Red Terror during the Civil War - history in photographs. Red terror (civil war)

Photos of the victims of the Red Terror in Russia during the Civil War and their executioners.
Attention! Shock content! Not to look nervous!


A corpse found in the courtyard of the Kherson Cheka.
Head chopped off, right leg broken, body burned

Mutilated corpses of victims of the Kherson Cheka

Village headman in the Kherson province E.V. Marchenko,
tortured in the Cheka

The corpses of the tortured at one of the stations of the Kherson province.
The heads and limbs of the victims were mutilated.

The corpse of Colonel Franin, tortured in the Kherson Cheka
in Tulipov's house on Bogorodskaya street,
where was the Kherson emergency

Corpses of hostages found in the Kherson Cheka
in the basement of Tulipov's house

Captain Fedorov with signs of torture on his hands.
On the left hand is a trace of a bullet wound received during torture.
At the last minute he managed to escape from the execution.
Below are photographs of instruments of torture,
depicted by Fedorov

Skin found in the basement of the Kharkov Cheka,
torn from the hands of victims with a metal comb
and special forceps

Skin flayed from victims' limbs
in the house of Rabinovich on the street. Lomonosov in Kherson,
where the Kherson emergency was tortured

Executioner - N.M. Demyshev.
Chairman of the Executive Committee of Evpatoria,
one of the organizers of the red "St. Bartholomew's Night".
Executed by the Whites after the liberation of Evpatoria

The executioner is Kebabchants, nicknamed "bloody".
Deputy Chairman of the Evpatoria Executive Committee,
participant of the "St. Bartholomew's Night".
Executed by whites

Woman executioner - Varvara Grebennikova (Nemich).
In January 1920, she sentenced officers to death
and the "bourgeoisie" aboard the steamship "Romania".
Executed by whites

Executioners.
Participants of the Bartholomew's Night
in Evpatoria and executions on the "Romania".
Executed by whites

Executioners of the Kherson Cheka

Dora Evlinskaya, under 20 years old, female executioner,
who executed 400 officers in the Odessa Cheka with her own hands

Saenko Stepan Afanasyevich,
commandant of the concentration camp in Kharkov

Corpses of hostages shot in Kharkov prison

Kharkiv. Corpses of hostages who died under Bolshevik torture

Kharkiv. The corpses of tortured female hostages.
Second left - S. Ivanova, owner of a small shop.
Third from the left - A.I. Karolskaya, wife of a colonel.
Fourth - L. Khlopkova, landowner.
All have their breasts cut open and husked alive,
the genitals were burned and coals were found in them

Kharkiv. The body of the hostage lieutenant Bobrov,
to whom the executioners cut off the tongue, chopped off the hands
and removed the skin along the left leg

Kharkov, court of the emergency.
The corpse of the hostage I. Ponomarenko, a former telegraph operator.
The right hand is chopped off. Several deep incisions across the chest.
There are two more corpses in the background.

Corpse of hostage Ilya Sidorenko,
the owner of a fashion store in the city of Sumy.
The dead man's arms are broken, his ribs are broken,
sexual organs were cut.
Tortured in Kharkov

Station Snegirevka, near Kharkov.
The corpse of a tortured woman.
No clothing was found on the body.
Head and shoulders were cut off
(during the opening of the grave, they were never found)

Kharkiv. The corpses of the dead, dumped in a cart

Kharkiv. The corpses of those tortured in the Cheka

Yard of the Kharkiv Gubchek (Sadovaya street, 5)
with the corpses of the executed

concentration camp in Kharkov. Tortured to death

Kharkiv. Photograph of the head of Archimandrite Rodion,
Spassovsky Monastery, scalped by the Bolsheviks

Excavations of one of the mass graves
near the building of the Kharkov Cheka

Kharkiv. Excavations of a mass grave
with the victims of the red terror

Farmers I. Afanasiuk and S. Prokopovich,
scalped alive. At the neighbor, I. Afanasyuk,
on the body there are traces of burns of a hot checker

The bodies of three hostage workers from a factory on strike.
The middle one, A. Ivanenko, has burnt eyes,
cut off lips and nose. Others have their hands cut off

The corpse of an officer killed by the Reds

Bodies of four peasant hostages
(Bondarenko, Plokhikh, Levenets and Sidorchuk).
The faces of the dead are terribly cut.
The genitals were mutilated in a special savage way.
The doctors conducting the examination expressed the opinion that
that such a technique should be known only
Chinese executioners and according to the degree of pain
exceeds all human imagination

On the left is the corpse of the hostage S. Mikhailov,
grocery store clerk
apparently hacked to death with a saber.
In the middle is the body of a man hacked to death with ramrods,
with a broken lower back, teacher Petrenko.
On the right is the corpse of Agapov, with twisted
previously described genital torture

The corpse of a 17-18-year-old boy,
with a cut side and a mutilated face

Permian. Georgievskaya station.
The body of a woman.
Three fingers of the right hand are clenched for baptism

Yakov Chus, a seriously wounded Cossack,
abandoned by the retreating White Guard.
Approached red doused with gasoline
and burned alive

Siberia. Yenisei province.
Officer Ivanov, tortured to death

Siberia. Yenisei province.
The corpses of tortured victims of the Bolshevik terror.
In the Soviet encyclopedia
"Civil War and Military Intervention in the USSR" (M., 1983, p. 264)
this photograph, from a slightly different angle, is given as an example
"Victims of Kolchakism" in Siberia in 1919

Dr. Belyaev, Czech.
Brutally killed in Verkhneudinsk.
The photograph shows a severed hand
and a disfigured face

Yeniseisk. Captured Cossack officer
brutally murdered by the Reds (legs, hands and head burned)

The victim's legs were broken before death.

Odessa. Reburial of victims from mass graves,
excavated after the departure of the Bolsheviks

Pyatigorsk, 1919. Excavations of mass graves
with the corpses of hostages executed by the Bolsheviks in 1918

Pyatigorsk, 1919.
Reburial of the victims of the Bolshevik terror.
memorial service

In the USSR, it was customary to consider the White Guards as enemies of the Soviet government and depict their atrocities. In the post-perestroika era, the term “Red Terror” came into use, which is used to denote the Bolshevik policy towards the nobility, the bourgeoisie and other “alien classes”. But what about the "white terror"? Did it actually take place?

Shooting at the Kremlin

"White terror" is a rather conditional term used by modern historians to designate repressive measures directed against the Bolsheviks and their supporters.

As a rule, acts of violence were spontaneous, unorganized, but in some cases they were sanctioned by temporary military and political authorities.

The first officially recorded act of "white terror" took place on October 28, 1917. The junkers, who were liberating the Moscow Kremlin from the rebels, lined up unarmed soldiers of the 56th reserve regiment, who had gone over to the side of the Bolsheviks, at the monument to Alexander II, allegedly for the purpose of checking, and opened fire on them from rifles and machine guns. About 300 people died as a result of this action.

Kornilov's "answer"

It is believed that one of the White Guard "leaders", General L.G. Kornilov allegedly gave the order not to take prisoners, but to shoot them on the spot. But no official order in this regard has been found. Kornilovets A.R. Trushnovich subsequently said that, unlike the Bolsheviks, who declared terror by law, justifying it ideologically, Kornilov's army stood for law and order, so it avoided requisitions of property and unnecessary bloodshed. However, it also happened that circumstances forced the Kornilovites to respond with cruelty to the cruelty of their enemies.

For example, in the area of ​​​​the village of Gnilovskaya near Rostov, the Bolsheviks killed several wounded Kornilov officers and the sister of mercy who accompanied them. In the Lezhanka area, the Bolsheviks captured the Cossack patrol and buried it alive in the ground. There they ripped open the belly of the local priest and dragged him by the intestines throughout the village. Many relatives of the Kornilovites were tortured to death by the Bolsheviks, and then they began to kill the prisoners ...

From the Volga region to Siberia

In the summer of 1918, supporters of the Constituent Assembly came to power in the Volga region. The White Guards massacred many party and Soviet workers. On the territory under the control of Komuch, security structures, courts-martial were created, so-called "death barges" were used to execute Bolshevik-minded persons. In September-October, workers' uprisings in Kazan and Ivashchenkovo ​​were brutally suppressed.

In northern Russia, 38,000 people ended up in the Arkhangelsk prison on charges of Bolshevik activities. About 8 thousand prisoners were shot, more than a thousand died within the walls of the prison.

In the same 1918, about 30 thousand people became victims of the "white terror" in the territories under the control of General P.N. Krasnov. Here are the lines from the order of the commandant of the Makeevsky District dated November 10, 1918: “I forbid arresting workers, but I order them to be shot or hanged; I order all the arrested workers to be hanged on the main street and not filmed for three days.”

In November 1918, Admiral A.V. Kolchak actively pursued a policy of expulsion and execution of the Siberian Socialist-Revolutionaries. Member of the Central Committee of the Right SR Party D.F. Rakov wrote: “Omsk simply froze in horror ... The dead ... there were an infinite number, in any case, no less than 2,500 people. Entire cartloads of corpses were transported around the city, as sheep and pig carcasses are transported in winter ... "

Generala A.I. Denikin was accused of being too soft on the Bolsheviks. However, there is Order No. 7 signed by him dated August 14 (27), 1918, according to which “all persons accused of assisting or favoring the troops or authorities of the Soviet Republic in their military or other hostile actions against the Volunteer Army, as well as for intentional murder, rape, robbery, robbery, deliberate incendiary or drowning of other people's property" was ordered to be brought "to the military field courts of the military unit of the Volunteer Army, by order of the military governor."

Be that as it may, one cannot consider the “reds” as bad and the “whites” as exceptionally good, or vice versa - as you like ... Any war is, first of all, violence. A civil war is a terrible tragedy in which it is difficult to find the right and the wrong...

Ilya Ratkovsky "Chronicle of the White Terror in Russia. Repression and lynching (1917-1920)". The author analyzes in detail such a phenomenon as the "white terror" of the Civil War in Russia. The author is not an apologist for the "Reds". His previous book dealt with the Red Terror.

“White terror” is a rather generalized term that includes phenomena that took place under various “political signs”, both the white movement itself and the anti-Bolshevik resistance in general, including the right-wing socialist regimes of the “democratic counter-revolution” of the summer-autumn 1918. These regimes, such as the Samara KOMUCH, despite the predominance of the "socialist element" in the leadership, relied in their practical activities on volunteer white military formations, often even establishing themselves with the direct participation of the officer underground. Thus, the basis of the anti-Bolshevik terror, even of socialist governments, was often white terror. The difference between “right-wing socialist” and “white” regimes is all the more not fundamental, since white regimes cannot be unambiguously opposed to “people's Socialist-Revolutionary regimes” in the matter of choosing a future form of government. It should also be added that the scale of terror of the "Socialist-Revolutionary" state formations was by no means connected with their political rhetoric. So, in the Volga region during the period of the "SR" state building in the summer-autumn of 1918, at least 5 thousand people became victims of anti-Bolshevik terror.

White (anti-Bolshevik) terror during the Civil War in Russia also includes the terror of the White Finns, White Czechs, White Poles, German and other occupying troops (for example, Japan), since their actions extended to large areas of Russia and solved one problem: the establishment of anti-Bolshevik principles on controlled their territories. A number of these foreign formations were directly subordinate to the White authorities, others acted in concert with them, or with the "popular socialist regimes" or local "national regimes" of an anti-Bolshevik orientation.

Under the white terror during the Civil War, one should also understand such diverse phenomena as individual anti-Bolshevik terror and armed counter-revolutionary actions, during which lynchings of Soviet workers were recorded (in this study, they are considered more briefly than "massive white terror").

The first information about the massive White Terror is often attributed to April-June 1918. This period can be characterized as the beginning of the frontal stage of the Civil War and, therefore, as the beginning of a new round of mutual bitterness and repression. First of all, the bloody suppression of the communist revolution in Finland should be noted. If during the Civil War in Finland, military and civilian losses on both sides amounted to 25 thousand people, then after the suppression of the revolution, about 8 thousand people were shot by the White Finns and up to 90 thousand participants in the revolution ended up in prisons. These data are confirmed by modern Finnish studies. According to a well-known Finnish historian, 8,400 Red prisoners were executed by the Whites in Finland, including 364 underage girls. After the end of the Civil War, 12,500 people died from hunger and its consequences in Finnish concentration camps. A study by Marjo Liukkonen from the University of Lapland provides new details of the executions of women and children in one of the largest concentration camps in Hennala. Only women there were shot without trial 218.

Such a “white experience” in Finland is important because it preceded the Russian experience of large-scale white terror and was one of the reasons for the bitterness of the Civil War in Russia on both sides. It is also important that it was a consequence of the establishment of a new Finnish white statehood in the territories liberated from Finnish revolutionaries. The fact that these events took place in a neighboring country did not reduce their impact on the situation in Russia, especially since there were a large number of Russian citizens among those shot in Tammerfors and Vyborg. As events unfolded in Finland, the population (and, to an even greater extent, the country's leadership) could compare them with the situation in Russia and draw certain conclusions and forecasts for the development of the situation already in Russian conditions, in particular, for the possible behavior of the victorious counter-revolution. Subsequently, this cruelty during the suppression of the Finnish revolution was indicated as one of the reasons for the introduction of the Red Terror in Soviet Russia in the autumn of 1918. The experience of the “Finnish appeasement” was also considered by the white side. The influence of the factor of Finnish terror on Russian events is not limited to this. It should also be noted that in the future, from the side of the Finnish lands, numerous military formations will penetrate into the territory of Russia, asserting on the ground the practice of destroying Bolshevism in the broadest sense.

The beginning of a wave of mass "Czechoslovak repressions" also belongs to the same period. The line of the Eastern (Czechoslovak) front at the beginning of the summer of 1918 was rapidly rolling back to the west, and along with the movement of troops of the Czechoslovak corps, anti-Bolshevik terror came here. The Czechoslovak events largely duplicated the Finnish ones. In Kazan alone, during the relatively short stay of the Czech and White detachments (a little over a month), at least 1,500 people will become victims of terror. The total number of "Bolshevik victims" of the advancement of the Czechoslovak corps in the summer of 1918 was close to 5 thousand people. Thus, the uprising of the Czechoslovak corps contributed not only to the establishment of anti-Bolshevik regimes in the East of Russia, but also to the deepening (toughening) of the Civil War in general.

The well-known spring campaign of Iasi - Rostov-on-Don by Colonel M. G. Drozdovsky in 1918 was also accompanied by mass executions. Only according to documents of personal origin of the participants in the campaign, the number of Drozdovites executed during the movement was at least 700 people, moreover, these data are clearly not complete. After the connection of the Drozdovsky detachment with the Volunteer Army, the situation will not change. According to various sources, from 1300 to 2 thousand people will be shot by the Drozdovites only in Belaya Glina during the Second Kuban campaign.

No less repression was marked by the famous First Kuban ("Ice") campaign led by General L. G. Kornilov. In Lezhanka alone, at least 500 people were shot by the Kornilovites. However, even before this campaign, the repressive practice of volunteers knew the mass executions of prisoners. So, during the occupation of Rostov-on-Don at the end of 1917, volunteer detachments carried out the first mass white executions in the region. The first repressions during this period are also recorded in the practice of the Kuban detachments under the command of the then captain, and soon General V. L. Pokrovsky. The practice of these lynching military executions was transferred by the white movement to a later period.

The total number of victims of anti-Bolshevik terror in the Civil War, in our opinion, can be estimated at a figure exceeding 500 thousand people. At the same time, this figure can be increased taking into account Jewish pogroms, which often also had an anti-Bolshevik orientation, whether they were organized by representatives of the white movement or Ukrainian chieftains ...

The sources of this study were both sources of personal origin (memoirs, letters, diaries), materials of the periodical press of the period under study, and numerous publications of documentary sources of a very different nature: from court documents to diplomatic notes. The work took into account the extensive historiography of the problem - both studies of the Soviet period and emigration literature, as well as Russian studies of recent years. Numerous local history studies were an important point for this study.

The civil war was a continuation of the revolution. And revolutions do not arise at the whim of revolutionaries. They, like social earthquakes, are brewing in the bowels of society for a very long time due to the aggravation of social contradictions. And it is not given to anyone to cause them artificially or to prevent them when they are ripe. Revolutions take property from the previously dominant classes, overthrow the old "elite", deprive certain social groups of their privileges. Those who have lost power and property fiercely resist, a civil war begins.

So it was after the victory of the Great October Revolution. Initially, the resistance of the bourgeoisie and landowners, their allies to the Soviet government, was weak, since they were in the minority, and their support - the old state and the army - disappeared. The counter-revolution was able to resist the Soviets with arms in a few places, mainly in the Cossack regions, and was easily suppressed by the small armed forces of the Reds. On April 29, 1918, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee approved the Leninist program for the use of a diversified economy in the period of transition to socialism. It was the basis for a class compromise.

However, the internal counter-revolution received help from outside. The Germans supported the anti-Soviet forces in the areas occupied by German troops. In March-April 1918, military intervention in Russia by the Entente countries began. At the end of May, on the orders of the military council of the Entente, an anti-Soviet rebellion was raised by the Czechoslovak corps, which was then recognized as part of the armed forces of France, located on the Trans-Siberian Railway from Penza to Irkutsk and in Vladivostok. With the help of the Czechoslovaks, Socialist-Revolutionary governments arose in Samara, Novonikolaevsk, Izhevsk, and after the arrival of the Allied squadron - in Arkhangelsk. They began to form their armies. Volunteers in the South and White Cossacks became more active. A full-scale civil war broke out in Russia.

White apologists are silent about the goals of the Entente. And they are well known to historians: the dismemberment of Russia into parts, their transformation into colonies and semi-colonies of Western countries and Japan. W. Churchill cynically admitted in 1932: "It would be a mistake to think that ... we fought for the cause of Russians hostile to the Bolsheviks, on the contrary, the Russian White Guards fought for our cause." So in recent years, the Western imperialists have found accomplices in Yugoslavia, Iraq, the Ukraine, Georgia, setting up puppet governments there.

In a fierce civil war, the use of terror by all its participants was inevitable. But the terror was both spontaneous, when class enemies destroyed each other without instructions from above, and organized, by the Whites and the Soviet government. The Bolsheviks tried at first to avoid terror. II All-Russian Congress of Soviets abolished the death penalty Arrested enemies of the Soviets were released on parole - not to fight with the new government (for example, generals Krasnov, Marushevsky and others, who did not keep their word, were released). The Soviet government began to use the death penalty against political opponents from June 1918, when the Civil War broke out. The anarchist element manifested itself. The anarchists were temporary companions of the Bolsheviks during the overthrow of the power of the bourgeoisie. But they acted out of control. Thus, under the leadership of the anarchists, the sailors of the Black Sea Fleet destroyed about 500 officers in the Crimea in January 1918. At the same time, anti-Soviet forces also rose spontaneously. In the Cossack regions, the Cossacks, for example, began to destroy non-residents - peasants, demanding the redistribution of all lands, including Cossack ones. In May, the rebellious Orenburg Cossacks captured the village of Alexandrov Gai in the Samara province. The captured Red Army soldiers were immediately shot - 97 people. On the advice of local kulaks, massacres began against supporters of Soviet power. In total, about 800 people were killed.

When the Socialist-Revolutionary governments appeared, the state white terror began. In Samara, during the coup, about 300 people were killed by the whites. During the capture of Syzran by the Czechoslovaks and the army of Samara Komuch - 500, during the capture of Volsk - 800. The Samara government created a punitive body - the State Guard, in addition, counterintelligence of the People's Army of Komuch, Czechoslovaks and Serbs acted. All of them arbitrarily arrested not only supporters of the Soviets, but also, for the slightest suspicion of disloyalty to the whites, they shot anyone they considered necessary without trial. The prisons of the Samara government were overcrowded, so the first concentration camps in the history of Russia appeared on the territory of Komuch - in the Totsk military camps. Used to contain the arrested barges.

The SR West Siberian government unleashed terror in even more cruel forms, on whose territory officers of the old army and White Cossacks actively manifested themselves. In September 1918, the peasants of the Slavgorod district in Altai revolted. They refused to give conscripts to the Siberian army, captured Slavgorod. On September 11, the punitive detachment of Ataman Annenkov arrived in Slavgorod. On this day, the punishers captured, tortured, shot, hanged 500 people. They burned down the village of Black Dol, where the rebel headquarters was.

And how did the governments of white generals behave? I will give examples from Siberia. November 18, 1918 in Omsk was overthrown Directory - Socialist-Revolutionary government. Power passed to the creature of the British - Admiral Kolchak. At the insistence of the Entente, he was declared the Supreme Ruler of Russia. On December 3, 1919, Kolchak signed a decree on the widespread use of the death penalty for an attempt on the health and life of the Supreme Ruler, for the fight against the white regime.

After the coup, Kolchak began to arrest and destroy the Socialist-Revolutionaries they had overthrown. On December 22, a group of Bolsheviks and soldiers attacked a prison in Omsk and freed those arrested. Part of the Socialist-Revolutionaries, about 60 people, decided to return to prison, hoping that the "legitimate power" would justify them. But at night the convoy brought them to the ice of the Irtysh and shot them. In total, in connection with the events of December 22, the Kolchakites killed one and a half thousand people in Omsk, the corpses of the dead were taken out on sledges in bulk, like cattle carcasses.

There were mass arrests in the Urals and Siberia. At the end of 1918, there were 914,000 prisoners in Siberian concentration camps, and 75,000 in prisons. There were also prisons and concentration camps of other white governments. For comparison: in Soviet Russia at that time there were a little more than 42 thousand prisoners, of which 2 thousand were in concentration camps.

Kolchak started plundering the Siberian peasants, the resistance was brutally suppressed. How did the white punishers behave? “Having hung several hundred people on the gates of Kustanai, after shooting a little, we spread to the village,” said the headquarters captain of the dragoon squadron from the Kappel Frolov corps, “... the villages of Zharovka and Kargalinsk were cut into walnut, where for sympathy with Bolshevism, all the men had to be shot from 18 to 55 years old, after which let the “rooster”. Further, the captain reported on the execution of two or three dozen peasants in the village of Borovoye, in which the peasants met the punishers with bread and salt, and the burning of part of this village ...

Kolchak's atrocities turned the Siberian peasantry against themselves so much that a powerful partisan movement arose here. 150,000 partisans helped the Red Army expel Kolchak and interventionists from Siberia. Other whiteguard governments behaved just as cruelly. Terror against the supporters of the Reds and the Soviets was used by the interventionists, kulaks, greens, and nationalists.

That is why the Soviet government declared the Red Terror on September 2, 1918, in response to the White Terror. There are statistics about his victims, although they are incomplete. The Cheka and its local commissions shot 6,300 people in September-December 1918 and 2,089 in the first seven months of 1919. Anti-Soviet people do not believe this information and exaggerate it. Of course, executions were also carried out by other Soviet bodies. The White governments did not keep records of the people killed by the White Guards. Although the scale of their terror many times exceeded the size of the red terror. General Grevs, commander of the American interventionist corps in Eastern Siberia, wrote in his memoirs in 1922: “Terrible murders were committed in Eastern Siberia, but they were not committed by the Bolsheviks, as was usually thought. I will not be mistaken if for every person killed by the Bolsheviks, there were a hundred killed by anti-Bolshevik elements. This subjective view characterizes objectively the ratio of the scales of the white and red terror. It should be borne in mind that the whites had to suppress the resistance of the majority of the people, and the reds - the minorities. Finally, the Bolsheviks also showed mercy. Beginning in May 1918, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee announced amnesties for revolutionary holidays to prisoners, primarily peasants and workers involved in anti-Soviet uprisings. I have not seen reports of amnesties by white governments. The Bolsheviks won the most difficult Civil War not because they used terror, but because they were supported, in the end, by the majority of workers and peasants who did not want a return to the bourgeois system, who connected their worldly prospects with Soviet power. 2

Terror, regardless of purpose, color and level of application, is a terrible and disgusting phenomenon. However, depending on the general point of view, the assessment of this or that terror can be modified to the complete opposite. This happened in the 20th century with the "red" and "white" terrors. Being noted in the history of the Civil War in Russia, as real phenomena, the "red" and "white" terror remain the subject of comparison and dispute over which of them is more terrible.

An attempt to compare the common and peculiar aspects of the Red and White terrors makes it possible to form an attitude towards the facts of violence. This approach leads to the conclusion that the legal policy of the Soviet government and its utilitarian implementation is very similar to the practice of white terror. Differences are noted only in particular cases of the execution of the policy of terror. The revolution and the counter-revolution romanticized violence in a marvelous way, which in itself is unnatural.

All terror is terrible

In the Soviet era, much was said about the atrocities of the White Guards and the justification in connection with this "Red Terror". During the years of perestroika and the subsequent bourgeois restoration, priorities changed dramatically and now the crimes of the Bolsheviks are condemned to a greater extent than the forced reaction of the "white" sufferers for Russia. It all depends on who and in what audience appeals to well-known facts.

One way or another, terror claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people on both sides of the conflict, because terror is a way of violence and intimidation, reprisals against political rivals. Violence was a universal way to fight against the oppressors, and an effective method of the opponents of the revolution in Russia.

Targets of the Red and White Terror

Speaking of terror, it is important to know the goals for which terror is carried out. The end, of course, does not justify the means, however, in a certain context it makes it “nobler”, if such a term is applicable to terror. Terror in the Civil War turned out to be in demand by everyone.

At some point, both sides lost control over mass manifestations of terror, and the scope of repressions crossed all reasonable limits. On the part of the "Reds" (the VI Congress of Soviets - on revolutionary legality) and on the part of the "Whites" there were attempts to limit the rampant elements, but it was already impossible to stop the terror.

Origins of the Red and White Terror

It is fair to divide terror according to the type of origin:

Along the line of events, the comparison is confirmed by the repeated analogy of terrorist actions, which are confirmed by many documents that tell not only about murders, but also about mass and perverted sadism and violence against people.

The above facts are far from exhausting the huge list of atrocities committed by all participants in the civil conflict in post-revolutionary Russia. Monstrous murders in terms of the degree of sadism and violence beyond reasonable understanding accompanied both the “red” and “white” terrors.