White" and "Red" Terror during the Civil War. Once again about the Civil War, white and red terror

Terror "Red" and "White"

What are the causes of the Red and White Terrors? IN AND. Lenin stated that the Red Terror during the years of the civil war in Russia was forced and became a response to the actions of the White Guards and interventionists.

According to the Russian emigration (S.P. Melgunov), for example, the Red Terror had an official theoretical justification, was of a systemic, governmental nature, the White Terror was characterized "as excesses on the basis of unbridled power and revenge."

For this reason, the red terror surpassed the white terror in its scope and cruelty.

At the same time, a third point of view arose, according to which any terror is inhuman and should be abandoned as a method of fighting for power. The very comparison “one terror is worse (better) than another” is incorrect. No terror has a right to exist. The call of General L.G. is very similar to each other. Kornilov to the officers (January 1918) “do not take prisoners in battles with the Reds” and the confession of Chekist M.I. Latsis that similar orders were resorted to in relation to the Whites in the Red Army.

The desire to understand the origins of the tragedy has given rise to several exploratory explanations. R. Conquest, for example, wrote that in 1918-1820. terror was carried out by fanatics, idealists - "people in whom one can find some features of a kind of perverted nobility." Among them, according to the researcher, can be attributed to Lenin.

I will give only some instructions written by V.I. Lenin. In a note to the Deputy Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic E.M. Sklyansky (August 1920) V.I. Lenin, evaluating the plan born in the depths of this department, instructed:

In a secret letter to members of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) dated March 19, 1922, V.I. Lenin proposed to take advantage of the famine in the Volga region and confiscate church valuables.

This action, in his opinion, “should be carried out with merciless determination, without stopping at anything and in the shortest possible time. The more representatives of the reactionary clergy and the reactionary bourgeoisie we manage to shoot on this occasion, the better. It is necessary now to teach this public a lesson in such a way that for several decades they will not even dare to think about any resistance.

Stalin perceived Lenin's recognition of state terror as a highly governmental matter, a power based on force, and not on law.

It is difficult to name the first acts of red and white terror. Usually they are associated with the beginning of the civil war in the country. Everyone committed terror: officers - participants in the ice campaign of General Kornilov; security officers who received the right to extrajudicial reprisals; revolutionary courts and tribunals.

It is characteristic that the right of the Cheka to extrajudicial reprisals, composed by L.D. Trotsky, signed by V.I. Lenin; granted unlimited rights to the tribunals by the people's commissar of justice; the decree on the Red Terror was endorsed by the people's commissars of justice, internal affairs and the manager of the affairs of the Council of People's Commissars (D. Kursky, G. Petrovsky, V. Bonch-Bruyevich).

The leadership of the Soviet Republic officially recognized the creation of a non-legal state, where arbitrariness became the norm, and terror became the most important tool for maintaining power. Lawlessness was beneficial to the belligerents, as it allowed any actions with references to the enemy.

The commanders of all the armies, apparently, never submitted to any control. We are talking about the general savagery of society. The reality of the civil war shows that the distinction between good and evil has faded. Human life has been devalued. The refusal to see the enemy as a human being encouraged violence on an unprecedented scale. Settling scores with real and imagined enemies has become the essence of politics. The civil war meant the extreme exasperation of society and especially of its new ruling class.

Murder of M.S. Uritsky and the assassination attempt on Lenin on August 30, 1918, provoked an unusually violent response. In retaliation for the murder of Uritsky, up to 900 innocent hostages were shot in Petrograd.

A much larger number of victims is associated with the attempt on Lenin's life. In the first days of September 1918, 6,185 people were shot, 14,829 were imprisoned, 6,407 were sent to concentration camps, and 4,068 people became hostages. Thus, assassination attempts on the Bolshevik leaders contributed to rampant mass terror in the country. war white army

Simultaneously with the red in the country, the white terror rampaged. And if the Red Terror is considered to be the implementation of state policy, then, probably, one should also take into account the fact that the Whites in 1918-1919. also occupied vast territories and declared themselves as sovereign governments and state entities.

The forms and methods of terror were different. But they were also used by adherents of the Constituent Assembly (Komuch in Samara, the Provisional Regional Government in the Urals), and especially the white movement.

The coming to power of the founders in the Volga region in the summer of 1918 was characterized by reprisals against many Soviet workers. One of the first departments created by Komuch were state guards, courts-martial, trains and "death barges". On September 3, 1918, they brutally suppressed the uprising of the workers in Kazan.

The political regimes established in 1918 in Russia are quite comparable, primarily in terms of predominantly violent methods of resolving issues of organizing power.

The Russian Civil War of 1917, like the War of the Roses in Great Britain, divided the country into "reds" and "whites". The Bolsheviks and supporters of the monarchist system grappled with each other, sweeping away everything in their path. Each side organized its own repressive mechanisms to fight the enemy. "Terror": all interrogations, tortures and executions of that period, both by the Reds and by the Whites, were designated with such a weighty word. Which terror turned out to be worse and caused more damage to Russia? Website amateur. media dealt with historians

Questions:

What terror did the most damage to Russia of that period?

Alexander Repnikov

In my opinion, the Civil War should be assessed as a national tragedy. There was red terror and white terror, "green terror" and the terror of all kinds of gangs, which became more widespread in that period. You can, of course, compare where there were more victims of terror, and where there were fewer, but, it seems to me, it is more correct to assess this tragedy as a nationwide one.

Leonid Mlechin

It just seems that the Civil War was won by the Reds and lost by the Whites. If you think about it, then absolutely everyone lost, the entire Russian people, because incredible cruelty and immorality triumphed, which in one way or another swept the whole country, it so happened that the whole country took part in this. A thin film of civilization has been torn clean, and a huge number of people have shown incredible cruelty. Trying to measure who is worse is almost impossible. It was just a catastrophe for all of Russia, even more catastrophic than the Great Patriotic War. Although more people died during the Great Patriotic War, the country and the people did not suffer as much as it happened during the Civil War.

Was it a struggle for power and territory, or a senseless class struggle?

Alexander Repnikov

For those who participated in the war, it was clearly not a senseless struggle. These people themselves died and destroyed others, based on one or another worldview. They had their own ideas about who is friend and who is enemy, who deserves to live and who should be destroyed. In my opinion, it is important now, almost a century later, to draw a line under the Civil War.

Leonid Mlechin

You see, as a result of the events of 1917, the state, as a mechanism, a structure organizing society, collapsed and fell apart for various reasons. So it was no longer a people and not a society, we slipped somewhere into a primitive communal system, where a rifle gave birth to power, where all the rules that society created for a normal life disappeared. And when they sorted out relations with each other in the caves, there were no rules or morals. Russia was in such a terrible state, where everyone fought against each other. It is wrong to assume that the whites fought the reds and that's it. It was a war of all against all, a monstrous catastrophe.

Could the White Terror return power to the hands of the anti-Bolshevik forces?

Alexander Repnikov

Anti-Bolshevik forces controlled most of the territory. You can talk about the Kolchakov or Denikin alternative, and so on. Still, there was variation. It is clear that the Greens, of course, could not win, but the Reds and Whites had historical chances. The difficult question is why it was the Reds who won, and not the Whites. It seems to me that the initial message in your question is not very clear, if you proceed from the fact that if whites had more “powerful” terror, then they could win. It's not just the factor of violence, repression, and so on.

Leonid Mlechin

White had no chance to win for a number of reasons. First, they personified the past. People tend to want something new. Secondly, in a peasant country, whites personified the former system of land management, where the land belongs to the landowners. The peasant side rejected this. Thirdly, the Whites did not have such outstanding leaders as Lenin and Trotsky were. In addition, the Bolsheviks owned power in the capital.

Is it possible to oppose red and white terror?

Alexander Repnikov

There is a good film by Friedrich Ermler: “Before the Judgment of History”, where you can see the monologue of Vasily Shulgin. When they begin to tell him that the Whites shed blood, Shulgin begins to list the Red commanders who also shed blood, and declares: "Blood will give birth to blood." I see the problem with society being "locked in" between the red and white alternatives. Either you are red or you are white. Pushing foreheads is absolutely futile. We must end this war in a hundred years.

Leonid Mlechin

Historians say that the Red Terror was more terrible because it was carried out by a state body, but I would consider it my duty to point out that the terrible scale was much greater than just the terror carried out by the two largest opposing forces.

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.

Causes and the beginning of the civil war in Russia. White and red movement. Red and white terror. Causes of the defeat of the white movement. The results of the civil war

The first historiographers of the civil war were its participants. A civil war inevitably divides people into “us” and “them”. A kind of barricade lay both in understanding and in explaining the causes, nature and course of the civil war. Day by day we understand more and more that only an objective view of the civil war on both sides will make it possible to approach historical truth. But at a time when the civil war was not history, but reality, it was looked at differently.

Recently (80-90s) the following problems of the history of the civil war have been at the center of scientific discussions: the causes of the civil war; classes and political parties in the civil war; white and red terror; ideology and social essence of “war communism”. We will try to highlight some of these issues.

An inevitable companion of almost every revolution is armed clashes. Researchers have two approaches to this problem. Some consider civil war as a process of armed struggle between citizens of one country, between different parts of society, while others see civil war as only a period in the history of a country when armed conflicts determine its entire life.

As for modern armed conflicts, social, political, economic, national and religious reasons are closely intertwined in their occurrence. Pure conflicts, where there would be only one of them, are rare. Conflicts predominate, where there are many such reasons, but one dominates.

Causes and the beginning of the civil war in Russia

The dominant feature of the armed struggle in Russia in 1917-1922. there was a "socio-political confrontation. But the civil war of 1917-1922 is impossible to understand, taking into account only the class side. It was a tightly woven ball of social, political, national, religious, personal interests and contradictions.

How did the civil war in Russia start? According to Pitirim Sorokin, usually the fall of a regime is not so much the result of the efforts of the revolutionaries, but rather the decrepitude, impotence and inability of the regime itself to carry out creative work. To prevent a revolution, the government must make certain reforms that would remove social tension. Neither the government of Imperial Russia nor the Provisional Government found the strength to carry out reforms. And since the escalation of events required action, they were expressed in attempts at armed violence against the people in February 1917. Civil wars do not begin in an atmosphere of social peace. The law of all revolutions is such that after the overthrow of the ruling classes, their striving and attempts to restore their position are inevitable, while the classes that have come to power try by all means to preserve it. There is a connection between revolution and civil war, in the conditions of our country the latter after October 1917 was almost inevitable. The causes of the civil war are the extreme intensification of class hatred, the exhausting First World War. The deep roots of the civil war must also be seen in the character of the October Revolution, which proclaimed the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The dissolution of the Constituent Assembly stimulated the unleashing of the civil war. The all-Russian power was usurped, and in a society already split, torn apart by the revolution, the ideas of the Constituent Assembly, the parliament could no longer find understanding.

It should also be recognized that the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk offended the patriotic feelings of the broad sections of the population, primarily the officers and the intelligentsia. It was after the conclusion of peace in Brest that the White Guard volunteer armies began to actively form.

The political and economic crisis in Russia was accompanied by a crisis of national relations. The white and red governments were forced to fight for the return of the lost territories: Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia in 1918-1919; Poland, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia and Central Asia in 1920-1922 The Russian Civil War went through several phases. If we consider the civil war in Russia as a process, then it becomes

it is clear that its first act was the events in Petrograd at the end of February 1917. In the same series, there are armed clashes on the streets of the capital in April and July, the Kornilov uprising in August, the peasant uprising in September, the October events in Petrograd, Moscow and a number of others places.

After the abdication of the emperor, the country was seized by the euphoria of the “red-bow” unity. Despite all this, February marked the beginning of an immeasurably deeper upheaval, as well as an escalation of violence. In Petrograd and other areas, the persecution of officers began. Admirals Nepenin, Butakov, Viren, General Stronsky and other officers were killed in the Baltic Fleet. Already in the first days of the February Revolution, the anger that arose in people's souls spilled onto the streets. So, February marked the beginning of the civil war in Russia,

By the beginning of 1918, this stage had largely exhausted itself. It was precisely this position that the Socialist-Revolutionary leader V. Chernov stated when, speaking at the Constituent Assembly on January 5, 1918, he expressed hope for an early end to the civil war. It seemed to many that a turbulent period was being replaced by a more peaceful one. However, contrary to these expectations, new centers of struggle continued to emerge, and from the middle of 1918 the next period of the civil war began, ending only in November 1920 with the defeat of the army of P.N. Wrangel. However, the civil war continued after that. Its episodes were the Kronstadt uprising of the sailors and Antonovshchina in 1921, military operations in the Far East, which ended in 1922, Basmachism in Central Asia, mostly liquidated by 1926.

White and red movement. Red and white terror

At present, we have come to understand that a civil war is a fratricidal war. However, the question of what forces opposed each other in this struggle is still controversial.

The question of the class structure and the main class forces in Russia during the civil war is quite complicated and needs serious research. The fact is that in Russia classes and social strata, their relationships were intertwined in the most complex way. Nevertheless, in our opinion, there were three major forces in the country that differed in relation to the new government.

The Soviet government was actively supported by part of the industrial proletariat, the urban and rural poor, some of the officers and the intelligentsia. In 1917, the Bolshevik Party emerged as a freely organized, radical, revolutionary party of workers-oriented intellectuals. By mid-1918 it had become a minority party, ready to ensure its survival through mass terror. By this time, the Bolshevik Party was no longer a political party in the sense in which it used to be, since it no longer expressed the interests of any social group, it recruited its members from many social groups. Former soldiers, peasants or officials, having become communists, represented a new social group with their own rights. The Communist Party has become a military-industrial and administrative apparatus.

The effect of the civil war on the Bolshevik Party was twofold. First, there was a militarization of Bolshevism, which was reflected primarily in the way of thinking. Communists have learned to think in terms of military campaigns. The idea of ​​building socialism turned into a struggle - on the industrial front, the collectivization front, and so on. The second important consequence of the civil war was the Communist Party's fear of the peasants. The Communists have always been aware that they are a minority party in a hostile peasant environment.

Intellectual dogmatism, militarization, combined with hostility towards the peasants, created in the Leninist party all the necessary preconditions for Stalinist totalitarianism.

The forces that opposed the Soviet regime included the big industrial and financial bourgeoisie, landowners, a significant part of the officers, members of the former police and gendarmerie, and part of the highly qualified intelligentsia. However, the white movement began only as a rush of convinced and brave officers who fought against the communists, often without any hope of victory. White officers called themselves volunteers, driven by the ideas of patriotism. But in the midst of the civil war, the white movement became much more intolerant, chauvinistic, than at the beginning.

The main weakness of the white movement was that it failed to become a unifying national force. It remained almost exclusively a movement of officers. The White movement was unable to establish effective cooperation with the liberal and socialist intelligentsia. Whites were suspicious of workers and peasants. They did not have a state apparatus, administration, police, banks. Personifying themselves as a state, they tried to make up for their practical weakness by cruelly imposing their own rules.

If the White movement failed to rally the anti-Bolshevik forces, then the Kadet Party failed to lead the White movement. The Cadets were a party of professors, lawyers and entrepreneurs. There were enough people in their ranks who were able to establish a workable administration in the territory liberated from the Bolsheviks. And yet the role of the Cadets in national politics during the civil war was insignificant. Between the workers and peasants, on the one hand, and the Cadets, on the other, there was a huge cultural gap, and the Russian Revolution was presented to the majority of the Cadets as chaos, rebellion. Only the white movement, in the opinion of the Cadets, could restore Russia.

Finally, the most numerous group of the population of Russia is the vacillating part, and often just passive, who watched the events. She looked for opportunities to do without the class struggle, but was constantly drawn into it 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.

But the division of forces proposed to readers should be considered conditional. In fact, they were closely intertwined, mixed with each other and scattered throughout the vast territory of the country. This situation was observed in any region, in any province, regardless of who held power. The decisive force, which largely determined the outcome of the revolutionary events, was the peasantry.

Analyzing the beginning of the war, only with great convention can we talk about the Bolshevik government of Russia. Nadele in 1918, it controlled only part of the country's territory. However, it announced its readiness to rule the whole country after it dissolved the Constituent Assembly. In 1918, the main opponents of the Bolsheviks were not whites or greens, but socialists. The Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries opposed the Bolsheviks under the banner of the Constituent Assembly.

Immediately after the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, the Socialist-Revolutionary Party began preparations for the overthrow of Soviet power. However, the Social Revolutionary leaders soon became convinced that there were very few who wanted to fight with weapons under the banner of the Constituent Assembly.

A very sensitive blow to attempts to unite the anti-Bolshevik forces was dealt from the right, by supporters of the military dictatorship of the generals. The main role among them was played by the Cadets, who resolutely opposed the use of the demand for the convocation of the Constituent Assembly of the 1917 model as the main slogan of the anti-Bolshevik movement. The Cadets headed for a one-man military dictatorship, which the Social Revolutionaries dubbed right-wing Bolshevism.

The moderate socialists, who rejected the military dictatorship, nevertheless compromised with the supporters of the general dictatorship. In order not to alienate the Cadets, the all-democratic bloc "Union of the Revival of Russia" adopted a plan to create a collective dictatorship - the Directory. To govern the country of the Directory, it was necessary to create a business ministry. The Directory was obliged to relinquish its powers of all-Russian power only before the Constituent Assembly after the end of the struggle against the Bolsheviks. At the same time, the "Union of the Revival of Russia" set the following tasks: 1) the continuation of the war with the Germans; 2) the creation of a single firm government; 3) the revival of the army; 4) restoration of scattered parts of Russia.

The summer defeat of the Bolsheviks as a result of the armed action of the Czechoslovak corps created favorable conditions. Thus, an anti-Bolshevik front arose in the Volga region and Siberia, and two anti-Bolshevik governments immediately formed - Samara and Omsk. Having received power from the hands of the Czechoslovaks, five members of the Constituent Assembly - V.K. Volsky, I.M. Brushvit, I.P. Nesterov, P.D. Klimushkin and B.K. Fortunatov - formed the Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly (Komuch) - the highest state body. Komuch handed over the executive power to the Board of Governors. The birth of Komuch, contrary to the plan to create the Directory, led to a split in the Socialist-Revolutionary leadership. Its right-wing leaders, led by N.D. Avksentiev, ignoring Samara, went to Omsk to prepare the formation of an all-Russian coalition government from there.

Declaring himself a temporary supreme power until the convocation of the Constituent Assembly, Komuch called on other governments to recognize him as a state center. However, other regional governments refused to recognize the rights of the national center for Komuch, regarding him as a party SR power.

Socialist-Revolutionary politicians did not have a specific program of democratic reforms. The issues of the grain monopoly, nationalization and municipalization, and the principles of organizing the army were not resolved. In the field of agrarian policy, Komuch limited himself to a statement about the inviolability of ten points of the land law adopted by the Constituent Assembly.

The main goal of foreign policy was declared to be the continuation of the war in the ranks of the Entente. The reliance on Western military assistance was one of Komuch's biggest strategic miscalculations. The Bolsheviks used foreign intervention to depict the struggle of the Soviet power as patriotic, and the actions of the Socialist-Revolutionaries as anti-national. Komuch's broadcast statements about the continuation of the war with Germany to a victorious end came into conflict with the mood of the masses. Komuch, who did not understand the psychology of the masses, could rely only on the bayonets of the allies.

The confrontation between the Samara and Omsk governments especially weakened the anti-Bolshevik camp. Unlike the one-party Komuch, the Provisional Siberian government was coalition. It was headed by P.V. Vologda. The left wing in the government was the Socialist-Revolutionaries B.M. Shatilov, G.B. Patushinsky, V.M. Krutovsky. The right side of the government - I.A. Mikhailov, I.N. Serebrennikov, N.N. Petrov ~ occupied cadet and promotional positions.

The government's program was shaped under considerable pressure from its right wing. Already at the beginning of July 1918, the government announced the abolition of all decrees issued by the Council of People's Commissars and the liquidation of the Soviets, the return to the owners of their estates with all inventory. The Siberian government pursued a policy of repression against dissidents, the press, meetings, etc. Komuch protested against such a policy.

Despite sharp differences, the two rival governments had to negotiate. At the Ufa State Conference, a “temporary all-Russian government” was created. The meeting ended its work with the election of the Directory. N.D. Avksentiev, N.I. Astrov, V.G. Boldyrev, P.V. Vologodsky, N.V. Chaikovsky.

In its political program, the Directory declared the struggle to overthrow the power of the Bolsheviks, annul the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and continue the war with Germany as the main tasks. The short-term nature of the new government was emphasized by the point that the Constituent Assembly was to meet in the near future - January 1 or February 1, 1919, after which the Directory would resign.

The Directory, having abolished the Siberian government, now seemed to be able to implement an alternative program to the Bolshevik one. However, the balance between democracy and dictatorship was upset. The Samara Komuch, which represented democracy, was dissolved. The attempt made by the Socialist-Revolutionaries to restore the Constituent Assembly failed. On the night of November 17-18, 1918, the leaders of the Directory were arrested. The directory was replaced by the dictatorship of A.V. Kolchak. In 1918, the civil war was a war of ephemeral governments whose claims to power remained only on paper. In August 1918, when the Social Revolutionaries and Czechs took Kazan, the Bolsheviks were unable to recruit more than 20 thousand people into the Red Army. The Socialist-Revolutionary People's Army numbered only 30,000. During this period, the peasants, having divided the land, ignored the political struggle waged between parties and governments. However, the establishment of the Kombeds by the Bolsheviks caused the first outbreaks of resistance. From that moment on, there was a direct correlation between the Bolshevik attempts to dominate the countryside and peasant resistance. The harder the Bolsheviks tried to plant "communist relations" in the countryside, the tougher the resistance of the peasants was.

White, having in 1918. several regiments were not contenders for national power. Nevertheless, the white army of A.I. Denikin, who originally numbered 10 thousand people, was able to occupy the territory with a population of 50 million people. This was facilitated by the development of peasant uprisings in the areas held by the Bolsheviks. N. Makhno did not want to help the Whites, but his actions against the Bolsheviks contributed to the breakthrough of the Whites. The Don Cossacks rebelled against the communists and cleared the way for the advancing army of A. Denikin.

It seemed that with the promotion to the role of dictator A.V. Kolchak, the Whites had a leader who would lead the entire anti-Bolshevik movement. In the provision on the temporary structure of state power, approved on the day of the coup, the Council of Ministers, the supreme state power was temporarily transferred to the Supreme Ruler, and all the Armed Forces of the Russian state were subordinate to him. A.V. Kolchak was soon recognized as the Supreme Ruler by the leaders of the other white fronts, and the Western allies recognized him de facto.

The political and ideological ideas of the leaders and ordinary members of the white movement were as diverse as the socially heterogeneous movement itself. Of course, some part sought to restore the monarchy, the old, pre-revolutionary regime in general. But the leaders of the white movement refused to raise the monarchist banner and put forward a monarchist program. This also applies to A.V. Kolchak.

What did the Kolchak government promise positively? Kolchak agreed to convene a new Constituent Assembly after the restoration of order. He assured Western governments that there could be no "return to the regime that existed in Russia before February 1917", the broad masses of the population would be given land, and differences on religious and national grounds would be eliminated. Having confirmed the complete independence of Poland and the limited independence of Finland, Kolchak agreed to "prepare decisions" on the fate of the Baltic states, the Caucasian and Transcaspian peoples. Judging by the statements, the Kolchak government was in the position of democratic construction. But in reality, everything was different.

The most difficult for the anti-Bolshevik movement was the agrarian question. Kolchak did not succeed in solving it. The war with the Bolsheviks, as long as Kolchak waged it, could not guarantee the transfer of the landlords' land to the peasants. The national policy of the Kolchak government was marked by the same profound internal contradiction. Acting under the slogan of “one and indivisible” Russia, it did not reject “self-determination of peoples” as an ideal.

The demands of the delegations of Azerbaijan, Estonia, Georgia, Latvia, the North Caucasus, Belarus and Ukraine put forward at the Versailles Conference were actually rejected by Kolchak. Having refused to create an anti-Bolshevik conference in the regions liberated from the Bolsheviks, Kolchak pursued a policy doomed to failure.

Complex and contradictory were Kolchak's relations with the allies, who had their own interests in the Far East and Siberia and pursued their own policies. This made the position of the Kolchak government very difficult. A particularly tight knot was tied in relations with Japan. Kolchak made no secret of his antipathy towards Japan. The Japanese command responded with active support for the chieftain, which flourished in Siberia. Petty ambitious people like Semyonov and Kalmykov, with the support of the Japanese, managed to create a constant threat to the Omsk government in the deep rear of Kolchak, which weakened him. Semyonov actually cut off Kolchak from the Far East and blocked the supply of weapons, ammunition, provisions.

Strategic miscalculations in the field of domestic and foreign policy of the Kolchak government were aggravated by mistakes in the military field. The military command (generals V.N. Lebedev, K.N. Sakharov, P.P. Ivanov-Rinov) led the Siberian army to defeat. Betrayed by all, and associates and allies,

Kolchak resigned the title of Supreme Ruler and transferred it to General A.I. Denikin. Not justifying the hopes placed on him, A.V. Kolchak died courageously, like a Russian patriot. The most powerful wave of the anti-Bolshevik movement was raised in the south of the country by Generals M.V. Alekseev, L.G. Kornilov, A.I. Denikin. Unlike the little-known Kolchak, they all had big names. The conditions under which they had to operate were desperately difficult. The volunteer army, which Alekseev began to form in November 1917 in Rostov, did not have its own territory. In terms of food supplies and recruitment of troops, it was dependent on the Don and Kuban governments. The volunteer army had only the Stavropol province and the coast with Novorossiysk, only by the summer of 1919 did it conquer a vast area of ​​the southern provinces for several months.

The weak point of the anti-Bolshevik movement in general and in the south especially was the personal ambitions and contradictions of the leaders M.V. Alekseev and L.G. Kornilov. After their death, all power passed to Denikin. The unity of all forces in the struggle against the Bolsheviks, the unity of the country and the authorities, the broadest autonomy of the border regions, fidelity to agreements with the allies in the war - these are the main principles of Denikin's platform. The entire ideological and political program of Denikin was based on the idea of ​​preserving a united and indivisible Russia. The leaders of the white movement rejected any significant concessions to the supporters of national independence. All this was in contrast to the Bolsheviks' promises of unlimited national self-determination. The reckless recognition of the right to secede gave Lenin the opportunity to curb destructive nationalism and raised his prestige far above that of the leaders of the white movement.

The government of General Denikin was divided into two groups - right and liberal. Right - a group of generals with A.M. Drago-mirov and A.S. Lukomsky at the head. The liberal group consisted of the Cadets. A.I. Denikin took the position of the center. The reactionary line in the policy of the Denikin regime manifested itself most clearly on the agrarian question. On the territory controlled by Denikin, it was supposed: to create and strengthen small and medium-sized peasant farms, to destroy latifundia, to leave small estates to the landowners, on which cultural farming could be conducted. But instead of immediately proceeding with the transfer of the landlords' land to the peasants, an endless discussion of draft laws on land began in the commission on the agrarian question. The result was a compromise law. The transfer of part of the land to the peasants was to begin only after the civil war and end after 7 years. In the meantime, the order for the third sheaf was put into effect, according to which a third of the harvested grain went to the landowner. Denikin's land policy was one of the main reasons for his defeat. Of the two evils - Lenin's requisitioning or Denikin's requisition - the peasants preferred the lesser.

A.I. Denikin understood that without the help of the allies, defeat awaited him. Therefore, he himself prepared the text of the political declaration of the commander of the armed forces of the south of Russia, sent on April 10, 1919 to the heads of the British, American and French missions. It spoke about the convocation of a people's assembly on the basis of universal suffrage, the establishment of regional autonomy and broad local self-government, and the implementation of land reform. However, things did not go beyond broadcast promises. All attention was turned to the front, where the fate of the regime was being decided.

In the autumn of 1919, a difficult situation developed for Denikin's army at the front. This was largely due to a change in the mood of the broad peasant masses. The peasants, who rebelled in the territory subject to the whites, paved the way for the reds. The peasants were the third force and acted against both in their own interests.

In the territories occupied by both the Bolsheviks and the Whites, the peasants were at war with the authorities. The peasants did not want to fight either for the Bolsheviks, or for the Whites, or for anyone else. Many of them fled into the forests. During this period, the green movement was defensive. Since 1920, there has been less and less of a threat from the Whites, and the Bolsheviks have been asserting their power in the countryside with greater determination. The peasant war against state power engulfed the whole of Ukraine, the Chernozem region, the Cossack regions of the Don and Kuban, the Volga and Ural basins, and large regions of Siberia. In fact, all the grain-producing regions of Russia and Ukraine were a huge Vendee (in a figurative sense - a counter-revolution. - Note. ed.).

In terms of the number of people involved in the peasant war and its impact on the country, this war eclipsed the war of the Bolsheviks with the whites and surpassed it in its duration. The Green Movement was the decisive third force in the civil war,

but it did not become an independent center claiming power more than on a regional scale.

Why did not the movement of the majority of the people prevail? The reason lies in the way of thinking of Russian peasants. The Greens defended their villages from outsiders. The peasants could not win because they never aspired to take over the state. The European concepts of a democratic republic, law and order, equality and parliamentarism, which the Social Revolutionaries brought to the peasant environment, were beyond the understanding of the peasants.

The mass of peasants participating in the war was heterogeneous. From the peasant milieu, both rebels, carried away by the idea of ​​“rob the loot,” and leaders who longed to become new “kings and masters” emerged. Those who acted on behalf of the Bolsheviks, and those who fought under the command of A.S. Antonova, N.I. Makhno, adhered to similar norms in behavior. Those who robbed and raped as part of the Bolshevik expeditions were not much different from the Antonov and Makhno rebels. The essence of the peasant war was the liberation from all power.

The peasant movement put forward its own leaders, people from the people (suffice it to name Makhno, Antonov, Kolesnikov, Sapozhkov and Vakhulin). These leaders were guided by the concepts of peasant justice and vague echoes of the platform of political parties. However, any party of peasants was associated with statehood, programs and governments, while these concepts were alien to local peasant leaders. The parties pursued a nationwide policy, and the peasants did not rise to the realization of nationwide interests.

One of the reasons why the peasant movement did not win, despite its scope, was the political life characteristic of each province, which was at odds with the rest of the country. While in one province the Greens were already defeated, in another the uprising was just beginning. None of the leaders of the Greens took action outside the immediate areas. This spontaneity, scale and breadth contained not only the strength of the movement, but also helplessness in the face of a systematic onslaught. The Bolsheviks, who had great power and had a huge army, militarily had an overwhelming superiority over the peasant movement.

The Russian peasants lacked political consciousness - they did not care what form of government was in Russia. They did not understand the importance of parliament, freedom of the press and assembly. The fact that the Bolshevik dictatorship withstood the test of the civil war can be seen not as an expression of popular support, but as a manifestation of the still unformed national consciousness and the political backwardness of the majority. The tragedy of Russian society was the lack of interconnectedness between its various layers.

One of the main features of the civil war was that all the armies participating in it, red and white, Cossacks and greens, went through the same path of degradation from serving a cause based on ideals to looting and excesses.

What are the causes of the Red and White Terrors? IN AND. Lenin stated that the Red Terror during the years of the civil war in Russia was forced and became a response to the actions of the White Guards and interventionists. According to the Russian emigration (S.P. Melgunov), for example, the Red Terror had an official theoretical justification, was of a systemic, governmental nature, the White Terror was characterized “as excesses on the basis of unbridled power and revenge.” For this reason, the red terror surpassed the white terror in its scope and cruelty. At the same time, a third point of view arose, according to which any terror is inhuman and should have been abandoned as a method of fighting for power. The very comparison “one terror is worse (better) than another” is incorrect. No terror has a right to exist. The call of General L.G. is very similar to each other. Kornilov to the officers (January 1918) “do not take prisoners in battles with the Reds” and the confession of Chekist M.I. Latsis that similar orders were resorted to in relation to the Whites in the Red Army.

The desire to understand the origins of the tragedy has given rise to several exploratory explanations. R. Conquest, for example, wrote that in 1918-1820. terror was carried out by fanatics, idealists - "people in whom one can find some features of a peculiar perverted nobility." Among them, according to the researcher, can be attributed to Lenin.

Terror during the war years was carried out not so much by fanatics as by people deprived of any nobility. Let us name only some of the instructions written by V.I. Lenin. In a note to the Deputy Chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic E.M. Sklyansky (August 1920) V.I. Lenin, evaluating the plan born in the depths of this department, instructed: “A wonderful plan! Finish it with Dzerzhinsky. Under the guise of "greens" (we'll blame them later), we'll go 10-20 versts and hang kulaks, priests, and landlords. Prize: 100,000 rubles for a hanged man.

In a secret letter to members of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) dated March 19, 1922, V.I. Lenin proposed to take advantage of the famine in the Volga region and confiscate church valuables. This action, in his opinion, “should be carried out with merciless determination, without stopping at anything and in the shortest possible time. The more representatives of the reactionary clergy and the reactionary bourgeoisie we manage to shoot on this occasion, the better. It is precisely now that this public must be taught a lesson so that for several decades they will not even dare to think about any resistance. Stalin perceived Lenin's recognition of state terror as a highly governmental cause, a power based on force, and not on law.

It is difficult to name the first acts of red and white terror. Usually they are associated with the beginning of the civil war in the country. Terror was committed by everyone: officers - participants in the ice campaign of General Kornilov; security officers who received the right to extrajudicial reprisals; revolutionary courts and tribunals.

It is characteristic that the right of the Cheka to extrajudicial reprisals, composed by L.D. Trotsky, signed by V.I. Lenin; granted unlimited rights to the tribunals by the people's commissar of justice; the decree on the red terror was endorsed by the people's commissars of justice, internal affairs and the manager of the affairs of the Council of People's Commissars (D. Kursky, G. Petrovsky, V. Bonch-Bruevich). The leadership of the Soviet Republic officially recognized the creation of a non-legal state, where arbitrariness became the norm, and terror became the most important tool for maintaining power. Lawlessness was beneficial to the belligerents, as it allowed any actions with references to the enemy.

The commanders of all the armies, apparently, never submitted to any control. We are talking about the general savagery of society. The reality of the civil war shows that the distinction between good and evil has faded. Human life has been devalued. The refusal to see the enemy as a human being encouraged violence on an unprecedented scale. Settling scores with real and imagined enemies has become the essence of politics. The civil war meant the extreme exasperation of society and especially of its new ruling class.

"Litvin A.L. Red and White Terror in Russia 1917-1922//0techestvennaya istoriya. 1993. No. 6. S. 47-48.1 2 Ibid. S. 47-48.

Murder of M.S. Uritsky and the assassination attempt on Lenin on August 30, 1918, provoked an unusually violent response. In retaliation for the murder of Uritsky, up to 900 innocent hostages were shot in Petrograd.

A much larger number of victims is associated with the attempt on Lenin's life. In the first days of September 1918, 6,185 people were shot, 14,829 were imprisoned, 6,407 were sent to concentration camps, and 4,068 people became hostages. Thus, assassination attempts on the Bolshevik leaders contributed to rampant mass terror in the country.

Simultaneously with the red in the country, the white terror rampaged. And if the Red Terror is considered to be the implementation of state policy, then, probably, one should also take into account the fact that the Whites in 1918-1919. also occupied vast territories and declared themselves as sovereign governments and state entities. The forms and methods of terror were different. But they were also used by adherents of the Constituent Assembly (Komuch in Samara, the Provisional Regional Government in the Urals), and especially the white movement.

The coming to power of the founders in the Volga region in the summer of 1918 was characterized by reprisals against many Soviet workers. One of the first departments created by Komuch were state guards, courts-martial, trains and "death barges". On September 3, 1918, they brutally suppressed the uprising of the workers in Kazan.

The political regimes that were established in Russia in 1918 are quite comparable, primarily in terms of predominantly violent methods of solving questions of the organization of power. In November 1918 A. V. Kolchak, who came to power in Siberia, began with the expulsion and murder of the Socialist-Revolutionaries. It is hardly possible to speak of support for his policy in Siberia in the Urals, if out of approximately 400,000 Red partisans of that time, 150,000 acted against him. The government of A.I. Denikin. On the territory captured by the general, the police were called state guards. By September 1919, its number reached almost 78 thousand people. Osvag's reports informed Denikin about robberies, looting, it was under his command that 226 Jewish pogroms took place, as a result of which several thousand people died. The White Terror turned out to be just as senseless to achieve the set goal as any other. Soviet historians have calculated that in 1917-1922. 15-16 million Russians died, of which 1.3 million became victims of terror, banditry, and pogroms. The civil, fratricidal war with millions of human victims turned into a national tragedy. Red and white terror became the most barbaric method of struggle for power. Its results for the progress of the country are truly disastrous.

Causes of the defeat of the white movement. The results of the civil war

Let us single out the most important reasons for the defeat of the white movement. The reliance on Western military assistance was one of the miscalculations of the Whites. The Bolsheviks used foreign interference to present the struggle of Soviet power as patriotic. The policy of the Allies was self-serving: they needed an anti-German Russia.

A deep contradiction marked the national policy of whites. Thus, Yudenich's non-recognition of the already independent Finland and Estonia may have been the main reason for the failure of the Whites on the Western Front. The non-recognition of Poland by Denikin made her a constant opponent of the Whites. All this was in contrast to the Bolshevik promises of unlimited national self-determination.

In terms of military training, combat experience and technical knowledge, the Whites had every advantage. But time was working against them. The situation was changing: in order to replenish the melting ranks, the whites also had to resort to mobilization.

The white movement did not have broad social support. The White army was not supplied with everything necessary, so it was forced to take carts, horses, supplies from the population. Local residents were drafted into the ranks of the army. All this restored the population against the whites. During the war, mass repressions and terror were closely intertwined with the dreams of millions of people who believed in new revolutionary ideals, and tens of millions lived nearby, preoccupied with purely everyday problems. The fluctuations of the peasantry played a decisive role in the dynamics of the civil war, as did various national movements. Some ethnic groups during the civil war restored their previously lost statehood (Poland, Lithuania), and Finland, Estonia and Latvia acquired it for the first time.

For Russia, the consequences of the civil war were catastrophic: a huge social upheaval, the disappearance of entire estates; huge demographic losses; rupture of economic ties and colossal economic ruin;

the conditions and experience of the civil war had a decisive influence on the political culture of Bolshevism: the curtailment of internal party democracy, the perception by the broad party mass of the installation on the methods of coercion and violence in achieving political goals - the Bolsheviks are looking for support in the lumpenized sections of the population. All this paved the way for the strengthening of repressive elements in public policy. The Civil War is the greatest tragedy in the history of Russia.

“... six months later, as a result of the October Revolution, Lenin and the Bolsheviks came to power. The Russian Empire turned into the USSR. The new leaders promised a bright and just future to the exhausted country. However, violence became the main political tool of the new regime.
From a video shown at the Yeltsin Center.

The question of who unleashed terror in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century requires a definition of the concepts of "white terror", "red terror" and "civil war".

By "red terror" is meant revolutionary terror, by "white" - counter-revolutionary. At the same time, it is historically incorrect to associate the "Red Terror", like the "White Terror", with any one party. The origins of the Red and White Terror go far beyond the revolutionary process in 1917.

The beginning of the "Red Terror" in Russia should be linked with the radical left wing of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party (1902-1911); the beginning of the "white terror" - with the emergence of monarchist organizations and their "black hundreds" (1905 - February 1917). The historical ignorance of the broad masses in this matter plays into the hands of those who carry out political orders to denigrate the personalities of Lenin, Dzerzhinsky, Stalin, and the USSR as a whole.

The beginning of the "Red Terror" in Russia (1902-1911)

“In order not to leave room for omissions, let us now make a reservation that, in our personal opinion, terror is currently an inappropriate means of struggle ...”
Lenin V. I. Draft of our program, 1899 // PSS. T. 4. S. 223.

In the second half of the 80s - 90s of the 19th century, Blanquist populist terrorist groups became more active in Russia, seemingly defeated after the regicide on March 1, 1881. They began to prepare assassination attempts on the son of Alexander II - Emperor Alexander III. In the case of the assassination attempt in 1887, Lenin's elder brother Alexander Ulyanov was executed. At the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, populist groups joined the Socialist Revolutionary Party (AKP, Socialist-Revolutionaries).

In 1902-1911, the Fighting Organization of the Social Revolutionaries became "the most effective terrorist formation of the early 20th century." Its leaders during this period were Grigory Gershuni, Evno Azef, Boris Savinkov. It is with their activities that the beginning of the revolutionary "Red Terror" can historically be linked.

Pyotr Arkadyevich Stolypin consecrated the revolutionary terror in detail in his speech on February 11, 1909 in the State Duma “About the Azef case”. The Minister of Internal Affairs of the Russian Empire linked terror with the revolutionary movement and the activities of the Socialist Revolutionaries, and not the Social Democrats. // Complete collection of speeches in the State Duma and the State Council /.

For 10 years, the Social Revolutionaries committed 263 terrorist acts, as a result of which 2 ministers, 33 governor-generals, governors and vice-governors, 16 mayors, 7 admirals and generals, 26 police agents were killed. The activities of the "Combat Organization" became an example for smaller terrorist groups of populist parties.

Here is the social-class characteristic of the composition of the participants in the revolutionary terror. In 1903-1906, the "Combat Organization of the AKP" included 64 people: 13 hereditary nobles, 3 honorary citizens, 5 came from families of clergymen, 10 from merchant families, 27 were of bourgeois origin and 6 were of peasant origin. As a rule, all of them were united by the student university environment.

According to the national characteristics, among the members of the "Combat Organization" 43 terrorists were Russians, 19 Jews and two Poles.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin sharply dissociated himself from the Narodniks and Socialist-Revolutionaries. He insisted on distinguishing between terror as a component of war and terror as a criminal offense in peacetime, without a declaration of war.

“In principle, we have never renounced and cannot renounce terror. This is one of the military actions that can be quite suitable and even necessary at a certain moment of the battle, given the state of the troops and under certain conditions. But the crux of the matter lies precisely in the fact that terror is being promoted at the present time not as one of the operations of the army in the field, closely connected and coordinated with the entire system of struggle, but as an independent and independent of any army means of a single attack. ... That is why we resolutely declare such a means of struggle under the given circumstances untimely, inappropriate, ... disorganizing not government, but revolutionary forces ... "
Lenin V. I. Where to start? 1901 // PSS. T. 5. S. 7

The beginning of the "White Terror" in Russia (1905 - February 1917).

The extreme right-wing organizations in Russia that operated in 1905-1917 acted under the slogans of monarchism, great-power chauvinism and anti-Semitism. The first Black Hundred organization was the Russian Assembly, founded in 1900. The leaders of the Black Hundred movement - Alexander Dubrovin, Vladimir Purishkevich, Nikolai Markov (Markov II), encouraged the creation of small armed organizations that dispersed rallies, demonstrations, and carried out pogroms in Jewish quarters. So the monarchists created the appearance of popular support for the monarchy. Sometimes the fighting squad was called "White Guard".

The activities of the Black Hundreds were supported by Nicholas II. He was an honorary member of the Union of the Russian People party, which was distinguished by extreme nationalism.

Armed squads of the Black Hundreds legally operated in Arkhangelsk, Astrakhan, Yekaterinoslav, Kyiv, Chisinau, Moscow, Odessa, St. Petersburg, Tiflis, Yaroslavl and other cities.

Child victims of the Jewish pogrom in Yekaterinoslav

Campaign leaflet for the election campaign for the elections to the State Duma of the Russian Empire of the III convocation of a single bloc: the Union of the Russian People and the Union of October 17.

There were no general principles for creating combat squads, since the creation of armed detachments by "patriotic parties" was officially prohibited, each of the departments of the "Union of the Russian People" acted at its own discretion. In Odessa, the fighting squad, according to the principle of the Cossack army, was divided into six "hundreds", each of which, in turn, had an independent name (for example, "Evil Hundred", etc.). The combatants were led by the "tax chieftain", "esauls", "foremen". All of them took patriotic pseudonyms for themselves: Yermak, Minin, Platov, etc. //Stepanov S.A. The Black Hundred terror of 1905-1907.

Edition of the Odessa branch of the Union of the Russian people.

The authorities considered the armed groups of "patriots" to be their mainstay and in some cases used them to maintain order in the streets and in striking enterprises. The Black Hundred squads suffered serious losses in violent clashes with the fighting groups of the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Social Democrats at St. Petersburg enterprises during the First Russian Revolution. In 1907, 24 monarchists were killed in skirmishes. //Stepanov S.A. Cited. op.

However, the Black Hundreds considered their main political opponents not socialists, but liberals. PN Milyukov was attacked by the Black Hundreds. On July 18, 1906, a member of the Central Committee of the Cadet Party, M. Ya. Gertsenshtein, was killed.

On March 14, 1907, Kazantsev, a member of the Union of the Russian People, organized the murder of cadet G. B. Iollos. Kazantsev gave the worker Fedorov a revolver and said that Iollos was betraying the revolutionaries. After killing Iollos and then learning from the newspapers about the falsity of the information reported to him, Fedorov killed Kazantsev and fled abroad //Kazantsev / The fall of the tsarist regime. Interrogations and testimonies. T. 7 / Index of names to I-VII vols. / TO.

The hatred of the Black Hundreds for them was determined by the fact that both of them were liberals, former deputies of the "rebellious" First State Duma and Jews.

After the February Revolution of 1917, the Black Hundred organizations were banned.

The Black Hundreds went underground. During the Civil War, many prominent leaders of the Black Hundreds joined the white movement, some to various nationalist organizations. The Bolshevik government saw Russian ethnic nationalism as a kind of fascism. The remnants of the activists of the Black Hundred movement went into exile, those who continued the struggle were destroyed.

modern monarchists.

During perestroika and Gorbachev's glasnost, monarchist organizations returned to Russia, including the Union of the Russian People and the Black Hundreds. The Restorative Congress of the Union of the Russian People was held in Moscow on November 21, 2005. Sculptor V. M. Klykov was elected the first chairman of the Union Websites of modern Black Hundred organizations: The official portal of the social and patriotic movement "Black Hundred", the Official regional portal of the "Black Hundred" OPD in St. Petersburg, the Society "Union of the Russian People", the newspaper "Pravoslavnaya Rus", Publishing House "Russian Idea", Publishing House "Black Hundred".

Monarchists are actively working today in Crimea:

“The main thing is that we are eradicating the “scoop” from ourselves and raising our children in the Russian, Orthodox, imperial spirit. And of course, our main work is propaganda. We remind the Crimeans what their great-grandfathers were like, what values ​​our glorious ancestors had in honor. So that they can see what they have become. And they drew the right conclusions. To make it easier to carry out our tasks, like-minded people have united in monarchist organizations that are sympathetic to this idea. There are several such in Crimea - some Cossack associations, branches of the Union of the Russian People and the Russian Imperial Union-Order (RISO), as well as ours, the very first monarchical, officially legalized organization on the peninsula - the "Union of Zealots for the Memory of Emperor Nicholas II" "
Monarchists in Crimea.

Who and how unleashed terror in Soviet Russia.

V. I. Lenin in September 1917 noted that the Soviet government had popular support, and the internal opposition had no chance of unleashing a Civil War in Russia.

“... The alliance of the Bolsheviks with the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks against the Cadets, against the bourgeoisie has not yet been tested. ... If there is an absolutely indisputable, absolutely proven by facts lesson of the revolution, then only the one that the exclusively alliance of the Bolsheviks with the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, the exclusively immediate transfer of all power to the soviets would make a civil war in Russia impossible. For against such an alliance, against the Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies, no civil war started by the bourgeoisie is unthinkable ... "

Lenin V.I. Russian Revolution and Civil War. They are frightened by the civil war / "Working Way". No. 12, 29 (16) September 1917 / PSS. T. 34 S. 221-222).

On November 1, 1917, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee adopted a resolution "On the terms of an agreement with other parties." The program for the democratization of Russia and the creation of a "homogeneous socialist government", a "working people's government" was thwarted by the internal opposition responsible for unleashing the Civil War.

But first, let's pay attention to the Leninist state policy, which, ahead of its time, fully corresponded to today's international law:

"Homogeneous socialist government"(will be recognized by N. S. Khrushchev at the XX Congress of the CPSU in 1956 and elevated to the principle of international law - in relation to Yugoslavia and other countries of people's democracy);

Peace Decree. He proclaimed the goal of the new government to be the immediate conclusion by all warring peoples and their governments of a just democratic peace without annexations and indemnities, and the rejection of secret diplomacy. Today, the peaceful settlement of interstate conflicts, the inviolability of state borders is the main norm of international law. Most of all, the Entente countries and the United States, which were already preparing the Versailles agreements on a new division of spheres of influence in a world where there was no place for Russia, neither with the tsar nor with the communists, were not interested in this treaty.

Land Decree. Abolished private ownership of land and transferred it to the disposal of rural labor communities. On the lands of the landlords, state farms were formed, which were to become highly technical, exemplary large farms-factories for the production of agricultural products.

At the beginning of the 20th century, 30,000 landowner families (70 million acres) owned half of Russia's arable land; the second half - 10.5 million peasant farms (75 million acres).

However, even in the peasant village the land was concentrated in the hands of a handful of kulaks. 15% of the rich owned 47% of the peasant land fund.

The impoverished medieval village, horseless, landless, was completely ruined during the First World War by the constant mobilization of men and the expropriation of horses and meat and dairy cattle for the needs of the war. The only effective way out of the economic crisis was the socialization of the land, its transfer to the peasants.

Lenin and Stalin in the office in the Kremlin talking with the peasants. Artist I. E. Grabar. 1938. GIM.

In the future, the technical modernization of agriculture will require the creation of large farms equipped with tractors, combine harvesters and automobiles. But in this situation, the socialization of the land was the right economic and political decision. The peasant majority of the country's population supported the new government and moved away from revolutionary activity, plunged into work until the Civil War was unleashed, and the White Guards began to return the land to the old owners - kulaks and landowners. The peasants again found themselves without work, without land in most of the country, where Kolchak and other white armies were in charge.

Under the auspices of Great Britain and France, after the collapse of the Russian Empire, a group of limitrophe (border) states was created along the European borders of Soviet Russia, formed from the outskirts of the former Tsarist Russia, mainly from the western provinces (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Finland).

In Central Europe, Czechoslovakia was created from the Czech Republic and Slovakia at Versailles, in the Balkans from Serbia and Croatia - the Kingdom of Serbs and Croats (KSH, later - Yugoslavia). A lot of work was done to separate Ukraine and Belarus and withdraw them from Russia.

All these territories in the future will be used by Hitler as limitrophe states for Nazi propaganda and to create a “fifth column” in them. In the 1990s, with the collapse of the USSR and the world system of socialism, the term "limitroph" came to life again: the United States and NATO countries stepped up their activities to create a belt of states with an anti-Russian orientation from the former Soviet republics and CMEA countries. Since the 1990s, the term has become widely used again in Western plans for the dismemberment of the Russian Federation.

Constitution of the RSFSR of 1918

The basic law does not contain any legal provisions on the persecution of the church, priests, believing citizens:

1. The church is separated from the state.

2. Within the Republic, it is forbidden to make any local laws or regulations that would restrict or restrict the freedom of conscience, or establish any advantages or privileges on the basis of the religious affiliation of citizens.

3. Every citizen can profess any religion or none. Any right deprivation associated with the confession of any faith or non-profession of any faith is canceled.

Note. From all official acts, any indication of religious affiliation and non-affiliation of citizens is eliminated.

4. The actions of state and other public-legal public institutions are not accompanied by any religious rites or ceremonies.

5. The free performance of religious rites is ensured insofar as they do not violate public order and are not accompanied by encroachments on the rights of citizens of the Soviet Republic.

Local authorities have the right to take all necessary measures to ensure public order and security in these cases.

6. No one can, referring to their religious views, evade the performance of their civic duties.

Exceptions to this provision, subject to the replacement of one civil duty by another, are allowed in each individual case by decision of the people's court.

7. Religious oath or oath is revoked.

In necessary cases, only a solemn promise is given.

8. Civil status acts are carried out exclusively by the civil authority: the departments of registration of marriages and births.

9. The school is separated from the church.

The teaching of religious beliefs in all state and public, as well as private educational institutions where general education subjects are taught, is not allowed.

Citizens can teach and learn religion privately.

10. All ecclesiastical and religious societies are subject to the general provisions on private societies and associations, and do not enjoy any advantages and subsidies either from the state or from its local autonomous and self-governing institutions.

11. Coercive collection of dues and taxes in favor of church and religious societies, as well as measures of coercion or punishment on the part of these societies over their members, are not allowed.

12. No ecclesiastical and religious societies have the right to own property. They do not have legal personality.

13. All property of the church and religious societies existing in Russia is declared to be the property of the people.

Buildings and objects intended specifically for liturgical purposes are given, by special decrees of local or central state authorities, for the free use of the respective religious societies.

The beginning of the confrontation

The Western trace in the organization of provocations in the capital was quickly discovered. On December 6, 1917, Vladimir Dmitrievich Bonch-Bruevich, at a meeting of the Petrograd Soviet, reported on the "battle groups" prepared to induce unrest in the capital:

Vladimir Dmitrievich Bonch-Bruevich (1873-1955).
Administrator of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR (1917-1920)
Bolshevik. Doctor of Historical Sciences

When interviewing the detained individual military ranks, it turned out that they were soldered and organized from them into a special institute of instigators of brothers to drink, for which they paid 15 rubles a day; ... Petrograd is flooded with a flurry of drunken debacles. ... The devastation began with small fruit stores, followed by the warehouses of Koehler and Petrov, a large ready-made dress store. In one half hour, we received 11 notices of pogroms and barely had time to send military units to the places ... ".

Suspicious individuals were handing out leaflets that outwardly resembled Bolshevik ones, with headlines: "Proletarians of all countries, unite!" and ending: "Down with imperialism and its lackeys!", "Long live the workers' revolution and the world proletariat!". In terms of content, these were provocative leaflets containing Black Hundred ideas. The leaflets incited soldiers, sailors, workers to smash wine warehouses and in every possible way to disorganize the normal life of the capital.

“The detainees turned out to be employees of the reactionary newspaper Novaya Rus. Under the threat of being shot, they informed us that they had been sent by an organization and gave us the addresses. When we went to the first address, we came across 20,000 copies of this appeal... We moved on and arrested many people. ... It is clear that we are dealing with a conspiracy of counter-revolution on an all-Russian scale, organized extremely widely with large amounts of money, set out to strangle ... the revolution.
Golinkov D. L. The collapse of the anti-Soviet underground in the USSR (1917-1925). M.: Politizdat, 1975. T. 1. S. 23.

In the early years of Soviet power, the danger came not from the Bolsheviks, but from the anarchist gangs supported by the Allies, the British ambassador Robert Bruce Lockhart argued in his memoirs:

Robert Hamilton Bruce Lockhart
(1887-1970), British diplomat,
secret agent, journalist, writer.

"Terror did not yet exist, it was impossible even to say that the population was afraid of the Bolsheviks." Petersburg life in those weeks had a rather peculiar character. ... The newspapers of the Bolshevik opponents were still published, and the politics of the Soviets were subjected to the most severe attacks in them ... In this early era of Bolshevism, the danger to bodily integrity and life came not from the ruling party, but from anarchist gangs. ... The allies are also to blame for the civil war. ... With our policy, we have contributed to the intensification of terror and increased bloodshed. ... Alekseev, Denikin, Kornilov, Wrangel did their best to overthrow the Bolsheviks. ... For this purpose, they, without support from abroad, were too weak, because in their own country they found support only in the officer corps, which in itself was already very weakened ”
Storm over Russia. Confessions of an English diplomat. - S. 227-234.

From January to September 1918, Lockhart was the head of a special British mission to the Soviet government, then he was arrested. In October 1918, he was expelled from Soviet Russia for participating in the "conspiracy of three ambassadors." Robert Bruce Jr., his son, wrote that his father collected from Russian capitalists through an English firm about 8,400,000 rubles, which were used to finance subversive activities against Soviet Russia. //“The ace of spies”, London, 1967. P. 74). Cit. Quoted from: Golinkov D. L. The truth about the enemies of the people. Moscow: Algorithm, 2006.

At the beginning of World War II, Lockhart was one of the heads of the political intelligence department of the British Foreign Office (1939-1940) and director of the Political Warfare Committee, which was in charge of propaganda and intelligence (1941-1945).

Menshevik D.Yu. Dalin wrote in exile in 1922:

“The Soviet system existed, but without terror, the civil war gave impetus to its development. ... The Bolsheviks did not immediately embark on the path of terror, for half a year the opposition press continued to appear, not only socialist, but also openly bourgeois. The first case of the death penalty took place only in May 1918. Everyone who wanted to speak at the meetings, almost without the risk of getting into the Cheka.

On December 7 (20), 1917, the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage (VChK) was created under the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR. The Cheka was headed by Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky. Dzerzhinsky considered devotion to revolutionary ideals, honesty, restraint and politeness to be the necessary qualities of Chekists.

Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky (1877-1926) Chairman of the Cheka under the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR

“The invasion of a private apartment by armed people and the deprivation of liberty of guilty people is an evil, which even at the present time must still be resorted to in order for good and truth to triumph. But we must always remember that this is evil, that our task is to use evil to eradicate the need to resort to this means in the future.
Therefore, let all those who are instructed to conduct a search, deprive a person of liberty and keep them in prison, treat people arrested and searched with care, let them be much more polite with them than even with a loved one, remembering that a person deprived of liberty cannot defend himself. and that he is in our power. Everyone must remember that he is a representative of the Soviet government - workers and peasants, and that every shout of his, rudeness, immodesty, impoliteness is a stain that falls on this government.
"one. The weapon is taken out only if danger threatens. 2. The treatment of those arrested and their families should be the most polite, no moralizing and shouting are unacceptable. 3. Responsibility for the search and behavior falls on everyone from the outfit. 4. Threats with a revolver and in general with any kind of weapon are unacceptable.
Those guilty of violating this instruction are subject to arrest for up to three months, removal from the commission and expulsion from Moscow.Draft instruction of the Cheka on the conduct of searches and arrests // Historical archive. 1958. No. 1. S. 5–6.

Western services, relying on Socialist-Revolutionary-anarchist elements, posed a serious threat to Russia, inflating chaos and banditry in the country as opposed to the creative policy of the new government.

The former Minister of War of the Provisional Government and Kolchakist A.I. Verkhovsky joined the Red Army in 1919. // "On a difficult pass".

According to the official version, he went over to the side of the "Reds" in 1922. In his memoirs, Verkhovsky wrote that he was a member of the Union for the Revival of Russia, which had a military organization that trained personnel for anti-Soviet armed uprisings, which was financed by the "allies".

Alexander Ivanovich Verkhovsky (1886-1938)

“In March 1918, I was personally invited by the Union for the Revival of Russia to join the military headquarters of the Union. The military headquarters was an organization that had the goal of organizing an uprising against Soviet power ... The military headquarters had connections with the allied missions in Petrograd. General Suvorov was in charge of relations with the allied missions... Representatives of the allied missions were interested in my assessment of the situation from the point of view of the possibility of restoring... the front against Germany. I had conversations on this subject with General Nissel, the representative of the French mission. The military headquarters, through the cashier of the headquarters of Suvorov, received funds from allied missions.

In May 1918 he was arrested, but soon released. After that he served in the Red Army. // /

Vasily Ivanovich Ignatiev (1874-1959)

The testimonies of A. I. Verkhovsky are fully consistent with the memoirs of another figure in the Union for the Revival of Russia, V. I. Ignatiev (1874-1959, died in Chile).

In the first part of his memoirs "Some Facts and Results of the Four Years of the Civil War (1917-1921)", published in Moscow in 1922, he confirms that the source of the organization's funds was "exclusively allied". Ignatiev received the first amount from foreign sources from General A.V. Gerua, to whom General M.N. Suvorov sent him. From a conversation with Gerua, he learned that the general was instructed to send officers to the Murmansk region at the disposal of the English general F. Poole, and that funds had been allocated to him for this cause. Ignatiev received a certain amount from Gerua, then received money from one agent of the French mission - 30 thousand rubles.

An espionage group was operating in Petrograd, headed by the sanitary doctor V.P. Kovalevsky. She also sent officers, mostly guards, to the English General Poole in Arkhangelsk through Vologda. The group called for the establishment of a military dictatorship in Russia and was supported by British funds. The representative of this group, the English agent Captain G. E. Chaplin, worked in Arkhangelsk under the name Thomson.

December 13, 1918 Kovalevsky was shot on charges of creating a military organization associated with the British mission. On January 5, 1918, the Union for the Defense of the Constituent Assembly was preparing a coup d'etat, which prevented the Cheka. The Constituent Assembly was dispersed. The English plan failed. Detailed information about the activities of the Socialist-Revolutionaries in the various committees "Salvation of the Motherland and the Revolution", "Protection of the Constituent Assembly" and others disclosed by the Cheka was given already in 1927 by Vera Vladimirova in her book "The Year of Service of the "Socialists" to the Capitalists. Essays on history, counter-revolution in 1918".

Today, in liberal literature, the prevention of a coup d'état in early January 1918 and the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly is put forward as a justification for the undemocratic policy of the Bolsheviks, which led to the civil war. Dzerzhinsky was aware of the counter-revolutionary activities of the socialists, mainly the Socialist-Revolutionaries; their connections with the British services, about the flows of their financing by the Allies.

Venedikt Alexandrovich Myakotin (1867, Gatchina - 1937, Prague)

Russian historian and politician V. A. Myakotin, one of the founders and leaders of the Union for the Revival of Russia, also published his memoirs in 1923 in Prague “From the recent past. On the other side." According to his story, relations with the diplomatic representatives of the allies were conducted by members of the Union for the Revival of Russia, specially authorized for this. These communications were carried out through the French ambassador Noulens. Later, when the ambassadors left for Vologda, through the French consul Grenard. The French financed the "Union", but Noulens directly stated that "the allies, in fact, do not need the assistance of Russian political organizations" and may well land their troops in Russia themselves. // Golinkov D. L. Secret operations of the Cheka

The civil war and the "Red Terror" in Soviet Russia were provoked by British services, with the active support of British Prime Minister Lloyd George and US President Woodrow Wilson.

The US President personally oversaw the work of agents to discredit the Soviet government, and above all, the young government headed by Lenin, both in the West and in Russia.

In October 1918, on the direct orders of Woodrow Wilson, Washington published "The Sisson Documents", allegedly proving that the Bolshevik leadership consisted of direct agents of Germany, controlled by the directives of the German General Staff. "Documents" was allegedly acquired at the end of 1917 by Edgar Sisson, special envoy of the US President in Russia, for 25 thousand dollars.

"Documents" was fabricated by the Polish journalist Ferdinand Ossendowski. They allowed the myth to be spread throughout Europe about the leader of the Soviet state, Lenin, who allegedly "made a revolution with German money."

Sisson's mission went "brilliantly". He "obtained" 68 documents, some of which allegedly confirmed the existence of Lenin's connection with the Germans and even the direct dependence of the Council of People's Commissars on the Government of Kaiser Germany until the spring of 1918. More information about forged documents can be found on the website of academician Yu. K. Begunov.

Forgery continues to spread in modern Russia. So, in 2005, the documentary film “Secrets of Intelligence. Revolution in a suitcase.

Lenin:

“We are reproached that we are arresting. Yes, we are arresting. ... We are reproached for using terror, but the terror that the French revolutionaries used, who guillotined unarmed people, we do not use and, I hope, will not use. And, I hope, we will not use it, because we have power behind us. When we were arresting you, we said that we would let you go if you would sign that you would not sabotage. And such a subscription is given.

"Soviet terror" was a retaliatory, defensive, and therefore just measure against the armed campaign of the interventionists, against the actions of the White Guards, against the white terror planned on a large scale by the aggressor states.

The mutiny of the Czechoslovak corps in support of the white movement in May 1918 had the goal of uniting the conspirators "in order to cut off the Siberian road, suspend the delivery of Siberian grain and starve the Soviet Republic":

“The Ural bandit Dutov, the steppe colonel Ivanov, Czechoslovaks, fugitive Russian officers, agents of Anglo-French imperialism, former landowners and Siberian kulaks united in one sacred alliance against the workers and peasants. If this union had won, rivers of people's blood would have flowed, and the power of the monarchy and the bourgeoisie would have been restored again on Russian soil. ... In order to ... sweep away bourgeois treason from the face of the earth and ensure the Great Siberian Road from further ... assassination attempts, the Council of People's Commissars considers it necessary to take exceptional measures.

Among them it was proposed:

“All Soviets are charged with the duty of vigilant supervision of the local bourgeoisie and severe reprisals against conspirators ... Officers-conspirators, traitors, accomplices of Skoropadsky, Krasnov, Siberian colonel Ivanov, must be mercilessly exterminated ... Down with traitorous rapists! Death to the enemies of the people!”

One of the instigators of the uprising Radol Gaida, commander of the Czechoslovak troops, with his guards

With the beginning of the Civil War and the intervention, the "Red Terror" changed its character, and the Cheka began to apply an extrajudicial measure - execution on the spot. The Cheka became not only an organ of search and inquiry, but also a direct reprisal against the most dangerous criminals. All previous revolutions used this legal right to defend themselves: the English, American and French, during which the bourgeoisie established its power. And no one, neither England, nor the United States, nor France, is now reproaching this.

On January 1, 1918, an attempt was made on Lenin's life. At about 7:30 p.m., the car carrying Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, Maria Ilyinichna Ulyanova and the secretary of the Swiss Social Democratic Party Friedrich Platten was fired upon by terrorists on the Simeonovsky bridge across the Fontanka.

The attempt was not solved. In the same month, the Extraordinary Commission for the Protection of the City of Petrograd, headed by Kliment Efremovich Voroshilov, began to receive information about the impending new attempt on Lenin's life, about surveillance of the apartments of senior officials, including Bonch-Bruevich.

In mid-January, the Cavalier of St. George Ya. N. Spiridonov came to Bonch-Bruevich and said that he was instructed to track down and take Lenin alive (or kill) and promised 20 thousand rubles for this. It turned out that the terrorist acts were developed by members of the "Petrograd Union of Knights of St. George." Lenin gave the order: “The matter is to be stopped. Release. Send to the front.

On June 21, 1918, the revolutionary tribunal of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee in a public open meeting passed the first death sentence.

On August 30, 1918, a new assassination attempt was made on Lenin at the Michelson plant, committed, according to the official version, by the Social Revolutionary Fanny Kaplan. The question of the organizers and participants of the assassination, as well as the involvement of Fanny Kaplan, remains unclear to this day.

Lenin left for the plant without guards, and there were no guards at the factory itself. Immediately after the assassination attempt, the leader was unconscious; Doctors discovered that he had a dangerous wound in the neck under the jaw, blood got into the lung. The second bullet hit him in the arm, and the third one hit the woman who was talking to Lenin at the moment the shooting started.

Moses Solomonovich Uritsky (1873-1918). Chairman of the Petrograd Cheka

On the morning of the same day, the chairman of the Petrograd Cheka, Uritsky, who was an opponent of executions in general, was killed in Petrograd.

On September 2, 1918, Yakov Sverdlov announced the Red Terror in an appeal to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee as a response to the assassination attempt on Lenin on August 30 and the murder on the same day of the chairman of the Petrograd Cheka, Uritsky (the decision was confirmed by a resolution of the Council of People's Commissars of September 5, 1918, signed by People's Commissar of Justice D.I. Kursky, People's Commissar of Internal Affairs G.I. Petrovsky, and the head of the Council of People's Commissars V.D. Bonch-Bruyevich).

Below we will consider in detail that the methods of the red and white terror differed.

The Red Terror was declared as one of the types of war against combat units of the enemies of the revolution and interventionists, especially dangerous terrorists, spies, saboteurs, participants in the preparation of sabotage, propagandists, criminals, and concealers. The white terror rather resembled genocide, which is usually used by foreign occupiers to terrify the peaceful indigenous population in order to warn them against resistance.

Siberian old-timers still remember the horrors of the White Terror. Kolchakites were distinguished by special bestial cruelty. They burned villages, raped, tortured and buried the local civilians alive.

One of the characteristic examples of Kolchak's genocide is the activity of Surov's punitive detachment, which was sent to suppress a peasant uprising in the village of Ksenyevka.

harshness

Surov Vladimir Aleksandrovich was born in 1892, graduated from the four-year city school.

In October 1913, Surov was enlisted in the state militia of the second category. In 1915, he was called up for mobilization, hitting the 9th Siberian Rifle Reserve Battalion, enrolled in the Irkutsk school of ensigns. On April 1, 1916, he was promoted to ensign of the army infantry and sent to the 4th Siberian reserve rifle brigade.

In June 1918, Surov was an assistant to the commander of the detachment of A. T. Aldmanovich, who was engaged in cleaning the southern districts of the Tomsk province from the Red Guards. In 1919, Captain Surov led a punitive detachment in the Chulym region. Later he was promoted to lieutenant colonel.

On May 4, 1919, at 15:00, Surov, at the head of a detachment of punishers, set out from the Cathedral Square of Tomsk along the Irkutsk tract. Under his command were 32 officers, 46 sabers (horsemen) and 291 infantry riflemen with three machine guns. The detachment consisted of three shock groups, a team of foot scouts, hussars, as well as mounted and foot police.

Surov's punitive detachment

The very next day at 16 o'clock, the first battle took place near Surov - near the village of Novo-Arkhangelsky. Punishers made arrests in the village and seized weapons, then broke into the village of Latatsky.

On May 7, the Surovites occupied the villages of Klyuevsky, Kaibinsky, and at 19:00, after a two-hour battle, the village of Malo-Zhirovo, seized the documents of the rebels, which dealt with the restoration of Soviet power in the territory covered by the peasant uprising and the mobilization of men born in 1897 into the "people's army" .

On May 9, 1919, the punishers occupied Voronino-Pashnya, as well as the villages of Tikhomirovsky and Troitsky, without a fight.

On May 10, the Surovites occupied the village of Novo-Kuskovo, 35 people - organizers and members of the Novo-Kuskovo Council of Deputies were executed. The detachment of the commander of the partisan detachment, member of the Tomsk Soviet Ivan Sergeevich Tolkunov (pseudonym - Goncharov) retreated to the village of Ksenevsky and the village of Kazanskoye.

Following them, the 2nd strike group was sent (each strike group had about 100 people) with a team of foot scouts, the 3rd strike group went to the villages of Kainary, Novo-Pokrovsky (Kuliary), Ivano-Bogoslovsky and Boroksky.

Punishers burned the villages of Kulyary, Tatars.

Surovtsy defeated Ksenievka, burned houses of partisans, killed their families. A lot of people were whipped.

From May 11 to May 14, the Surovites occupied the village of Kazanskoye and moved to the village of Chelbakovsky, where, according to intelligence, there were 450 fighters of the partisan detachment. There was a fight with the use of grenades, bayonets, to hand-to-hand combat.

The Reds, taking advantage of the wind blowing towards the punishers, lit dry grass and created a smokescreen that allowed them to regroup on the flanks. Meanwhile, the Surovites brought up reinforcements and machine guns and, after a 3.5-hour battle, threw back the partisans, who suffered huge losses in killed and wounded.

A detachment of Reds in the amount of 80-100 people managed to cross to the other side of the Chulym.

12 May total torture residents were subjected to Kazanka and the village of Chelbak . 22 people were executed for "belonging to a revolutionary committee"; them property and houses were burned.

Surov reported to the command: “A bullet foundry was discovered in Ksenievsky, participants in the amount of 12 people were brought to court-martial. The peasant Pleshkov, a former member of the executive committee of the Council of Soldiers' and Workers' Deputies of the city of Tomsk, was arrested and shot.

On May 15, the 1st shock group of the Surov detachment moved to the village of Filimonovsky, the village of Mitrofanovskoye, the Karakolsky yurts, the village of Mikhailovsky, the village of Novikovsky and back through the village of Antonovsky, the village of Mitrofanovskoye and the village of Filimonovsky.

Made arrests persons involved in Bolshevism. Surovtsy established contact with another punitive detachment under the command of Captain Orlov, who operated in neighboring volosts.

On May 16, Surov received news that a partisan detachment of Peter Lubkov, numbering three hundred people, was moving into the area of ​​the peasant uprising. In the village of Khaldeevo, the Lubkovites attacked a transport with wounded White Guards from Surov's detachment, and in the village of Vorono-Pashnya they fired at Orlov's detachment.

On the night of May 17, Surov, with two shock groups, set out for the village of Tikhomirovsky, where the Lubkovites settled down to spend the night. In battle, the partisans were defeated, losing part of the convoy and prisoners.

Then Surov crossed on the steamer "Ermak" to the opposite bank of the Chulym to pursue the "small gangs". Having shot down the guards of the rebels, the Surovites went through 18 settlements for several days, including the villages of Sakhalin, Uzen, Makarovsky, Tsaritsynsky, Voznesensky, Lomovitsky, the village of Rozhdestvenskoye, the village of Sergeevo, the yurts of Burbina, Ezhi and others.

By the end of May 1919, the peasant uprising was crushed. But the partisan detachment created by Goncharov during the days of the uprising continued to operate. Having united with the Lubkov detachment, the Goncharov detachment operated on the territory of the Tomsk and Mariinsky districts.

Pyotr Kuzmich Lubkov. A peasant from the village of Svyatoslavka, Malo-Sandy volost, Mariinsky district, Tomsk province. In May 1917, he returned from the front of the First World War as a Knight of St. George with the rank of senior non-commissioned officer. In October 1917, the Svyatoslav peasants created a Council of Deputies in the village, which included Lubkov. In the spring of 1918, white punishers came to the village of Svyatoslavka and arrested Pyotr Lubkov and his brother Ignat, but they managed to escape and joined the partisan movement. In 1919, Lubkov joined the Red Army, participated in the battles for the liberation of Eastern Siberia, and worked in the Cheka. In September 1920, he raised an uprising against the surplus and hid in the taiga. June 23, 1921 liquidated as a result of the operation of the Cheka. http://svyatoslavka.ucoz.ru/in…

On June 24, Lubkov's detachment attacked the Izhmorka station and the railway bridge across the Yaya River. The detachment of Czechoslovaks guarding them was defeated. The equipment of the station was put out of action, trophies were captured - rifles, cartridges, grenades, many sets of uniforms. However, when retreating, near the village of Black River, the partisans were overtaken by whites.

Lubkovites retreated to Mikhailovka, Goncharov's detachment also approached here. The Whites attacked the combined forces of the partisans from Gagarino. Goncharov led his men to attack the bridge across the river.

On June 25, in the village of Mikhailovka, a large detachment of punishers surrounded a handful of brave men who had escaped forward, led by Goncharov. In an unequal battle, 20 partisans died here, including the commander of the partisan detachment, member of the Tomsk Soviet, Ivan Sergeevich Tolkunov-Goncharov. V. Zworykin became the commander of the detachment. Lubkov was seriously wounded in battle.

The historical memory of the white punishers and red partisans has been preserved in the form of monuments in the settlements of the Asinovsky district of the Tomsk region.

"The mass grave of partisans, underground fighters and victims of white terror." Railway Station Square in Asino, Tomsk Region. On the pedestal is the inscription "Eternal glory to the partisans of the Civil War." https://kozyukova.jimdo.com/p…

Mass grave of partisans, supporters of the Soviet government, who helped the partisans. With. Kazanka of the Tomsk region. http://memorials.tomsk.ru/news…
The mass grave of the partisans who died in 1919 in the village. Novokuskovo, Tomsk region.

Head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs V.N. Pepelyaev, having learned about the actions of V.A. Surov and his detachment, telegraphed the manager of the Tomsk province B.M. Mikhailovsky:

“I read your report with satisfaction ... Please convey my gratitude to Captain Surov. Convey my regards and my gratitude to the ranks of the police. Present generously to the benefits of the victims and those who distinguished themselves ... I look forward to equally energetic actions in all areas.

Surov with the remnants of the Kolchak army retreated first to Transbaikalia, and then ended up in exile in China. In 1922, he volunteered for the Siberian volunteer squad, formed by General A.N. Pepelyaev. In 1924 he was arrested and shot.

From the decision of the court over Surov:

“Captain Surov in the early days of May 1919, received command of the expeditionary-punitive detachments, whose tasks included a merciless fight against the insurgent movement. From that time on, the dark days of harshness hung over the Tomsk province, especially over the Tomsk and Mariinsky districts. The cruelty and inhumanity of Surov had no boundaries: strong and weak, old men and old women, women and children were subjected to torture and torture, flogging, shooting and hanging.

Interventions

Speaking of white terror, it is necessary to take into account: this is terror, which was carried out as part of the intervention of foreign aggressors on the territory of young Soviet Russia.

On March 1, 1918, German troops overthrew Soviet power in Kyiv and moved in the direction of Kharkov, Poltava, Yekaterinoslav, Nikolaev, Kherson and Odessa. The German invaders created the government of General P.P. Skoropadsky and proclaimed him hetman of Ukraine.

Meeting Skoropadsky with Hindenburg at the train station in the German city of Spa, September 1918

On March 5, the Germans under the command of Major General von der Goltz invaded Finland, where they soon overthrew the Finnish Soviet government. On April 18, German troops invaded the Crimea, and on April 30 they captured Sevastopol.

By mid-June, more than 15 thousand German troops with aviation and artillery were in Transcaucasia, including 10 thousand people in Poti and 5 thousand in Tiflis (Tbilisi). Turkish troops have been in Transcaucasia since mid-February.

On May 25, there was a performance of the Czechoslovak Corps, the echelons of which were located between Penza and Vladivostok.

Entente landing in Arkhangelsk, August 1918

American intervention in Vladivostok. August 1918

Japanese occupation units in Vladivostok. 1918

Allied parade in Murmansk in honor of the victory in the First World War. November 1918.

Unloading British tanks in Arkhangelsk

The American invaders are guarding the arrested "bolos" - that's what they called the Bolsheviks. Dvinskoy Bereznik, Vinogradovsky municipal district of the Arkhangelsk region.

A special form of intervention was Russian collaborationism under the guise of a white movement.

Kolchak with foreign allies

Don Ataman Pyotr Krasnov:

“The volunteer army is pure and infallible. But it's me, the Don ataman, with my dirty hands taking German shells and cartridges, washing them in the waves of the quiet Don and handing them clean to the Volunteer Army! The whole shame of this case lies with me!

General Krasnov during the Second World War (from March 30, 1944 - Head of the Main Directorate of Cossack Troops (Hauptverwaltung der Kosakenheere) http://alternathistory.com/pop…

The real genocide of the inhabitants of the Far East was repaired by American invaders.

So, for example, having captured the peasants I. Gonevchuk, S. Gorshkov, P. Oparin and Z. Murashko, the Americans buried alive them for contact with local partisans. And the wife of the partisan E. Boychuk was dealt with as follows: pierced the body with bayonets and drowned in the garbage pit. The peasant Bochkarev was mutilated beyond recognition with bayonets and knives: “The nose, lips, ears were cut off, the jaw was knocked out, the face and eyes were punctured with bayonets, the whole body was cut up.” At st. Sviyagino, in the same brutal way, partisan N. Myasnikov was tortured, who, according to an eyewitness, “first they cut off the ears, then the nose, arms, legs, chopping them alive into pieces».

Killed Bolshevik

“In the spring of 1919, a punitive expedition of interventionists appeared in the village, inflicting reprisals on those who were suspected of sympathizing with the partisans,” testified A. Khortov, a resident of the village of Kharitonovka, Shkotovsky district. - Punishers arrested many peasants as hostages and demanded to hand over the partisans, threatening to shoot(...) The interventionist executioners brutally dealt with the innocent peasant hostages. Among them was my elderly father Philip Hortov. He was brought home covered in blood. He was still alive for several days, repeating all the time: “Why did they torture me, damned animals?!”. The father died, leaving five orphans.

Caption under the photo: “Shot Russian. At post number 1 on January 8, 1919 at 3 am, an enemy patrol of seven people tried to get close to the American post. The village of High Mountain. Ust Padega. River Vaga Village of Visorka Gora, Ust Padenga, Vaga River Column, Russia. Jan. 8, 1919. (Official U.S. Army Signal Corps caption for photo 152821).

Several times American soldiers appeared in our village and each time arrested the inhabitants, looted and killed. In the summer of 1919, American and Japanese punishers staged a public flogging with ramrods and whips peasant Pavel Kuzikov. An American non-commissioned officer stood nearby and, smiling, clicked his camera. Ivan Kravchuk and three other guys from Vladivostok were suspected of having links with the partisans, they tormented for several days. They are knocked out their teeth, cut off their tongues».

"The invaders surrounded the Little Cape and opened fire on the village. Having learned that there were no partisans there, the Americans grew bolder, broke into it, burned down the school. Flogged brutally everyone who fell into their hands. The peasant Cherevatov, like many others, had to be carried home bloodied and unconscious. Brutal harassment was carried out by American infantrymen in the villages of Knevichi, Krolevtsy and other settlements. In front of everyone, an American officer shot several bullets in the head wounded boy Vasily Shemyakin. //https://topwar.ru/14988-zverst…

US Army Colonel Morrow: couldn't sleep without killing someone on this day (...) When our soldiers took the Russians prisoner, they took them to the Andriyanovka station, where the wagons were unloaded, prisoners were taken to huge pits, where they were shot from machine guns».

"Most memorable" for Colonel Morrow was the day "when 1600 people shot delivered in 53 wagons.

In May 1918, a squadron of allied forces of the Entente entered Murmansk for intervention. The crew of the Olympia assigned people to the Anglo-French-American landing force that occupied the city. The Americans created a real Sonderkommando: they hunted the Bolsheviks.

The Japanese interventionists were not inferior in cruelty to the American ones. In January 1919, the Japanese burned the village of Sokhatino, and in February, the village of Ivanovka.

Reporter Yamauchi from the Japanese newspaper Urajio Nippo:

“The village of Ivanovka was surrounded. 60-70 households, of which it consisted, were completely burned, and its inhabitants, including women and children (total 300 people) - captured. Some tried to hide in their homes. And then these houses were set on fire along with the people who were in them».

Only in the first days of April 1920, the Japanese, suddenly violating the armistice agreement, destroyed about 7 thousand people in Vladivostok, Spassk, Nikolsk-Ussuriysk and the surrounding villages.

The interventionists mercilessly plundered all the occupied territories of Russia. They exported metal, coal, bread, machine tools and equipment, engines and furs. They stole civilian ships and steam locomotives. Until October 1918, the Germans exported from Ukraine alone 52,000 tons of grain and fodder, 34,000 tons of sugar, 45 million eggs, 53,000 horses and 39,000 heads of cattle.

In total, more than a million invaders visited Russia - 280 thousand Austro-German, 850 thousand English, American, French and Japanese. The Russian people, according to incomplete data, lost about 8 million killed, tortured in concentration camps, who died of wounds, starvation and epidemics. The material losses of the country, according to experts, amounted to 50 billion gold rubles. //According to varjag_2007

Atrocities of the Whites

Doctor of Historical Sciences Heinrich Ioffe writes in the journal Science and Life No. 12 for 2004 in an article about Denikin:

“In the territories liberated from the Reds, there was a real revanchist coven. The old masters returned, reigned arbitrariness, robberies, terrible Jewish pogroms…».

William Sydney Graves (1865-1940)

“Great murders were committed in Eastern Siberia, but they were not committed by the Bolsheviks, as is commonly thought. I won't be wrong if I say that for every person killed by the Bolsheviks, there were 100 people killed by anti-Bolshevik elements».

Czechoslovak punishers literally wiped out entire towns and villages from the face of the earth. In Yeniseisk alone, for example, more than 700 people were shot for sympathy with the Bolsheviks - almost a tenth of those who lived there. During the suppression of the uprising of the prisoners of the Alexander transit prison in September 1919, the Czechs shot the prisoners point-blank from machine guns and cannons. The massacre lasted three days. About 600 people died at the hands of the executioners.

Concentration camps were set up for those who opposed the occupation or sympathized with the Bolsheviks.

On August 23, 1918, on the island of Mudyug near the Northern Dvina in the Arkhangelsk region, the Entente invaders created a concentration camp for Bolsheviks and sympathizers.

Because of this, Mudyug received the nickname "island of death." On June 2, 1919, the British handed over the concentration camp to the White Guards. By this time, out of 1242 prisoners, 23 had been shot, 310 had died of disease and mistreatment, and more than 150 had become disabled.

After the departure of the Anglo-French interventionists, power in the North of Russia passed into the hands of the White Guard General Yevgeny Miller. He not only continued, but also intensified repression and terror, trying to stop the rapidly developing process of Bolshevization of the population. Their most inhuman personification was the exile-convict prison in Iokanga, which one of the prisoners described as the most brutal, sophisticated method of exterminating people by a slow, painful death:

“The dead lay on the planks together with the living, and the living were no better than the dead: dirty, covered with scabs, in torn rags, decomposing alive, they represented a nightmarish picture.”

Yokang Prison

Model of the Yokang Prison in the Murmansk Museum of Local Lore

By the time Yokangi was liberated from the whites, out of a thousand and a half prisoners, 576 people remained, of which 205 could no longer move.

A system of similar concentration camps was deployed by Admiral Kolchak in Siberia and the Far East. The Kolchak regime imprisoned 914,178 people who rejected the restoration of the pre-revolutionary order. Another 75 thousand people were sitting in white Siberia. Kolchak stole over 520 thousand prisoners for slave, almost unpaid labor in enterprises and in agriculture.

The bodies of workers and peasants shot by Kolchak

When the White Guards began to suffer defeat from the Red Army in the autumn of 1918, on the Eastern Front, to Siberia, and then to the Far East, barges and death trains with prisoners of prisons and concentration camps were drawn.

When the death trains were in Primorye, they were visited by members of the American Red Cross. One of them, Buqueli, wrote in his diary:

fracture

As mentioned above, initially Lenin was determined to release the enemies of the revolution on a subscription with guarantees of non-participation in sabotage. This was due to the phenomenal success of the October Revolution, which spread throughout Russia in four months, thanks to the support of the power of the Soviets by the overwhelming majority of the common people. Lenin hoped that the opponents would realize the irreversibility of the accomplished self-determination of the people and the change in the state system.

However, the brutal white terror and intervention forced the Bolsheviks to change tactics.

Then many enemies of the revolution were released on parole. Among them were Pyotr Krasnov, Vladimir Marushevsky, Vasily Boldyrev, Vladimir Purishkevich, Alexei Nikitin, Kuzma Gvozdev, Semyon Maslov and others.

However, the counter-revolutionaries again unleashed an armed struggle, propaganda, sabotage, terrorist attacks, entered into an alliance of aggressors, which turned out to be the death of several million more citizens for the country during the years of the Civil War and intervention. Then the Soviet leadership decided to change tactics, although we emphasize once again that this measure was exclusively retaliatory.

Red terror

The Red Terror was aimed at those who purposefully acted against the authorities and were regulated by certain principles: there had to be a rationale and a public announcement of the massacre.

Let us turn, following the main scientific principle, to historical documents:

If you carefully study the newspaper clippings of those years, we are always talking about enemy combat units: those who are waging a specific struggle against the new state, participating in the white movement, or committing other counter-revolutionary crimes prohibited by law.

Let us also pay attention to the method of carrying out terror. This is, as a rule, a court-martial, that is, execution on the spot. Google, on the other hand, searches for “red terror” and gives out child victims and sadistic pictures.

True, it is not clear on the basis of what the photographs of dug up corpses and severed fingers on the bodies of old women are attributed to the Red Terror, that is, the actions of the Chekists.

This may well be nothing more than evidence of the brutal chaos of those years. The old government collapsed in the country, and the new one still did not control everything. Forest bandits, nationalists, city gangs and marauders were operating. Millions of people returned from the war fronts demoralized. The emperor, who declared war, renounced his country, and the conspirators, who accepted the renunciation, treacherously destroyed the army right during the fighting outside their native lands.

As a result, Russia not only did not receive the Bosporus and Dardanelles promised by the allies, but also abandoned all the conquests of the soldiers of the First World War. Why did almost three million Russians die and seven million were wounded or taken prisoner?

Many became marginalized, poverty and ruin reigned everywhere, and millions of uncontrolled weapons walked around the country, the large-scale production of which was launched by the First World War.

Unlike Kolchak's punishers, who burn villages, torture and kill local men, women, children, the Chekists look like real fighters for establishing order in the newly established state. We will not take on the role of judges here, but at least in the context of what is happening in the country, described in detail above, such a struggle may seem justified.

Chekists-Red Guards of the railway junction st. Chrysostom. 1919

Various cultural and educational societies, sponsored by the Soros, MacArthur, US government and others, have said a lot about the Red Terror.

Now let's give the floor to the official position of the Soviet government.

As we can see, there is no question of any “billions of victims of Bolshevism”, which liberal human rights activists are constantly talking about.

Nevertheless, let us briefly dwell on how anti-Soviet fables are created, using one specific example.

There is such a site "Historical memory". Its focus can be judged from its description:

Many of the problems of modern Russian society that interest us are mentioned here: the supernatural interest in “victims of the regime”, and “reconciliation”, and the Yeltsin Center, and the Higher School of Economics.

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin taught to see the interests of certain classes behind any activity:

“People have always been and always will be stupid victims of deceit and self-deception in politics until they learn to look for the interests of certain classes behind any moral, religious, political, social phrases, statements, promises”

//Lenin V.I. Three sources and three components of Marxism // Complete. coll. op. - T. 23. - S. 47.

In this vein, the partners of the mentioned Internet portal are interesting.

Special gratitude for participation in the creation of the site is expressed to the oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov.

Here is a typical site content:

Below the photo is a caption:

In August 1918, after the assassination attempt on Lenin and the murder of Uritsky, the Bolsheviks announced an act of retribution in the country - the Red Terror. Rybinsk did not stand aside either. On September 4, 1918, a formidable notice from the Rybinsk district military commissariat appeared in the newspaper Izvestia of the Rybinsk Council of Workers, Soldiers and Red Army Deputies: “Red bloody terror is declared to everyone who lives on capital, exploiting the labor of others! The trial of the traitors will be short and merciless - in 24 hours the sentence and execution!

The Rybinsk Uyezd Extraordinary Commission drew up a "planned outfit" for executions. Mass executions continued for two days. Both single and mass executions were carried out. The families of the Rybinsk merchants Polenovs, Durdins, Zherebtsovs, Sadovs and others were shot.

The mechanism for carrying out the Red Terror was as follows. The chairman of the Rybinsk district Cheka, P. Golyshkov, called his subordinates to him and gave the task of shooting specific individuals. A firing squad of 4-5 Chekists gathered. This group went to a specific address, a search was carried out with the confiscation of valuable property. Then the owner of the house or several members of the family were taken out of the house under the pretext of sending them to the Cheka for interrogation. However, the arrested were not taken to the Cheka, but to a forest or a barn, where they were shot. Part of the property of the killed was divided among the members of the firing squad, and part was surrendered to the Cheka. On the way from the place of execution to the Cheka, members of the firing squad went to the house of one of the Chekists, where they got drunk to the point of extreme intoxication. The Red Army soldiers from the military registration and enlistment office, who also participated in the Red Terror, acted in a similar way.

And here's what really happened.

In the execution lists, which were investigated by the local historian, Popenov did not appear. Then the granddaughter of this merchant appeared, who explained literally the following:

The family of Leonty Lukich Popenov, indeed, was shot. But not the whole family, but those who were at home at the time the bandits arrived. The Popenovs' house was located on the left bank of the Volga (opposite Rybinsk). They are photographed at their home. By the way, he survived. A clinic has been located there since the 1930s.
So, the head of the family, who was in the city at that moment, as well as his two daughters, who were in Rybinsk (in the classroom), were lucky to avoid execution. In addition, the eldest daughter who married in January 1911, who was in Kyiv in 1918, was lucky. And one more son survived, because. he served in the army. The First World War and the Civil War ended for him in Serbia.
L. L. Popenov buried his wife and murdered children in the fence of the Church of the Iberian Mother of God, located not far from their house, also on the left bank of the Volga.
The execution of the family of L. L. Popenov took place with the aim of a banal robbery.
L. L. Popenov himself lived to a ripe old age and died at the age of more than 90 years (in 1942), was buried near Moscow.

In this situation, the Rybinsk security officers were credited with something that they did not do, and Popenov lived in Soviet Russia to a ripe old age, and no one executed him just because he was a merchant under the capitalist system.

This is how myths are created.

Instead of a conclusion

After the end of the Civil War, the Red Terror was curtailed.

Is it possible for the Soviet state to return to a new wave of terror? Lenin answered this question prophetically. The first people's commissar of the USSR - to the last people's commissar of the USSR I. V. Stalin:

“Terror was imposed on us by the terrorism of the Entente, when the world-powerful powers attacked us with their hordes, stopping at nothing. We could not have held out even two days if these attempts by the officers and the White Guards had not been answered in a merciless manner, and this meant terror, but this was imposed on us by the terrorist methods of the Entente. And as soon as we won a decisive victory, even before the end of the war, immediately after the capture of Rostov, we abandoned the use of the death penalty ...

And I think, I hope and I am sure that the All-Russian Central Executive Committee will unanimously confirm this measure of the Council of People's Commissars and allow it in such a way that the use of the death penalty in Russia becomes impossible.

It goes without saying that any attempt by the Entente to resume the methods of war will compel us to resume the former terror. We know that we live in a time of predation, when a kind word is not acted upon; this is what we had in mind, and as soon as the decisive struggle was over, we immediately began to cancel the measures that in all other powers are applied indefinitely "

Report on the work of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars // Lenin V. I. PSS vol. 40. P. 101)

It remains for us to study history well in order to clearly determine where good and evil are, and to preserve the values ​​​​of the victory of the great October, which our ancestors achieved with such difficulty and with such losses.