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Myth. On Terror During the Civil War

Myth. On Terror During the Civil War

25.09.2019

The terror carried out during the years of the Russian Civil War is usually divided into red and white. Let's start with red. (See also the articles White Terror during the Russian Civil War and Red and White Terror - Comparison.) Those interested can recommend the book by S. P. Melgunov "Red Terror", which was based on the materials of the Denikin commission investigating Bolshevik atrocities.

Terror, which has been gradually spreading since the victory of Soviet power, is openly introduced into the system immediately after the establishment of one-party rule - in the summer of 1918, along with surplus appropriation, prohibition of trade relations, combos etc. And just as the surplus was not a consequence of the famine (on the contrary, it was its cause), so the red terror was by no means a response to the white, but an integral part of the new order created Bolsheviks. He was not a means to an end, but an end in itself. In the monstrous dystopia of the Leninist state, terror was supposed to destroy those parts of the population that do not fit into the scheme drawn by the Leader and are recognized as harmful and superfluous.

It wasn't yet the terror of the Stalinist camps using slave labor. According to Lenin's original plan, all of Russia was to become such a camp, giving away free labor and receiving a ration of bread in return. People who were not suitable for such a scheme simply needed to be exterminated. The right to make plans was granted only to the party elite, and it was precisely the thinking part of the population that turned out to be superfluous. First of all, the intelligentsia and other sections of citizens who are accustomed to thinking independently, for example, the cadre workers of Tula or Izhevsk, the prosperous part of the peasantry (“ fists"). The "Red Terror" did not just massacre people - it destroyed the best. He killed the soul of the people in order to replace it with a party propaganda surrogate. Ideally, a constantly operating punitive apparatus was supposed to "shear" everything in the slightest degree rising above the obedient gray mass.

White Guard poster depicting the Red Terror

The most powerful repressive system was created during the Civil War: Cheka, people's courts, tribunals of several types, army special departments. Plus the rights to repression granted to commanders and commissars, party and Soviet representatives, food detachments and detachments, local authorities. The basis of all this complex apparatus was the Cheka. They led a centralized politics terror.

The extent of the repressions can be judged from indirect data, since detailed data are still not available. Executioner theorist Latsis in the book "Two Years of Struggle on the Home Front" he cited the number of executed 8389 people. with many stipulations.

Firstly, this number refers only to 1918 - the first half of 1919, i.e. does not take into account the summer of 1919, when many people were exterminated "in response" to Denikin's offensive and Yudenich when, when the whites approached, the hostages and those arrested were shot, drowned in barges, burned or exploded along with prisons (for example, in Kursk). The years 1920-1921, the years of the main reprisals against the defeated White Guards, members of their families and "accomplices", are not taken into account either.

Secondly, the figures given refer only to the Cheka “by way of extrajudicial reprisal”, it does not include the acts of the tribunals and other repressive bodies.

Thirdly, the number of those killed was given only for 20 central provinces of Russia - not including the front-line provinces, Ukraine, Don, Siberia, etc., where the Chekists had the most significant "volume of work."

And fourth, Latsis emphasized that these data are "far from complete." Indeed, they look understated. In Petrograd alone, in only one campaign after assassination attempt on Lenin 900 people were shot.

The Red Terror was carried out according to the instructions of the government - either in massive waves throughout the state, or selectively, in certain regions - for example, during " decossackization».

Narrative. Painting by D. Shmarin

Another feature is the reinforcement of the terror of the era by class theory. The "bourgeois" or "fist" was declared a subhuman, a kind of inferior being. Therefore, his destruction was not considered murder. As in Nazi Germany - the destruction of "racially inferior" peoples. From the "class" point of view, torture was recognized as acceptable. The question of their applicability was openly discussed in the press and resolved positively. Their range already in the Civil War was very diverse - torture by insomnia, light - car headlights in the face, salty "diet" without water, hunger, cold, beatings, flogging, cauterization with cigarettes. Several sources tell of cabinets where you could only stand up straight (sit crouched as an option) and sometimes push several people into a "single" cabinet. Savinkov and Solzhenitsyn mention a "cork cell," hermetically sealed and heated, where the prisoner suffered from lack of air, and blood oozed from the pores of the body. Moral torture was also used: placing men and women in a common cell with a single bucket, mockery, humiliation and bullying. Many hours of kneeling was practiced for arrested women from the cultural strata of society. Option - in the nude. And one of the Kiev Chekists, on the contrary, drove the “bourgeois women” into tetanus by interrogating them in the presence of naked girls who groveled before him - not prostitutes, but the same “bourgeois women” whom he had broken before.

The writer N. Teffi recognized the commissar, who terrified the entire district of Unechi, as a quiet and downtrodden woman-dishwasher, who had always volunteered to help the cook butcher chickens. "No one asked - she went with her hunting, she never missed." The portraits of Chekists - sadists, cocaine addicts, half-mad alcoholics - are not accidental either. Just such people took positions according to their inclinations. And for massacres, they tried to attract the Chinese or Latvians, since ordinary Red Army soldiers, despite the issuance of vodka and permission to profit from the clothes and shoes of the victims, often could not stand it and scattered.

If torture remained at the level of "amateur" and experiments, then the executions of the Civil War era were brought to a single methodology. Already in 1919-1920. they were carried out in the same way in Odessa, and in Kyiv, and in Siberia. The victims were stripped naked, laid face down on the floor, and shot in the back of the head. Such uniformity allows us to assume centralized guidelines, with the aim of maximum "savings" and "convenience". One cartridge per person, a guarantee against unwanted excesses at the last moment, again - it writhes less, does not cause inconvenience when falling. Only in mass cases did the form of murder differ - barges with pierced bottoms, rifle volleys or machine guns. However, even in 1919 before surrender of Kyiv, when in one fell swoop many prisoners were thrown under the volleys of the Chinese, even in the rush that reigned under execution, they did not forget to punctually undress. And during the period massacres in the Crimea, when crowds were driven under a machine gun every night, the doomed were forced to undress while still in prison, so as not to drive vehicles for things. And in winter, in the wind and frost, columns of naked men and women were driven to execution.

At the building of the Kharkov Cheka after the liberation of the city by the whites. Summer 1919

Such an order fit perfectly into the projects of the new society and was justified by the same Bolshevik dystopia, which completely spoiled the moral and moral "survivals" and left the new state only the principles of naked rationalism. Therefore, the system that destroys unnecessary people was obliged to scrupulously preserve everything that could be useful, not disdaining even dirty linen. The clothes and shoes of the executed were accounted for and entered the "asset" of the Cheka. A curious document got through an oversight into the Complete Works of Lenin, vol. 51, p. 19:

“Invoice to Vladimir Ilyich from the economic department of the IBSC for the goods sold and released to you ...”
Listed: boots - 1 pair, suit, suspenders, belt.
In total for 1 thousand 417 rubles. 75 kop."

Involuntarily, you will wonder who owned the Lenin coats and caps exhibited later in museums? Did they manage to cool down after the previous owner, when their leader pulled on himself?

Based on the materials of the book by V. Shambarov "White Guard"

the officially announced policy of the Soviet state to combat counter-revolution, speculation and crime ex officio in September-November 1918, which provided for a set of extremely cruel repressive measures outside the judicial system. In a broader sense, the Red Terror refers to the entire repressive policy of the Bolsheviks during the Civil War of 1917-1922. By definition of the chairman of the Cheka F.E. Dzerzhinsky, the main component of the Red Terror is "the intimidation, arrests and destruction of the enemies of the revolution on the basis of their class affiliation or their role in the past pre-revolutionary periods" (Interview with an employee of "Ukrrost" on May 9, 1920).

The issue of deploying terror against "enemies of the revolution", forcing civil servants to perform their duties (fighting sabotage), suppressing political opponents, etc. rose to the agenda immediately after the Bolsheviks seized power. Unable to use other methods, the new government immediately switched to a punitive policy, at the same time warning its opponents that it would intensify it if the resistance did not stop. December 2, 1917 L.D. Trotsky publicly declared: “There is nothing immoral in the fact that the proletariat is finishing off a falling class. This is his right. You are indignant ... at the mild terror that we direct against our class opponents, but know that not later than in a month this terror will take on more formidable forms, modeled on the terror of the great revolutionaries of France. Not a fortress, but a guillotine will be for our enemies.”

However, in 1918 the situation only became more complicated and constantly aggravated, resistance to the Bolsheviks grew everywhere. Decree "The socialist fatherland is in danger!" dated February 21, 1918, provided that "enemy agents, speculators, thugs, hooligans, counter-revolutionary agitators, German spies are shot at the scene of the crime." At the same time, the conflict between the Bolsheviks and the Left SRs deepened, with the latter traditionally paying great attention to terror and terrorist acts. The conflict ended in July with riots in Moscow, Yaroslavl and Simbirsk. Even before that, the Central Executive Committee established the Supreme Revolutionary Tribunal, which, by its very first decision on June 13, 1918, restored the death penalty. At the V All-Russian Congress of Soviets, which took place at the beginning of July 6, 1918, L.D. Trotsky urged the delegates to adopt a resolution: "All agents of foreign imperialism who will call for an offensive and resist the Soviet authorities with weapons in their hands, to be shot on the spot." The congress, however, limited itself to a resolution that agitators would be "punished according to the laws of war." At the same congress, speaking with a report on the activities of the Central Executive Committee, its chairman, the Bolshevik Ya.M. Sverdlov, defending the restoration of the death penalty, pointed out that even earlier (in 1917-1918) the death penalty was widely used, but without its official introduction, said: “We can point at all not to the weakening of terror in relation to all enemies of Soviet power, by no means to weaken, but, on the contrary, to the sharpest intensification of mass terror against the enemies of Soviet power ... The broadest circles of working Russia ... will react with full approval to such measures as chopping off the head, as the execution of counter-revolutionary generals and other counter-revolutionaries. Already after the end of the congress (June 26, 1918) V.I. Lenin wrote to G.E. Zinoviev: "We must encourage the energy and mass character of terror against counter-revolutionaries."

On the need for mass terror by secret order V.I. Lenin insisted constantly. For example, on August 8, 1918, he wrote to G.F. Fedorov: “In Nizhny, obviously, a White Guard uprising is being prepared. It is necessary to exert every effort, to make up a trio of dictators (You, Markin, etc.), immediately inflict mass terror, shoot and take out hundreds of prostitutes who solder soldiers, former officers, etc. ” The next day, he repeated his idea in a telegram to the Penza Gubernia Executive Committee: “It is necessary to carry out a merciless mass terror against the kulaks, priests and White Guards; doubtful ones to be locked up in a concentration camp outside the city.”

Official Red Terror

The events of August 30, 1918 became the immediate reason for the official announcement of the Red Terror in Soviet Russia. On this day, the chairman of the Petrograd Cheka, M.S. Uritsky was killed by a member of the neo-populist Party of People's Socialists L.I. Kannegiser, and Moscow V.I. Lenin was wounded by a shot from a revolver, according to the official version, a member of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party F.E. Kaplan. In the evening of the same day, Ya.M. Sverdlov signed the Appeal of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee to all Soviets, which stated: "The working class will respond to attempts against its leaders with even greater rallying of its forces, will respond with merciless mass terror against all enemies of the Revolution." On September 2, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee adopted a Resolution on the Red Terror, where the same positions were repeated: "The workers and peasants will respond to the white terror of the enemies of the workers' and peasants' power with massive red terror against the bourgeoisie and its agents."

The official document, in accordance with which the Red Terror was declared in Soviet Russia, was the Decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR of September 5, 1918, which read:

“The Council of People’s Commissars, having heard the report of the Chairman of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution, Profiteering and Crime ex officio on the activities of this Commission, finds that in this situation, providing rear services through terror is a direct necessity; that in order to strengthen the activities of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution, Profiteering and Crime ex officio and to introduce greater planning into it, it is necessary to send there the largest possible number of responsible party comrades; that it is necessary to secure the Soviet Republic from class enemies by isolating them in concentration camps; that all persons connected with the White Guard organizations, conspiracies and rebellions are subject to execution; that it is necessary to publish the names of all those who were shot, as well as the reasons for applying this measure to them ”(Code of Laws. No. 19. Section 1. Art. 710, 05.09.18). The resolution was signed by People's Commissar of Justice D.I. Kursky, People's Commissar for Internal Affairs G.I. Petrovsky and manager of affairs of the SNK V.D. Bonch-Bruevich.

In development of the decisions of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars, a whole series of instructions and regulatory instructions of the All-Russian Cheka were issued for their concrete implementation. One of the instructions indicated that execution should be used from former gendarmerie and police officers, up to active members of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party of the Center and right and "revolutionary parties (Kadets, Octobrists, etc.)". Including all suspicious "according to the data of searches and not having certain occupations" former officers, all members of "former patriotic and Black Hundred organizations", etc. were subject to imprisonment in a concentration camp.

In the Weekly of the Cheka, published on November 1, 1918, one of its leaders, M.I. Latsis described the Red Terror system as follows: “We are no longer fighting against individuals, we are destroying the bourgeoisie as a class. Do not look in the case for accusatory evidence about whether he rebelled against the Soviet with weapons or words. Your first duty is to ask him what class he belongs to, what is his origin, what is his education and what is his profession. These questions should decide the fate of the accused. This is the meaning and essence of the Red Terror.”

After the adoption of the resolution, a wave of mass executions swept across the country. In the first days of September, 512 people were shot in Petrograd - former officials, officers, professors, etc. (in total, as part of the official red terror in Petrograd, about 800 people were executed).

The most important component of the red terror was the factor of intimidation, not punishment, which was served, incl. executions of hostages, who often had nothing to do with the events for which they were shot. So, for example, in response to the execution by the commander of the 11th Red Army on October 21, 1918 in Pyatigorsk, I.L. Sorokin, a group of leaders of the Central Executive Committee of the North Caucasian Soviet Republic and the regional committee of the RCP (b), in the first days of November, 106 hostages were shot there, incl. generals and senior officials of the Russian Empire.

Formally, the provision on the Red Terror was in effect for two months and its regime was terminated by the proposal of L.B. Kamenev by the Decree of the VI All-Russian Congress of Soviets of November 6, 1918 "On Amnesty". The resolution itself did not mention the term "Red Terror", but the release of some of the hostages and prisoners in itself was contrary to the spirit of the Decree of the Council of People's Commissars "On the Red Terror".

Mass terror

The suppression of counter-revolution, "class enemies", political opponents - such as imprisonment in concentration camps, hostage, executions both in court and out of court, in Soviet Russia began earlier and ended later than the official operation of the Red Terror regime and actually acted throughout the entire period of the Civil War. war. Moreover, from the very beginning, the bodies of Soviet justice were focused not on sentencing for acts in a legal manner, but on mass terror. Thus, the chairman of the Revolutionary Military Tribunal of the RSFSR in 1918-1919. K.Kh. Danishevsky wrote: “Military tribunals are not and should not be guided by any legal norms. These are punishing bodies created in the course of the most intense revolutionary struggle.

The leadership of the repressions and punitive policy of the Bolshevik government was carried out by the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution, Profiteering and Crime ex officio (VChK), incl. and September-October 1918. Already in December 1917, the Cheka, in order to fight the counter-revolution, received the right to arrest and confiscate, evict criminal elements, deprive food cards, publish lists of enemies of the people, etc.

The leaders of the Soviet state themselves were aware that the amnesty of November 1918 by no means meant the end of the Red Terror. So, on May 17, 1922, V.I. Lenin wrote to the People's Commissar of Justice D.I. Kursky that “The Court must not eliminate terror; to promise this would be self-deception or deceit, but to substantiate and legitimize it ... ".

The number of victims of the Red Terror is unknown. Thus, the commission operating in the Armed Forces of the South of Russia determined the number of deaths from the Red Terror at more than 1.7 million people. At the same time, M.I. Latsis in his book (1920) indicated the number of victims in 1918 and for 7 months of 1919 - 8389 people shot (as well as more than 13 thousand taken hostage, about 87 thousand arrested, more than 9 thousand prisoners in concentration camps and 34 thousand - to prisons); later Latsis pointed out that in 1918, according to the decision of the Cheka, 6300 people were shot, and in 1919 - 3456. Modern researcher O.B. Mozokhin, referring to the documents of the Cheka, indicates the figure "no more than 50 thousand people." However, most often the question is what the researchers mean by the term "victims" and what period is attributed to the Red Terror.

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 premeditated murder, rape, robbery, robbery, deliberate incendiary or drowning of other people's property" was prescribed 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...

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, and 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

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Introduction

One of the biggest dramas of the 20th century is the civil war in Russia. This 4-year armed class struggle between various groups of the population, with the active intervention of foreign interventionists, took place in stages, took various forms, including uprisings, rebellions, large-scale military operations with the participation of regular armies, and the actions of armed detachments in the rear of existing governments and state formations. The war was fought on the fronts, the total length of which reached 8 thousand km.

The victory of the October Revolution of 1917 divided the Russian society into three major forces, with different attitudes towards the new government. The Soviet government was actively supported by most of the industrial and rural proletariat, the urban and rural poor (small artisans, trade employees, etc.), some of the officers and intelligentsia.

Large-scale industry and the financial bourgeoisie, the landowners, most of the officers, the ranks of the former police and the bourgeoisie, and part of the highly qualified intelligentsia were actively opposed.

The most numerous group is the vacillating part, which often simply passively observes the events, but is continuously drawn into the class struggle by the active actions of the first two forces. These are the urban and rural petty bourgeoisie, the peasantry, the proletarian strata who wanted "civil peace", part of the officers and a significant number of intellectuals.

At present, we are increasingly looking back, looking for analogies in past tenses. Now, when in our country there has been a sharp division of society into the poor and the rich, and the majority of the poor in society, we recall the events of the early twentieth century. Then society was in a similar situation and the authorities also neglected their poor people, and cherished and cherished only crooks and thieves close to her. How it ended we know very well - three revolutions and a civil war. That is why the events of those years are so close to us now.

The purpose of this essay is to highlight the main events of the civil war, as well as to try to identify and consider the causes of terror observed during the civil war.

1. Civil war. The course of hostilities

In fact, the beginning of the Civil War in Russia was the armed seizure of power by the Bolsheviks in Petrograd on the night of October 25-26 (according to the new style - from November 7 to 8) 1917 and subsequent battles in Moscow between supporters and opponents of the Provisional Government.

The most serious armed opposition to the Soviet regime was the Volunteer Army. It was formed by the former chief of staff of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, General Alekseev, from the cadres of the Alekseevskaya organization created by him on November 15, 1917 in Novocherkassk - officers, cadets, students, high school students, pupils of cadet corps and soldiers of shock units. Alekseev became the supreme leader of the created army, and Lavr Kornilov became the commander. The formation of the army took place on the territory of the region of the Don Cossacks with the support of the Don ataman General Alexei Kaledin, who on November 20 refused to recognize Soviet power and proclaimed the temporary independence of the Don "until the formation of a nationwide, popularly recognized authority." * * White generals. Rostov-on-Don, 1998. S. 56.

On January 9, 1918, on behalf of the Volunteer Army, an appeal was published in which the volunteers pledged to stand guard over "civil freedom", "... under the conditions of which the owner of the Russian land, its people, will reveal their sovereign will through the freely elected Constituent Assembly" * The slogan of the Constituent Assembly was merely a propaganda device for the leaders of the Volunteer Army in order to win over the peasants, the intelligentsia and part of the workers.

On December 17, 1917, Kaledin's Cossacks, with the support of volunteers, put down a pro-Bolshevik uprising in Rostov raised by local workers and soldiers. Meanwhile, in the north of the Don region, Bolshevik detachments, sent from Russia and receiving the support of a significant part of the front-line Cossacks, became more active. The armies of Kaledin and Kornilov were blocked by the superior forces of the Bolshevik troops. On January 24, 1918, the congress of Cossack front-line soldiers declared Kaledin's government deposed.

The Volunteer Army began to defend the area of Taganrog and Rostov, but it could not stop the advance of the Reds. On February 22, the Volunteer Army left Rostov and moved to the Kuban, on its famous "ice campaign". It consisted of about 3.7 thousand people, including 2,356 officers and generals. On February 12, the Red Cossacks occupied the Don capital of Novocherkassk, arresting and executing Kaledin's successor, General Anatoly Nazarov.

After the entry of German troops into the Ukraine, a corps of Czechoslovak prisoners of war (about 45,000 people), formed by the tsarist government, retreated from there to Russia. On March 26, 1918, the Council of People's Commissars allowed its evacuation through the Far East to France "on condition that the bulk of the weapons were handed over at specially designated points." * By mid-May, Czechoslovak echelons were stretched along the railway from Penza to Vladivostok. Meanwhile, Vladivostok was occupied by Japanese troops, and the movement of trains to Vladivostok stalled. As early as May 2, the Supreme Soviet of the Entente decided "to try to use the Czechoslovak corps to create a new Eastern Front against the Austro-German troops, and, if necessary, against the Bolsheviks." * * Shevotsukov PA Pages of the history of the civil war. M., 1992. S. 67.

The head of the military commissariat, L. Trotsky, ordered the disarmament of the corps. On May 20, the command and political leadership of the corps - the Czechoslovak National Council - decided not to hand over their weapons. An attempt to disarm the corps caused an uprising: the Czechs feared that they would immediately be handed over unarmed to the Central Powers. The small Red Army detachments and garrisons were defeated by well-organized and trained units of the corps. On May 25, echelons set out in Siberia, where they were led by General R. Gaida. On May 26, the Czechoslovak units in the Urals rebelled under the command of General S. Voitsekhovsky, and the uprising in the Volga region on May 28 was led by General S. Chechek. During June and July, Czechoslovak troops, together with the Socialist-Revolutionary detachments, cleared these regions from Red Army units.

On June 8, in Samara, after the city was occupied by the Czechs, the Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly (Komuch), headed by the Socialist-Revolutionary V. Volsky, emerged from the underground, declaring itself "temporary power" in the Samara province and other territories liberated from the Bolsheviks. Komuch "began to form his own People's Army under the red flag from those dissatisfied with the Soviets." * At the same time, he tried to ensure the observance of basic democratic freedoms and the implementation of the program goals of the socialist parties, such as establishing an 8-hour working day. Initially, the People's Army, thanks to the Czechoslovak units, achieved significant success, on August 6, capturing Kazan, where it got part of Russia's gold reserves evacuated here as booty. But as discipline increased and the military experience of the Red Army units increased, the People's Army began to suffer defeat after defeat. On September 10, the Reds occupied Kazan, on the 29th - Simbirsk.

Under the influence of these failures of the anti-Bolshevik movement in the ranks of officers, more and more people began to talk about the establishment of a dictatorship. On September 23, the Ufa Directory was created to lead all the anti-Soviet forces in the East, headed by the Social Revolutionary N. Avksentiev. Komuch renounced his claims to supreme power and became known as the Congress of Members of the Constituent Assembly. In October, the Directory moved to Omsk, where on November 18, with the support of officers and Cossacks, Admiral Kolchak overthrew it. Avksentiev and some members of the Directory were sent abroad. Others were arrested and after the unsuccessful uprising of the Omsk workers against Kolchak, they were shot. A number of former members of Komuch, including Volsky, having gone underground, decided to stop the armed struggle against the Soviet regime.

On August 2, 1918, Soviet power was overthrown in the North of Russia with the support of the Anglo-French troops, who landed in Murmansk and Arkhangelsk, supposedly to protect these ports from the German threat and to prevent the Central Powers from accumulating military materials.

The government of the Northern Region, headed by the famous Socialist-Revolutionary Nikolai Tchaikovsky, came to power here. Here, the number of interventionist troops, "mostly British, amounted to about 25 thousand people." * The number of Russian anti-Bolshevik troops was several times smaller. The British command did not undertake large-scale offensive operations, limiting itself to attempts to advance towards the Czechoslovak units advancing from the east.

September 5, 1918 becomes a significant day in the history of the Civil War. On this day, the Council of People's Commissars officially announces the beginning of the "Red Terror". This was caused by the assassination on August 30 in Petrograd of the head of the local Cheka, M. Uritsky, and the unsuccessful attempt on the same day in Moscow on the life of Lenin. Both terrorist attacks were committed by the Socialist-Revolutionaries - L. Kannegisser and F. Kaplan. In response, the Cheka declared that "from now on, hostages from the wealthy classes of the population, officers, intellectuals and all those suspected of counter-revolutionary activities will be shot for attempting to assassinate representatives of the Soviet power."* In Petrograd alone, after shooting at Uritsky and Lenin, 500 hostages were shot.

Impressive success in the second half of 1918 was achieved by Denikin. His Volunteer Army occupied almost the entire North Caucasus with Ekaterinodar, Stavropol and Novorossiysk, defeating the 150,000-strong army of the Reds. The success of the volunteers was facilitated by "mass uprisings of the Kuban Cossacks against Soviet power, caused by arbitrary requisitions of fodder and food and violence against Cossacks perpetrated by Red Army soldiers from among non-residents." * * Sokolov B.V. One hundred great wars. M., 2002. S. 401.

In the ranks of the white movement, a disagreement began in the organization of troops in the west and east. The former commander of the Izhevsk division, General Viktor Molchanov, who lived out his life in America, already in 1972, saw him in the following: "Most of the officers of the General Staff ended up in the south of Russia, since there was an uprising earlier than other places; intelligent forces ended up there too , as in the nearest point to the capitals and vital centers of Russia.If in the south of Russia there were Kornilovites, Markovites, Drozdovites (regiments, which initially consisted mainly of officers), then there were no such units as Izhevsk, Votkintsy, Mikhailovtsy, consisting exclusively of workers , and there were also no such as the Ufa Bashkirs and Tatars. "* In the east of the country, those officers who were transferred from European Russia for any faults traditionally served, which could not but affect the quality of Kolchak's army. In addition, atamanism flourished here. The chieftain of the Transbaikalian Cossacks G. Semenov, the chieftain of the Semirechensk Cossacks B. Annenkov, the chieftain of the Ussuri Cossacks I. Kalmykov and others almost did not obey orders from Omsk, and their detachments only restored the population against the whites by looting and violence.

In general, in 1918, the anti-Bolshevik forces on all fronts acted almost without any connection with each other. The peak of the successes of the White armies in the south came in autumn, when the Czechoslovaks and Komuch's troops had already been defeated in the Volga region. And in the south, Denikin's volunteers and Krasnov's Don Cossacks advanced in divergent directions - on Yekaterinodar and Tsaritsyn. The Bolsheviks had the advantage of unity of command and the ability to operate along internal lines of operations. After the capture of Kazan by the Czechs, the main forces of the Reds were thrown to the Eastern Front, as the closest at that moment to the vital centers of the country. Soviet troops occupied the Volga region and were already fighting in the Urals. It also played into the hands of the Bolsheviks that neither the Central Powers nor the Entente, occupied with the last decisive battles on the fronts of the World War, could provide significant assistance to the Whites.

1919 became the decisive year of the Civil War in Russia. In November 1918, Germany and its allies capitulated. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk has lost its force. The Red Army moved to Ukraine, Belarus and the Baltic states. Lenin hoped that "... the Red Army would be able not only to liberate Russian territory, but also to ignite the fire of the world revolution in Poland, Germany and other countries. For some time, the main efforts of the Soviet troops were transferred to the west and southwest." * * One hundred great battles. M., 1998. S. 325.

This was not slow to take advantage of the armies of Kolchak and Denikin in the east and south. Now the Entente was ready to supply them with weapons and equipment, in abundance left over from the First World War, and sent its troops to the ports of Ukraine and Crimea left by the Germans. Since the main stockpiles of weapons and the main enterprises of the military industry turned out to be in the territory controlled by the Soviets, the Allies, supplying the White armies, maintained a balance of power for some time.

In November 1918, English and French ships entered the Black Sea. The troops landed in Odessa and other ports of the Black Sea coast. Their total number reached 130 thousand people. Another contingent landed in Vladivostok, after which the foreign presence in the Far East amounted to 150 thousand people. By "... the end of 1918, all the strategic objects of the Russian Far East were under the control of the United States and Japan." In addition, the Bolsheviks had the most necessary thing for retaining power - a numerically grown, strengthened, combat-ready Red Army.

In January 1919, she took Riga and Vilna, Kharkov and Baranovichi. The new governments of Lithuania and Belarus proclaimed the creation of Soviet republics. In February 1919, Kyiv welcomed the Red Army, "hoping that the Bolsheviks would restore political stability." V. Antonov-Ovseenko commanded the Ukrainian Front, and H. Rakovsky headed the first Soviet government of Ukraine. But the spring began with more successful white warfare. General Denikin launched an offensive from the south; in the Urals, the offensive of Admiral A. Kolchak acquired a threatening character. In March 1919, his army occupied Ufa, and by the end of April it had conquered vast expanses with a population of 5 million people. S. Kamenev was appointed commander of the Eastern Front of the Red Army.

Acting on the southern sector of the front, the troops of the commander M. Frunze in April dealt a tangible blow to Kolchak's battle formations. By mid-May 1919, the White defenses had been broken through. Ufa fell in June. At this moment, Commander-in-Chief Vatsetis ordered "to transfer part of the troops to the south, against General Denikin, but Kamenev refused to obey, for which he was recalled to Moscow. There he managed to convince Lenin that he was right, and as a result, the transfer of troops stopped. Commander-in-Chief in place of Vatsetis was appointed Kamenev. * * The Civil War in the USSR. M., 1984. S. 77.

In the summer of 1919, the Reds occupied such large cities as Perm and Yekaterinburg, defeated the Kolchakists near Zlatoust and Chelyabinsk. In mid-October, the Reds were 500 km from Omsk. In November, Kolchak's Council of Ministers, headed by Pepelyaev, moved to Irkutsk. Kolchak himself left Omsk on November 12, two days before the Red Army entered the city. On January 4, 1920, he transferred his powers to General Denikin. Meanwhile, the troops of Ataman Semyonov were operating in the Baikal region, who introduced a regime of terror there, called "atamanism." * Atamanov was supported by Japan, which sought to control the Far East and kept significant military formations in Russia - numbering up to 80 thousand people.

In the spring of 1920, European and American troops left Siberia, and now only the Japanese maintained a military presence here. A guerrilla war was constantly waged against them and the chieftains, which has always been an important factor in Russian military strategy. By the end of 1919, the partisans surrounded Irkutsk, which was approaching Kolchak's armored train. The former authority of the "supreme ruler of Russia" had faded by that time, and the allies turned away from him. The Czech General R. Gaida, who was the commander of the Siberian army of Kolchak, in November raised a rebellion against him in Vladivostok. And in Irkutsk, a group of Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries created their own government - the Political Center.

On January 15, 1920, Czech troops arrested Kolchak and his associates and handed them over to the local authorities. Soon the Bolsheviks entered the city. February 7, 1920 Kolchak was shot. By February 1920, not a single foreign soldier remained in Arkhangelsk and Murmansk. Now all the hopes of the whites were connected with the south, where the Volunteer Army of General Denikin operated. Even "at the beginning of 1919, he became Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the South of Russia, and at the very beginning of 1920 he received the fullness of military and civil power from Kolchak."

In the spring of 1919, Denikin launched an offensive from the North Caucasus. In mid-June, the Crimea was occupied, and on June 26, units of General Kutepov entered Belgorod. After 2 days, the 1st Volunteer Army of General May-Maevsky captured Kharkov. The Caucasian Volunteer Army of General P. Wrangel stormed Tsaritsyn, taken only on June 30, 1919, thanks to the support of British tanks and artillery, although the Caucasian corps of General Shkuro had broken through the Red front long before that. On July 3, in Tsaritsyn, Denikin issued a Moscow directive - "an order to attack Moscow." * On August 30, he occupied Kyiv, knocking out Polish troops and General Petlyura from it.

In August, 8 thousand Don Cossacks of General Mamontov made their way to the Tambov province and, having devastated it, moved to Voronezh. Here they joined with the Kuban corps of General Shkuro. In September 1919, Denikin came as close to Moscow as no white general had ever been able to get before him. His troops took Orel and stopped 200 km from Tula with its weapons factories and 400 km from Moscow. It seemed that victory was not far off. But with the advance to the North, Denikin's problems in the rear worsened. In Ukraine, the army of the anarchist N. Makhno, who hated Denikin, was significantly strengthened, realizing that with his victory the dreams of the Ukrainian peasantry about the land would come to an end. "In the autumn of 1919, after the raid of the Makhnovists on the rear of the Whites, Denikin was forced to send an army corps to fight him. Denikin began to lose support in other territories." * Corruption, extortion, and theft flourished in his army.

From September 1 to November 15, 1919, the Bolsheviks managed to mobilize and send more than 100 thousand people to the Southern Front. On November 20, the Reds went on the offensive. The Whites held Orel for 6 days, but eventually surrendered the city. During this offensive, elite cavalry units were formed in the Red Army for the first time - the famous 1st Cavalry Army was formed. It was headed by S. Budeny and K. Voroshilov.

"On October 24, the 1st Cavalry Army defeated the White Cossacks near Voronezh, and a month later it crossed the Don and drove a wedge between the center of Denikin's army and its right flank." * After his best units were driven back 700 km, Denikin was forced to withdraw the main strength. In December, the Red Army recaptured Kharkov, Kyiv, Odessa, Yekaterinoslav. In early January 1920, the 1st Cavalry and 8th Red Army entered Rostov-on-Don. Denikin left for the Crimea, appointing Baron P. Wrangel as his successor, and he himself emigrated to France.

At the same time, other white fronts suffered defeat after defeat. In February 1920, after the evacuation of British troops from the Russian North, the Red Army occupied Murmansk and Arkhangelsk. The remnants of the White Guard troops, led by General E. Miller, went into exile. The last commander in chief of the white movement was Wrangel. On the ruins of Denikin's army, he created military units of 35 thousand people. The British advised him to gain a foothold in the Crimea, but he began to prepare for the offensive. Although he had the best white officers at his disposal, he understood that it was impossible to defeat the powerful Red Army. Therefore, he sought to conclude a truce on the most favorable terms and bring the Crimea and southern Ukraine beyond the limits of Bolshevik influence.

"In June 1920, Wrangel, at the height of the Soviet-Polish war, launched an offensive in the Kuban and Ukraine. He managed to surprise the Bolsheviks, most of whose forces at that time were concentrated on the Polish front." * Disagreements with the ruler of Poland, Yu. Pilsudsky, led to the fact that Wrangel refused to obey the orders of the Polish High Command. Now he had to fight the Bolsheviks without allies.

On September 27, Frunze, the new commander of the Southern Front, arrived in Kharkov. “Given the overwhelming superiority of the Red Army in manpower and equipment, he tried not so much to seize territories as to destroy the enemy.” * Frunze created the Second Cavalry Army and put F. Mironov at its head. After a powerful blow from the Red Army, the Whites retreated to the Crimea, which had been turned into an impregnable fortress. The Turkish rampart on Perekop, which separated the peninsula from the mainland, was considered impregnable.

On the night of November 8, Frunze launched an assault on the Crimea, in which N. Makhno's troops also took part. Since the frontal attacks of the Turkish Wall, which was defended by General Kutepov, were not successful, the Second Cavalry bypassed it in the shallow water of Lake Sivash and hit the rear of the Perekop fortification. At the same time, the infantry crossed the Chingar Strait and occupied Dzhankoy and Karanjanai. The Wrangelites rolled south. November 13 Mironov entered Simferopol. Wrangel gave the order to retreat from the Crimea. The hasty evacuation of troops and civilians was poorly organized, but still the majority managed to be taken out.

On November 16, 1920, the ship with the last of the 145 thousand evacuees headed for Constantinople. By the end of 1920, hostilities continued only in the Far East. From 1918 to 1920, power here constantly changed hands. Since the local population has long treated the Japanese with contempt, the Provisional Government created by them had no support from the people. It was replaced by the government of a buffer state, the Far Eastern Republic (FER), which existed from 1920 to 1922 and was essentially a territorial unit of Soviet Russia. "In February 1922, the FER army under the command of V. Blucher went on the offensive, and on October 22 of the same year, the army led by I. Uborevich occupied Vladivostok, completing the three-week Primorsky operation." 1922). M., 1974. S. 153.

Thus, the Civil War in Russia finally ended in 1922.

2. The problem of red and white terror

The question of white and red terror is one of the most controversial in the history of the Civil War. In the last decade, many articles and publications have been devoted to this issue. But, as a rule, they create a one-sided image of the "red" terror and the Bolsheviks as allegedly its ardent supporters.

After the victory of the October Revolution, the Soviet government for 8 months did not resort to executions by court or without trial of its political opponents. "Lenin condemned certain facts of lynching of representatives of the old government (the murder by sailors of two former ministers of the Provisional Government, who were in the Peter and Paul Fortress, the murder in Mogilev of the commander-in-chief of the old army, General N. N. Dukhonin, by soldiers, etc.)." * Until the summer of 1918 not a single political opponent of Soviet power was shot.

The Soviet government did not seek to incite a civil war and at first treated its enemies very humanely. Released on parole by the Council of People's Commissars, General P. N. Krasnov led the Cossack counter-revolution on the Don in the spring and summer of 1918, and the junkers who were released, for the most part, became active participants in the white cause. The first was the White Terror, which caused the Red Terror in response.

Historian P. M. Spirin, back in 1968, correctly believed that in the summer of 1918 "... the bourgeoisie switched to mass and individual terror, pursuing the goal, on the one hand, to intimidate the workers and peasants with numerous murders, and on the other - to wrest from the ranks of the revolution its leaders and best activists. "* White terror acquired a particularly large scale in the Don, Kuban, the Volga region, the Orenburg province, Siberia, that is, in those areas where there was a larger layer of kulaks, wealthy Cossacks, where many whites accumulated officers. In the North and the Far East, mass terror was carried out by the interventionists and the White Guards. Hundreds and thousands of "out-of-town" peasants, who formed the backbone of Soviet power in the Cossack regions, fell at the hands of wealthy Cossacks. Hundreds of food order workers became victims of the kulak terror in the villages. The officers hunted for communists and Soviet activists.

Tragic is the chronicle of the events of the Novouzensky district of the Samara province for several days in May 1918, which L. M. Spirin cites: “May 5 - the village of Aleksandrov-Gai is occupied by the Ural Cossacks, the chairman of the Volost Council Chugunkov was torn to pieces in the village; many Soviet workers were shot. 6 May - the kulak congress in Novouzensk decided to shoot all the Bolsheviks. On May 9, in Aleksandrov-Gai, the Cossacks killed all the Red Army soldiers who had surrendered (96 people), the wounded were covered with earth in a common pit. In total, the whites shot 675 people in the village. "* * Pages of history Soviet society. M., 1989. S. 60.

The revolt of the Socialist-Revolutionaries under the leadership of Savinkov, raised on the night of July 6-7, 1918, was accompanied by rampant white terror. The rebels held Yaroslavl for 16 days. Throughout the city, the White Guards were looking for party and Soviet workers and carried out reprisals against them. One of the active participants in the rebellion, former Colonel B. Vesarov, later wrote: “Those who fell into the hands of the insurgent commissars, all sorts of Soviet businessmen and accomplices, were taken to the courtyard of the Yaroslavl branch of the state bank. There was a bloody revenge, they were shot without any pity " .* More than 200 people were placed on a barge in the middle of the Volga, and doomed to starvation and torment. When the prisoners tried to escape from the barge, they were shot at. Only on the thirteenth day did the prisoners of the floating prison manage to weigh anchor and bring the barge to the location of the Red Army troops.

Of these people, 109 people survived. In the areas captured by the White Guards and interventionists, mass terror was carried out. According to the approximate data of the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the RSFSR, "in July-December 1918, only in the territory of 13 provinces, the White Guards shot 22,780 people." * * White generals. Rostov-on-Don. 1998. P. 205.

On August 30, the former cadet of the Mikhailovsky Artillery School "People's Socialist" L. Kanegisser, on the instructions of the underground group of the Right Social Revolutionary Filonenko, shot the chairman of the Petrograd Cheka, the Bolshevik M. S. Uritsky. At the same time, the train of the Higher Military Inspection crashed, in which N. I. Podvoisky, chairman of the VVI, miraculously survived. Earlier, a prominent Bolshevik V. Volodarsky was killed. A group of SR terrorists, who arrived in Moscow after the murder of Volodarsky, under the leadership of the militant Semyonov, began spying on V. I. Lenin. The city was divided into several sectors, each of which was assigned a terrorist executor. Among them was F. Kaplan. On August 30, she seriously wounded V.I. Lenin with two bullets. It is from this assassination attempt that the "Red Terror" should be counted.

On September 5, 1918, the Council of People's Commissars adopted a resolution that went down in history as a resolution on the Red Terror, signed by the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs G. I. Petrovsky, the People's Commissar of Justice D. I. Kursky and the head of the Council of People's Commissars V. D. Bonch-Bruyevich. It said: "The Council of People's Commissars, having heard the report of the chairman of the Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution on the activities of this commission, finds that in this situation, providing rear services through terror is a direct necessity; that in order to strengthen the activities of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission and bring it into greater planning it is necessary to send there as many responsible party comrades as possible; that it is necessary to secure the Soviet Republic from class enemies by isolating them in concentration camps; that all persons connected with the White Guard organizations, conspiracies and rebellions must be shot; that it is necessary to publish the names of all those who were shot, as well as the reasons application of this measure to them. "* * Golinkov D. L. The collapse of the anti-Soviet underground in the USSR. Book. 1. M., 1980. S. 178.

Among those repressed under the decree of September 5 were many ardent counter-revolutionaries who distinguished themselves by their cruelty in the days of tsarism. Among them are the monarchists - Minister of the Interior A. N. Khvostov, Director of the Police Department S. P. Beletsky, Minister of Justice I. G. Shcheglovitov, high-ranking officials of the gendarmerie and security departments. Those servants of the old regime who did not take part in counter-revolutionary actions also fell under repressions and executions. "There were cases when, in order to seize surpluses of grain, and sometimes not surpluses, the requisitioning detachments used violence not only against the kulaks, but also against the middle peasants or subjected the rebellious Cossack villages, and sometimes even villages, to artillery fire." * * Shevotsukov P. A. Decree . op. S. 271.

In the autumn of 1918, the system of hostage-taking was unjustifiably widely used. Moreover, it resulted not only in temporary isolation in concentration camps of groups of the population potentially dangerous for the Soviet government, but, as R. Medvedev writes, in "the physical destruction of some people for the misdeeds and crimes of other people."* But such actions were not a system.

Condemning the Red Terror, some authors writing on this topic not only do not compare the White and Red Terror, but even deny the existence of the former. Nevertheless, the comparison shows that the White Terror was more widespread and incredibly cruel. "In nine months (June 1918 - February 1919), the emergency commissions of the Soviet government shot 5,496 criminals on the territory of 23 provinces, including about 800 criminals. In the seven months of 1918, the White Guards killed only in 13 provinces in 4 seconds more than once more people. In Siberia alone, in the spring of 1919, the Kolchakists shot several tens of thousands of workers and peasants. op. S. 422.

As early as November 6, 1918*, the first all-Russian amnesty was declared by a resolution of the VI Congress of Soviets. All hostages were released from prison, except for those whose temporary detention was necessary as a condition for the safety of comrades who fell into the hands of enemies. From now on, only the Cheka could take hostages. The Central Committee appointed the political revision of the Cheka by a commission from the Central Committee consisting of Kamenev, Stalin and Kursky, instructing it "to examine the activities of the emergency commissions without weakening their struggle against the counter-revolutionaries." * * Ibid. S. 431.

At the same time, M. Ya. Latsis, a member of the Cheka commission, chairman of the Cheka of the Eastern Front, in the Red Terror magazine published in Kazan, spoke about the advisability of strict legal regulation of the activities of the Cheka. The article contained the following instructions to the local bodies of the Cheka: “Do not look for accusatory evidence in the case; whether he rebelled against the Soviets with weapons or in words. First of all, you should ask him what class he belongs to, what origin he has, what education and what is his profession? These are the questions that should decide the fate of the accused.* After criticizing this article in Pravda, Yem. Yaroslavsky M. Ya. Latsis, answering him, argued that “... at the moment of the most desperate class struggle, one cannot seek material evidence. to the class about the origin.* * The Civil War in Russia. Crossroads of opinions. Decree. op. S. 220.

Regarding the spread of the Red Terror, Lenin, in a speech to the Cheka in November 1918, noted: “When we took control of the country, we naturally had to make many mistakes and, naturally, the mistakes of the emergency commissions are most striking. individual mistakes of the Cheka, weep and rush about with them. We say: we learn from mistakes. Their business is where decisiveness, speed, and, most importantly, loyalty are required. When I look at the activities of the Cheka, and compare it with attacks, I say: these are philistine rumors, worthless.”* It would do no harm for the authors of those publications to think about these Leninist words, which are inclined to reduce all the activities of the Cheka to terror, mistakes, arbitrariness. Such statements, as we see, are not new, and they are far from reality.

In general, the use of the red terror was more conscious and logical than the white one. On this occasion, the Tambov uprising is recalled, which was led by the former village teacher, Socialist-Revolutionary A. Antonov. The uprising began in the middle of 1920, when Antonov's detachment, numbering 500 people, defeated the guard battalion sent against him. At the beginning of 1921, there were already 20 thousand people in Antonov's army. At the end of 1921, Tukhachevsky, who had already distinguished himself in suppressing the Krondstadt uprising, was appointed commander of the troops of the Tambov province. On May 12, on the day of his arrival in Tambov, Tukhachevsky issued extermination order No. 130. On May 17, the Plenipotentiary Commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee for Combating Banditry in the Tambov Province published a popular statement of this order, titled it as "Order to members of bandit gangs": 1) Workers 'and Peasants' the authorities decided to put an end to robbery and robbery in the Tambov province as soon as possible and restore peace and honest labor in it; 2) The worker-peasant government has sufficient military forces in the Tambov province. All those who raise arms against Soviet power will be exterminated. You, members of bandit gangs, are left with one of two options: either die like mad dogs, or surrender to the mercy of Soviet power; 3) According to the order of the Red Command No. 130 and the "Rules on taking hostages" published by the Plenipotentiary Commission on May 12, the family of a person who evaded to appear at the nearest headquarters of the Red Army to surrender weapons is taken hostage, and the property is seized. * * Sokolov B V. Decree op. P. 420.

On June 11, an even more formidable order No. 171 appeared. It ordered citizens who refused to give their names to be shot on the spot without trial. The families of the rebels were expelled, and the senior worker in the family was shot. Hostages from villages where weapons were found were also shot. This Order was carried out "... severely and mercilessly." * Cruelty and preponderance of forces were on the side of the Red Army and decided the matter. The uprising fizzled out. By the end of May, concentration camps for 15,000 people were hastily set up in Tambov, Borisoglebsk, Kirsanov, and other cities of the province, and a list of "bandits" was ordered for each village. By July 20, all large detachments of Antonovites were destroyed or "scattered". During the operation to eliminate the Antonov gangs, Tukhachevsky used chemical weapons. The rebellious province was blockaded and there was no food supply there. And it is unlikely that in the conditions of the New Economic Policy, yesterday's rebels would have wanted to return to the forests after the end of the harvest campaign. But it was necessary to teach the rebels a substantive lesson, so that not only they, but also their children and grandchildren would not rebel. For this, executions of hostages and gas attacks against those who sought refuge in the forests were needed. Antonov himself died in a shootout in June 1922.

Thus, once again it should be noted that there was both white and red terror. Historically, it would be wrong to speak only about the existence of the Red Terror, which was more natural and due to many reasons. The Bolsheviks acted as the bearers of power in Russia, and, consequently, their measures were more legitimate than the actions of the counter-revolutionaries.

Conclusion

In 1922 the Civil War in Russia ended. Losses in the Civil War can only be determined very approximately by demographic estimates of the total population for different periods and within the same boundaries and the losses of the Red Army, about which there is only incomplete and scattered information. The population of the Russian Empire before the revolution of February 1917 totaled 176.3 million people, and with the deduction of irretrievable losses by the dead and prisoners suffered by the Russian army by that time, it was 171.9 million people.

The total natural increase in the population of the USSR within the borders at the beginning of 1926 in the period 1917-1925. inclusive, we estimate it at 3.33%, or 5 million people. In addition, approximately 2 million people emigrated from the European part of Russia and about 0.5 million from Central Asia and the Caucasus. Taking this into account, the population of the USSR by the beginning of 1926 should have been about 152.65 million people (excluding Finland, Poland, Bessarabia, the Baltic states, where the total population was approximately 25 million people). In practice, the 1926 census determined the population at 146.9 million people. The difference of 5.75 million people is an approximate value of irretrievable losses in the Civil War, including excess mortality from various epidemics and famine.

As a result of the victory of the Bolsheviks in the Civil War, conditions were created for the future militarization of Russia. During the fighting, a combat-ready, mobile army was created, and the countries of the West realized that the new Russia could not be defeated so easily. That is why the Entente countries, accustomed to an easy victory, retreated from Russia so quickly. The victory of Lenin and his associates was predetermined by the fact that they were supported by much wider sections of the country's population than previously expected. The Western powers did not have the strength to occupy Russian territory. Their soldiers after the First World War did not want to fight in Russia, in which they did not see any threat to their interests and from where the slogans of freedom, equality and brotherhood, attractive to the masses, came from.

The Whites lost because they did not have a unified program of action - each pulled the blanket over himself. The white movement was joined by people with completely different views on the state system - Socialist-Revolutionaries, monarchists, Cadets, etc. Naturally, they could not and did not want to understand each other. In addition, people participated in the white movement, directly or indirectly related to the overthrown power of the tsar in 1917, and, consequently, discredited themselves. After all, the power of the tsar, no matter how they try to present it to us now, was hated by the majority of the people - and the majority were peasants and workers. Consequently, the people who called for the return of the old order could win very few over to their side.

As a result of this bloody war, Russia suffered losses in the amount of more than 10 million people. In addition, industry and agriculture were in a state of ruin. This led to the great famine of 1921-1922. It took the country another 10 years to bring its ruined economy back to a more or less normal state.

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