, etc

Not black & white.

[ComradeOm]

Bureaucracy fucked up, the General secretary fucked up,the communist party members fucked upExcept that in Russia these factors were in the future. Red Terror (not to be confused with the Great Terror) is largely spontaneous and carried out by grassroots organisations. Certainly this was the case in Russia where, despite urging from Moscow, the Red Terror was carried out by largely independent regional Chekas that, initially at least, reported to their local soviets