Bolsheviks & Terror

[The Grey Blur]

How much of an element was the Cheka in the consolidation of Bolshevik power? I think at times they were excessive but I would like to see some writings/sources or critsicims on this.

Thanks

[Rockfan]

I wouldn't know of any documentation but from what I've learnt they were excessive but I don't know, maybe it was deemed nessasary in a time of such tormoil. Although I don't agree that the level of violence I belive they showed was nessasary it must obviously be kept in mind that this took place almost 100 years ago and crime was, as everyone well knows, punished much harsher then.

[Morpheus]

The Guillotine At Work by GP Maximoff has some good information on this subject.

[Jacob Peters]

How much of an element was the Cheka in the consolidation of Bolshevik power?

The Cheka recorded 12,733 executions between 1918-20. During a year of heavy insurrection, there were 9,701 executions handed down. However, this retribution was not something unprovoked. Russian historian Kovalenko reported that up to July 1918, 4140 Soviet activists were murdered. A whopping 6350 were murdered in the period August-September 1918. I read in the the translated Soviet encyclopedia that hundreds of thousands of communists lost their lives in the counterrevolutionary campaigns.

Based on implausible horror stories by emigre writers like S.Melgunov concerning Kronshtadt and peasant insurrections, right-wing authors like Robert Conquest and George Leggett estimated between 140,000 to 250,000 executed or killed in insurrections. This is impossible to accept because insurrections did not take a notable toll. Only 527 sailors were killed in what was in all respects a fair fight. Overall, 1 million were killed in combat and disease between the red and white armies.

The scholars W.H Chamberlin and O.Mozokhin estimated 50,000 executed.
http://www.fsb.ru/history/read/1998/mozohin.html

Again, this is based on a misunderstanding that there were "tens of thousands" executed in the Krym. Lenin distinctly said the following which casts doubts on unverifiable claims put forth by partisan emigre writers:
We are solving far more difficult problems. For instance, there are at present 300,000 bourgeois in the Crimea. These are a source of future profiteering, espionage and every kind of aid to the capitalists. However, we are net afraid of them. We say that we shall take and distribute them, make them submit, and assimilate them.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/dec/06.htm

The White armies of Denikin, Kolchak, the Cossacks, and especially Finland's Mannerheim were far more brutal. In Finland alone between February-May 1918, a whopping 25,000 Red workers were either murdered or killed in concentration camps. Up to 100 thousand Jews were murdered in pogroms in Ukraine. Bolsheviks were killed wherever they were found like with the atrocious murder of the 26 Baku commissars which included Central Committee member Shahumyan.

For an account on the ruthless Cossack warlords in the civil war, refer to this volume by Jamie Bisher (http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0714656909&id=t8sdihXN47wC&pg=PP1&lpg=PP1&ots=1btJWTVLVh&dq=Jamie+Bisher&sig=GatIEBK_ZxQGHAbQ58JsV_3alKc)

[Dimentio]

Count von Ungern-Sternberg is certainly one of the more funny White commanders to read about.