The wikipedia article on the Cheka

[JimmyJazz]

Can someone who knows the history tell me what is true and what is bullshit in the wiki article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheka) on the Cheka?


For instance, it says:




Estimates on Cheka executions vary widely. The lowest figures are provided by Dzerzhinsky’s lieutenant Martyn Latsis, limited to RSFSR over the period 1918–1920:


For the period 1918-July 1919, covering only twenty provinces of central Russia:

1918: 6,300; 1919 (up to July): 2,089; Total: 8,389

For the whole period 1918-19:

1918: 6,185; 1919: 3,456; Total: 9,641

For the whole period 1918-20:

January-June 1918: 22; July-December 1918: more than 6,000; 1918-20: 12,733 Experts generally agree these semi-official figures are vastly understated.[9] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheka#cite_note-8) W. H. Chamberlin, for example, claims “it is simply impossible to believe that the Cheka only put to death 12,733 people in all of Russia up to the end of the civil war.”[10] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheka#cite_note-9) He provides the "reasonable and probably moderate" estimate of 50,000[4] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheka#cite_note-autogenerated1-3), while others provide estimates ranging up to 500,000.[11] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheka#cite_note-10)[12] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheka#cite_note-11) Several scholars put the number of executions at about 250,000.[13] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheka#cite_note-12)[14] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheka#cite_note-13) One difficulty is that the Cheka sometimes recorded the deaths of executed anarchists and other political dissidents as criminals, 'armed bandits', or 'armed gangsters'. Some believe it is possible more people were murdered by the Cheka than died in battle.[15] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheka#cite_note-14) Lenin himself seemed unfazed by the killings. On 14 May (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_14) 1921 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1921), the Politburo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politburo), chaired by Lenin, passed a motion "broadening the rights of the [Cheka] in relation to the use of the [death penalty]."

and:


The Cheka is reported to have practiced torture (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torture). Victims were skinned alive, scalped, "crowned" with barbed wire, impaled, crucified, hanged, stoned to death, tied to planks and pushed slowly into furnaces or tanks of boiling water, and rolled around naked in internally nail-studded barrels. Chekists poured water on naked prisoners in the winter-bound streets until they became living ice statues. Others beheaded their victims by twisting their necks until their heads could be torn off. The Chinese Cheka detachments (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_in_Russian_Revolution) stationed in Kiev (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiev) reportedly would attach an iron tube to the torso of a bound victim and insert a rat into the other end which was then closed off with wire netting. The tube was then held over a flame until the rat began gnawing through the victim's guts in an effort to escape. Denikin’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Ivanovich_Denikin) investigation discovered corpses whose lungs, throats, and mouths had been packed with earth.[17] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheka#cite_note-16)[18] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheka#cite_note-17)[19] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheka#cite_note-18) Women and children were also victims of Cheka terror.

Women would sometimes be tortured and raped before being shot. Children between the ages of 8 and 16 were imprisoned and occasionally executed.

Somebody who's registered on wikipedia should probably go through that Atrocities section and put a "citation needed" after every single form of torture claimed. Or just delete everything besides the claim about dirt in corpses' mouths, which is the only thing in the whole section that is cited (and which, btw, is not evidence of torture).

As far as refuting things in this thread, though, I'm mostly interested in the number of victims, since that section of the wiki is pretty well cited but has some extremely conflicting claims. Thanks in advance.

[Os Cangaceiros]

I think it's probably safe to say that the Cheka had it's hand in more than a few instances of torture. Most of the cases I've read about involved them beating people.

I hadn't heard about this truly sadistic shit, though. Especially that bit about the rat. I sure hope that's not true. :huh:

[ComradeOm]

AFAIK the sadistic methods of torture are pretty much accepted by modern historians. In fact I've read of more than a few (such as the infamous 'glove trick') that do not make an appearance in this article. Many such techniques were borrowed from Tsarist secret police or traditional peasant punishments

Where the article is wildly inaccurate is in the portrayal of the Cheka as some centralised organ operating under Lenin's direction and its role in suppressing political dissent

[Yehuda Stern]

I'm not sure if all of that is true, but it certainly doesn't condemn the revolution either way. The state apparatus was hardly firmly under the control of the Bolsheviks even in the relatively healthy period of the USSR (1917-1922), and it would be ridiculous to blame the Bolsheviks for every cruel act committed by the secret service. Also, we might ask ourselves if it is even correct to oppose torture by a workers' state in all cases - some of the time it might be necessary, sometimes maybe not. I don't know and the answer could be that it's always wrong, but I would not take my opposition to the practices of a capitalist state and transfer it one by one to a workers' state.

[Labor Shall Rule]

It's not everyday that you face cyclical harvest failure, combined with a blockade that kept food and medicine out, and a typhus-infected, war-torn civilian population in.

The Bolsheviks faced hell - the Entente and White Army would be willing to kill "two-thirds" of all Russians (in the words of a White Movement officer) if it meant securing a victory over the spread of Bolshevism. They were quite content with marching into villages, rallying up workers and commissars, and torturing and massacring them in the most brutal of ways. Their targets included the Jewish population of Ukraine and White Russia. It's worth noting that the White Terror came before the Red Terror.

[JimmyJazz]

I still have to wonder why there isn't a single citation in the Atrocities section if all those methods of torture are true. ComradeOm, do you know of a somewhat neutral book that confirms them?

The fact that they were committed under crazy conditions outside of the Bolsheviks' control goes without saying. The thing that prompted me to look this up is that my dad and I were having a discussion (about politics in general, not even about socialism) and he said something about good intentions can go wrong: just witness the fact that "Lenin killed millions". I didn't yell "bullshit!", cuz my dad is a pretty softspoken guy, but I did let him know that the figure is so wildly off the mark I hardly knew what to do with it. Millions died in the Russian civil war, it's true...but as far as executions, the ratio of executions to battle deaths was really that high, at least if the lower estimates like ~13,000 are true. Executions are always bad, obviously. But in the context of millions of deaths, caused mostly by the Whites and their aggression against the Bolshevik regime, I don't know how much use there is in getting worked up over the conditions of the death (in battle versus execution) of a few thousand of the casualties.

And again, at risk of sounding like an apologist for mass executions (I'm not), it's still true that the highest estimate of 500,000 victims only matches the number of people killed by our boy Suharto. And the second-highest estimate of 250,000 is roughly equal to the number of indigenous Guatemalans who were murdered after the CIA-led coup, and to the number who've died violent deaths in Iraq (by the lowest credible estimates). And the lowest estimate of 12,733 is about four times as many as Pinochet tortured to death, in a country tremendously smaller than Russia, that was not in the midst of a civil war. And as much as I don't enjoy having to resort to this kind of argument, it is true that failing to implement an international socialist system means this international capitalist system will continue--so the deaths will happen either way, but they will happen either to or maintain capitalism or to achieve socialism. The bottom line, I think, is that capitalist apologists will constantly point out that deaths in Russia, China, Cambodia and so on are "socialist deaths", whereas when they talk about Suharto or Pinochet they won't admit that these are "capitalist deaths", they'll simply treat them as an aberration, the victims of one lone, crazy dictator. But the truth is that they all had direct support from Washington, they all happened as a direct consequence of Washington's concern for open markets and free trade, and thus they are in every sense a systematic symptom of the international capitalist order.

I would still like to hear from someone who has read a book or two on the civil war and can talk about those execution victim numbers.

[ComradeOm]

ComradeOm, do you know of a somewhat neutral book that confirms them?I have Figes' A People's Tragedy on hand. Figes is far less reliable on the Civil War than he is the preceding years but I have heard of such practices before. Interestingly enough he does not venture a guess as to the Cheka's final tally sheet beyond saying that it almost certainly lies in the hundreds of thousands

Of course the whole issue with the Cheka is not the turmoil of the times but the fact that it was a largely grassroots organisation that developed erratically and independently throughout the country. This was not some monolithic organisation, as the KGB is often portrayed, and during the Civil War years the Party only had very loose control over the country branches. Even the Petrograd headquarters was semi-independent until mid-1918. So instead of Lenin passing down orders from on high you have local organisations developing (to fight counter-revolutionaries) acting relatively independently. This is where much of the regrettable nature of the Cheka comes in with its violence often being used to further/settle local feuds and drawing upon traditional peasant punishments and cruelties

None of which shoulddisguise the fact that its role was vital in securing the internal front. Many, many counter-revolutionaries were executed or imprisoned in the course of securing the revolutionary gains

[S&Y]

What if thousands died from the Cheka?

First of all there were certain conditions under which they happened which others have outlined before me.

Also I will remind you that you cannot win a revolution by wearing silk gloves .

[JimmyJazz]

Also I will remind you that you cannot win a revolution by wearing silk gloves .

It's not me that needs convincing, friend. It's the millions of people who reject socialism solely on the basis of capitalist propaganda that says socialism inevitably leads to widespread murder and government oppression.

[Wakizashi the Bolshevik]

This wiki article is complete crap.
It just gives the most cruel, disgusting and "weird" torutures in history.
Those tortures have all been used some time in history of mankind.
One capitalist moron has just searched for the most cruel torures imaginable and put them under the name "Cheka".

[Wakizashi the Bolshevik]

What if thousands died from the Cheka?

First of all there were certain conditions under which they happened which others have outlined before me.

Also I will remind you that you cannot win a revolution by wearing silk gloves .
A lot of people were actuelly killed by the Cheka: czarist police members, landlords who were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of peasant, most cruel capitalist factory owners, foreign spies and assassins, nobility members,...
All people who had committed serious crimes and deserved death.

As you said: in Revolution and war violence is necessary.

[Kwisatz Haderach]

What I want to know is why there are so many wiki articles that show obvious signs of right-wing bias. Anyone can edit wikipedia. Why aren't more leftists editing it, at least to remove the right-wing bias if not to add left-wing information?

[ComradeOm]

Also I will remind you that you cannot win a revolution by wearing silk gloves .Or sometimes any gloves at all. The 'glove trick' that I referred to above involved keeping a victim's hand in boiling water until the skin blistered and could be peeled off to produce 'human gloves'

[Yehuda Stern]

What I want to know is why there are so many wiki articles that show obvious signs of right-wing bias. Anyone can edit wikipedia. Why aren't more leftists editing it, at least to remove the right-wing bias if not to add left-wing information?




Wikipedia is funded by donations. That sort of thing usually leads to a pro-capitalist bias.

[Herman]

Obviously those numbers are off the mark. The Cheka was a necessary institution to fight counter-revolution, especially in dire conditions such as a civil war.

Is it regrettable that there were most likely innocents executed? Yes, it is. In the context though, you can't blame them for being a little overzealous. It's not just Tsarist generals who are attacking, murdering and pillaging on their way, it's also foreign capitalist powers sending troops to help the whites, and all of them surrounding revolutionary territory.

[JimmyJazz]

Obviously those numbers are off the mark.

Obviously?

[Herman]

Obviously?

I mean the numbers which are described as "500,000" or "250,000". It's more accurate to say that they were more than 10,000 and less than 100,000. Figes and the rest of his historian cronies have always been known for their anti-communism and pro-liberalism beliefs. Don't believe me? Check the end of that book: A people's Tragedy.

[TheDevil'sApprentice]

Pitor Arshinov puts Cheka executions in Ukraine pre-1920 at 200'000.

They certainly weren't a 'grass roots' organisation there.