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White terror in Russia.

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 monarchical system grappled with each other, sweeping away everything in their path. Each side organized its own repressive mechanisms to combat the enemy. “Terror”: such a weighty word was used to describe all the interrogations, tortures and executions of that period, both by the Reds and the Whites. Which terror was more terrible and caused more damage to Russia? Website diletant. media talked to historians

Questions:

What terror caused more damage to Russia during 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 that became more widespread during 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 evaluate this tragedy as a national one.

Leonid Mlechin

It just seems that the Reds won the Civil War and the Whites lost. If you think about it, absolutely everyone, the entire Russian people, lost, because incredible cruelty and immorality triumphed, which one way or another engulfed the whole country, and it so happened that the whole country took part in it. The thin veneer of civilization was completely stripped away, and a huge number of people showed incredible cruelty. Trying to measure who is worse is almost impossible. It was simply a disaster for all of Russia, even a greater disaster than the Great Patriotic War. Although more people died during the Great Patriotic War, the country and people did not suffer as much as happened during the Civil War.

Was it a struggle for power and territory or a meaningless class struggle?

Alexander Repnikov

For those who participated in the war, it was clearly not a meaningless struggle. These people themselves died and destroyed others, based on one or another worldview. They had their own ideas about who was friend and who was enemy, who deserved 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 collapsed due to various reasons. So it was no longer a people or a society, we slipped somewhere into a primitive communal system, where the rifle gave birth to power, where all the rules that society created for normal life, disappeared. And when they sorted things out with each other in the caves, there were no rules or morals. Russia found itself in such a terrible state, where everyone fought against each other. It is wrong to assume that the whites fought the reds and that was it. It was a war of all against all, a monstrous catastrophe.

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

Alexander Repnikov

Anti-Bolshevik forces controlled most of the territory. You can talk about Kolchak’s or Denikin’s alternative and so on. There was still variability. It is clear that the greens, of course, could not win, but the reds and whites had historic chances. The difficult question is why the Reds won and not the Whites. It seems to me that the initial message in your question is not very clear, if you assume that if the whites had more “powerful” terror, they could have won. It's not just the factor of violence, repression, etc.

Leonid Mlechin

White had no chance to win for a number of reasons. Firstly, they personified the past. People tend to want something new. Secondly, in a peasant country, whites personified the previous system of land management, where the land belonged 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 held power in the capital.

Is it possible to contrast red and white terror?

Alexander Repnikov

There is a good film by Friedrich Ermler: “Before the Judgment of History,” where you can see a monologue by 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.” The problem I see is that society is “locked” between the red and white alternatives. Either you are red or you are white. Butting heads together is absolutely futile. We must end this war in a hundred years.

Leonid Mlechin

Historians say that the Red Terror was worse because it was carried out by a government agency, but I would consider it my duty to draw attention to the fact that the terrible scale was much greater than just the terror carried out by the two largest opposing forces.

20. Civil war in Russia. The history of homeland

20. Civil war in Russia

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

IN Lately(80-90s) the following problems of the history of the civil war are 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.

The inevitable accompaniment of almost every revolution is armed clashes. Researchers have two approaches to this problem. Some view a civil war as a process of armed struggle between citizens of one country, between different parts of society, while others see a 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. Conflicts in their pure form, where only one of them would be present, are rare. Conflicts prevail where there are many such reasons, but one dominates.

20.1. Causes and 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. impossible to understand taking into account only the class aspect. It was a tightly woven tangle of social, political, national, religious, personal interests and contradictions.

How did the civil war begin in Russia? According to Pitirim Sorokin, usually the fall of a regime is the result not so much of the efforts of revolutionaries as of the decrepitude, impotence and inability of the regime itself to do creative work. To prevent a revolution, the government must undertake certain reforms that would relieve 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 desire and attempts to restore their position are inevitable, while the classes that have come to power try by all means to maintain 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 aggravation of class hatred, the debilitating first World War. The deep roots of the civil war must also be seen in the character October revolution which proclaimed the dictatorship of the proletariat.

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

It should also be recognized that the Brest-Litovsk Treaty offended the patriotic feelings of broad sections of the population, primarily officers and 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 in national relations. White and red governments were forced to fight for the return of 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, it will become

it is clear that its first act was the events in Petrograd at the end of February 1917. In the same series 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 gripped by the euphoria of “red-bow” unity. Despite all this, February marked the beginning of immeasurably deeper upheavals, as well as an escalation of violence. In Petrograd and other areas, a 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 out 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 this situation that the leader of the Socialist Revolutionaries V. Chernov stated when, speaking at the Constituent Assembly on January 5, 1918, he expressed hope for a speedy end to the civil war. It seemed to many that the turbulent period was being replaced by a more peaceful one. However, contrary to these expectations, new centers of struggle continued to emerge, and from mid-1918 the next period of the civil war began, ending only in November 1920 with the defeat of P.N.’s army. Wrangel. However, the civil war continued after this. Its episodes were the Kronstadt uprising of sailors and the Antonovschina of 1921, military operations in Far East, ending in 1922, Basmachi in Central Asia, mostly liquidated by 1926.

20.2. White and red movement. Red and white terror

Currently, 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 of Russia during the civil war is quite complex and requires 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.

Soviet power 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 loosely organized radical revolutionary party of intellectuals, oriented towards workers. 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 had been before, 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 your rights. The Communist Party turned into a military-industrial and administrative apparatus.

The impact of the Civil War on the Bolshevik Party was twofold. Firstly, 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, etc. 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 opposing Soviet power included the large 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 an impulse of convinced and brave officers who fought against the communists, often without any hope of victory. White officers called themselves volunteers, motivated by ideas of patriotism. But at the height of the civil war, the white movement became much more intolerant and 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, or banks. Personifying themselves as a state, they tried to compensate for their practical weakness by brutally imposing their own rules.

If the white movement was unable 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. In their ranks there were enough people capable of establishing 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. There was a huge cultural gap between the workers and peasants, on the one hand, and the Cadets, on the other, and the Russian Revolution was presented to most Cadets as chaos and rebellion. Only the white movement, according to the cadets, could restore Russia.

Finally, the largest group of the Russian population is the wavering part, and often simply passive, observing 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 representatives of the intelligentsia.

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

Analyzing the beginning of the war, it is only with great convention that we can talk about the Bolshevik government of Russia. In fact, in 1918 it controlled only part of the country's territory. However, it declared its readiness to rule the entire country after dissolving the Constituent Assembly. In 1918, the main opponents of the Bolsheviks were not the Whites or the Greens, but the Socialists. The Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries opposed the Bolsheviks under the banner of the Constituent Assembly.

Immediately after the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly, the Socialist Revolutionary Party began preparing for the overthrow of Soviet power. However, soon the leaders of the Socialist Revolutionaries became convinced that there were very few people willing to fight with weapons under the banner of the Constituent Assembly.

A very sensitive blow to attempts to unite anti-Bolshevik forces was dealt from the right, by supporters of the military dictatorship of the generals. Main role Among them were the Cadets, who resolutely opposed the use of the demand for the convening 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 Socialist Revolutionaries dubbed right-wing Bolshevism.

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

The summer defeat of the Bolsheviks as a result of the armed uprising of the Czechoslovak corps created favorable conditions. This is how the anti-Bolshevik front arose in the Volga region and Siberia, and two anti-Bolshevik governments were 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 transferred executive power to the Board of Governors. The birth of Komuch, contrary to the plan for creating the Directory, led to a split in the Socialist Revolutionary elite. Its right-wing leaders, led by N.D. Avksentiev, ignoring Samara, headed to Omsk to prepare from there the formation of an all-Russian coalition government.

Declaring himself the temporary supreme power until the convening of the Constituent Assembly, Komuch called on other governments to recognize him as the center of state. However, other regional governments refused to recognize Komuch's rights as a national center, regarding him as a party Socialist Revolutionary power.

Socialist Revolutionary politicians did not have a specific program for democratic reforms. The issues of the grain monopoly, nationalization and municipalization, and the principles of army organization 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 foreign policy the continuation of the war in the ranks of the Entente was announced. Relying on Western military assistance was one of Komuch's biggest strategic miscalculations. The Bolsheviks used foreign intervention to portray the struggle Soviet power as patriotic, and the actions of the Social Revolutionaries as anti-national. Komuch's broadcast statements about continuing the war with Germany to a victorious end clashed with sentiments masses. Komuch, who did not understand the psychology of the masses, could rely only on the bayonets of the allies.

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

The government's program was formed under significant pressure from its right wing. Already at the beginning of July 1918, the government announced the cancellation of all decrees issued by the Council of People's Commissars, the liquidation of the Soviets, and the return of their estates to the owners 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 meeting, a “temporary all-Russian government” was created. The meeting concluded its work with the election of the Directory. N.D. was elected to the latter. Avksentyev, N.I. Astrov, V.G. Boldyrev, P.V. Vologodsky, N.V. Chaikovsky.

In its political program, the Directory declared the main tasks to be the struggle to overthrow the power of the Bolsheviks, the annulment of the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty and the continuation of the war with Germany. The short-term nature of the new government was emphasized by the clause 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, could now, it seemed, implement an alternative program to the Bolshevik. However, the balance between democracy and dictatorship was upset. The Samara Komuch, representing democracy, was dissolved. The Social Revolutionaries' attempt 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 Socialist Revolutionaries and Czechs took Kazan, the Bolsheviks were unable to recruit more than 20 thousand people into the Red Army. The people's army of the Social Revolutionaries numbered only 30 thousand. During this period, the peasants, having divided the land, ignored the political struggle that parties and governments waged among themselves. However, the establishment by the Bolsheviks of the Pobedy Committees caused the first outbreaks of resistance. From this moment on, there was a direct relationship between the Bolshevik attempts to dominate the countryside and the peasant resistance. The more diligently the Bolsheviks tried to impose “communist relations” in the countryside, the harsher the resistance of the peasants.

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

It seemed that with the nomination of A.V. to the role of dictator. 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 other white fronts, and the Western allies recognized him de facto.

The political and ideological ideas of the leaders and ordinary participants in the white movement were as diverse as the movement itself was socially heterogeneous. 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 monarchical banner and put forward a monarchical program. This also applies to A.V. Kolchak.

What positive things did the Kolchak government promise? Kolchak agreed to convene a new Constituent Assembly after order was restored. 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 allocated land, and differences along religious and national lines 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, Caucasian and Trans-Caspian peoples. Judging by the statements, the Kolchak government took the position of democratic construction. But in reality everything was different.

The most difficult issue for the anti-Bolshevik movement was the agrarian question. Kolchak never managed to solve it. The war with the Bolsheviks, while Kolchak was waging it, could not guarantee the peasants the transfer of landowners' land to them. The same deep internal contradiction marks national policy Kolchak government. Acting under the slogan of a “united and indivisible” Russia, it did not reject “self-determination of peoples” as an ideal.

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

Kolchak’s relations with his allies, who had their own interests in the Far East and Siberia and pursued their own policies, were complex and contradictory. This made the position of the Kolchak government very difficult. A particularly tight knot was tied in relations with Japan. Kolchak did not hide his antipathy towards Japan. The Japanese command responded with active support of the ataman, which flourished in Siberia. Small ambitious people like Semenov and Kalmykov, with the support of the Japanese, managed to create a constant threat to the Omsk government deep in Kolchak’s rear, which weakened it. Semyonov actually cut off Kolchak from the Far East and blocked the supply of weapons, ammunition, and 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 everyone, both comrades and allies,

Kolchak resigned his title Supreme ruler and handed it over to General A.I. Denikin. Having not lived up to 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 in 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 supply 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 fight against the Bolsheviks, the unity of the country and power, the broadest autonomy of the outskirts, loyalty to agreements with allies in the war - these are the main principles of Denikin’s platform. Denikin’s entire ideological and political program was based on the idea of preserving a united and indivisible Russia. The leaders of the white movement rejected any significant concessions to supporters of national independence. All this stood in contrast to the Bolsheviks' promises of unlimited national self-determination. The reckless recognition of the right to secession gave Lenin the opportunity to curb destructive nationalism and raised his prestige much higher than 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 cadets. A.I. Denikin took the position of center. The most clearly reactionary line in the policy of the Denikin regime manifested itself on the agrarian issue. In the territory controlled by Denikin, it was planned to: create and strengthen small and medium-sized peasant farms, destroy latifundia, and leave landowners with small estates on which cultural farming could be conducted. But instead of immediately starting to transfer the landowners' land to the peasants, the commission on the agrarian question began an endless discussion of the draft law on land. As a result, a compromise law was adopted. The transfer of part of the land to the peasants was supposed to begin only after the civil war and end 7 years later. In the meantime, the order for the third sheaf was put into effect, according to which a third of the collected grain went to the landowner. Denikin's land policy was one of the main reasons for his defeat. Of the two evils - Lenin's surplus appropriation system or Denikin's requisition - the peasants preferred the lesser.

A.I. Denikin understood that without the help of his allies, defeat awaited him. Therefore, he himself prepared the text of the political declaration of the commander of the armed forces of southern Russia, sent on April 10, 1919 to the heads of the British, American and French missions. It spoke of convening a national assembly on the basis of universal suffrage, establishing regional autonomy and broad local self-government, and carrying out 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 fall of 1919, a difficult situation developed at the front for Denikin’s army. This was largely due to a change in the mood of the broad peasant masses. Peasants who rebelled in territory controlled by the whites paved the way for the reds. The peasants were a third force and acted against both in their own interests.

In the territories occupied by both the Bolsheviks and the Whites, the peasants fought a 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, the threat from the whites has become less and less, and the Bolsheviks have been more determined to impose their power in the countryside. The peasant war against state power covered all 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 grain-producing regions of Russia and Ukraine were the huge Vendée (in figuratively- counter-revolution. - Note edit.).

In terms of the number of people participating in the peasant war and its impact on the country, this war eclipsed the war between the Bolsheviks and the Whites and surpassed it in duration. The Green movement was the decisive third force in the civil war.

but it did not become an independent center claiming power on more than 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 protected their villages from outsiders. The peasants could not win because they never sought to take over the state. The European concepts of a democratic republic, law and order, equality and parliamentarism, which the Social Revolutionaries introduced into the peasant environment, were beyond the understanding of the peasants.

The mass of peasants participating in the war was heterogeneous. From the peasantry came both rebels, carried away by the idea of “plundering the loot,” and leaders, eager to become new “kings and masters.” 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 standards of behavior. Those who robbed and raped as part of the Bolshevik expeditions were not much different from the rebels of Antonov and Makhno. The essence of the peasant war was 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 concepts of peasant justice and vague echoes of the platforms of political parties. However, any peasant party was associated with statehood, programs and governments, while these concepts were alien to local peasant leaders. The parties pursued a national policy, but the peasants did not rise to the level of awareness of national interests.

One of the reasons that the peasant movement did not win, despite its scope, was the political life inherent in each province, which ran counter to the rest of the country. While in one province the Greens were already defeated, in another the uprising was just beginning. None of the Green leaders took action beyond the immediate area. This spontaneity, scale and breadth contained not only the strength of the movement, but also helplessness in the face of systematic onslaught. The Bolsheviks, who had great power and a huge army, had an overwhelming military superiority over the peasant movement.

Russian peasants lacked political consciousness - they did not care what the form of government in Russia was. 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 considered not as an expression of popular support, but as a manifestation of the still unformed national consciousness and the political backwardness of the majority. Tragedy 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 outrages.

What are the causes of the Red and White Terrors? IN AND. Lenin stated that the Red Terror during 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 basis, was systemic, governmental in nature, white terror was characterized “as excesses based on unbridled power and revenge.” For this reason, the Red Terror was superior to the White Terror in its scale 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 struggle for power. The very comparison “one terror is worse (better) than another” is incorrect. No terror has the 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 the security officer M.I. Latsis that similar orders regarding whites were resorted to in the Red Army.

The quest to understand the origins of the tragedy has given rise to several research explanations. R. Conquest, for example, wrote that in 1918-1820. The 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, is Lenin.

Terror during the war years was carried out not so much by fanatics as by people devoid of any nobility. Let's name just a few 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, assessing the plan born in the depths of this department, instructed: “A wonderful plan! Finish it together with Dzerzhinsky. Under the guise of “greens” (we will blame them later) we will march 10-20 miles and outweigh the kulaks, priests, and landowners. 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 taking advantage of the famine in the Volga region and confiscating church valuables. This action, in his opinion, “must be carried out with merciless determination, certainly stopping at nothing and in the most 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 now necessary to teach this public a lesson so that for several decades they will not dare to think about any resistance.” Stalin perceived Lenin's recognition of state terror as a high-government matter, power based on force and not on law.

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

It is characteristic that the Cheka’s right to extrajudicial killings, composed by L.D. Trotsky, signed by V.I. Lenin; the tribunals were given unlimited rights by the People's Commissar of Justice; The resolution on the Red Terror was endorsed by the People's Commissars of Justice, Internal Affairs and the head 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 an illegal state, where arbitrariness became the norm and terror became the most important tool for maintaining power. Lawlessness was beneficial to the warring parties, as it allowed any actions by reference to the enemy.

The commanders of all the armies appear to have never been subject to any control. It's about about the general savagery of society. The reality of the civil war shows that the differences between good and evil have faded. Human life has become 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 bitterness of society and especially its new ruling class.

Litvin A.L. Red and white terror in Russia 1917-1922//national history. 1993. No. 6. P. 47-48. Right there. pp. 47-48.

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

Much larger number casualties associated with the assassination attempt on Lenin. In the first days of September 1918, 6,185 people were shot, 14,829 were sent to prison, 6,407 were sent to concentration camps, and 4,068 people became hostages. Thus, attempts on the lives of Bolshevik leaders contributed to the rampant mass terror in the country.

At the same time as the Reds, white terror was rampant in the country. And if the Red Terror is considered to be the implementation of state policy, then it should probably be taken into account that 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 by 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. Some of the first departments created by Komuch were state security, military courts, trains and “death barges”. On September 3, 1918, they brutally suppressed the workers' uprising in Kazan.

The political regimes established in Russia in 1918 are quite comparable, first of all, in their predominantly violent methods of resolving issues of organizing 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 talk about support for his policies in Siberia and the Urals, if out of approximately 400 thousand Red partisans of that time, 150 thousand acted against him. The government of A.I. was no exception. Denikin. In 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 and looting; it was under his command that 226 Jewish pogroms took place, as a result of which several thousand people died. White terror turned out to be as pointless for achieving the 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 casualties 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.

20.3. Reasons for the defeat of the white movement. Results of the civil war

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

The white national policy is marked by deep contradictions. Thus, Yudenich’s non-recognition of the already independent Finland and Estonia may have been the main reason for the Whites’ failure on the Western Front. Denikin’s non-recognition of Poland made it a permanent enemy of the whites. All this stood in contrast to the Bolsheviks' promises of unlimited national self-determination.

In a relationship military training, combat experience and technical knowledge, White had all the advantages. But time was working against them. The situation was changing: in order to replenish the dwindling ranks, the whites also had to resort to mobilization.

The white movement did not have widespread social support. The White army was not supplied with everything it needed, so it was forced to take carts, horses, and supplies from the population. Local residents were drafted into the army. All this turned the population against whites. During the war, mass repression and terror were closely intertwined with the dreams of millions of people who believed in new revolutionary ideals, while tens of millions lived nearby, preoccupied with purely everyday problems. The vacillations of the peasantry played a decisive role in the dynamics of the civil war, as did various national movements. During the civil war, some ethnic groups 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 classes; huge demographic losses; gap economic ties and colossal economic devastation;

conditions and experience of the civil war decisively influenced political culture Bolshevism: the curtailment of internal party democracy, the perception by the broad party masses of an attitude towards methods of coercion and violence in achieving political goals - the Bolsheviks are looking for support in the lumpen sections of the population. All this paved the way for the strengthening of repressive elements in state policy. The Civil War is the greatest tragedy in Russian history.

Causes and beginning of the civil war in Russia. White and red movement. Red and white terror. Reasons for the defeat of the white movement. Results of the civil war

The first historiographers of the civil war were its participants. A civil war inevitably divides people into “us” and “strangers”. A kind of barricade lay in understanding and explaining the causes, nature and course of the civil war. Day by day we understand more and more that only an objective look at the civil war on both sides will make it possible to get closer to the 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.

Causes and 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 cannot be understood taking into account the class side alone. It was a tightly woven tangle of social, political, national, religious, personal interests and contradictions.

How did the civil war begin in Russia? According to Pitirim Sorokin, usually the fall of a regime is the result not so much of the efforts of revolutionaries as of the decrepitude, impotence and inability of the regime itself to do creative work. To prevent a revolution, the government must undertake certain reforms that would relieve 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 desire and attempts to restore their position are inevitable, while the classes that have come to power try by all means to maintain 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 aggravation of class hatred and the debilitating 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.

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

White and red movement. Red and white terror

We have now 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.

Soviet power 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 loosely organized radical revolutionary party of intellectuals, oriented towards workers. 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 had been before, 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 turned into a military-industrial and administrative apparatus.

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

If the white movement was unable 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. In their ranks there were enough people capable of establishing 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. There was a huge cultural gap between the workers and peasants, on the one hand, and the Cadets, on the other, and the Russian Revolution was presented to the majority of the Cadets as chaos, a rebellion. Only the white movement, according to the cadets, could restore Russia.

A very sensitive blow to attempts to unite 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 convening 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 Socialist Revolutionaries dubbed right-wing Bolshevism.

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

The most difficult issue for the anti-Bolshevik movement was the agrarian question. Kolchak never managed to solve it. The war with the Bolsheviks, while Kolchak was waging it, could not guarantee the peasants the transfer of landowners' land to them. The national policy of the Kolchak government is marked by the same deep internal contradiction. Acting under the slogan of a “united and indivisible” Russia, it did not reject “self-determination of peoples” as an ideal.

Kolchak resigned the title of Supreme Ruler and handed it over to General A.I. Denikin. Having not lived up to 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 in 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 supply 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.

In the territories occupied by both the Bolsheviks and the Whites, the peasants fought a 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, the threat from the whites has become less and less, and the Bolsheviks have been more determined to impose their power in the countryside. The peasant war against state power covered all 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 grain-producing regions of Russia and Ukraine were a huge Vendée (in a figurative sense - a counter-revolution. - Note ed.).

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

Russian peasants lacked political consciousness - they did not care what the form of government in Russia was. 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 considered 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.

What are the causes of the Red and White Terrors? IN AND. Lenin stated that the Red Terror during 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 systemic, governmental in nature, the White Terror was characterized “as excesses based on unbridled power and revenge.” For this reason, the Red Terror was superior to the White Terror in its scale 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 struggle for power. The very comparison “one terror is worse (better) than another” is incorrect. No terror has the 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 the security officer M.I. Latsis that similar orders regarding whites were resorted to in the Red Army.

Terror during the war years was carried out not so much by fanatics as by people devoid of any nobility. Let's name just a few 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, assessing the plan born in the depths of this department, instructed: “A wonderful plan! Finish it together with Dzerzhinsky. Under the guise of the “greens” (we will blame them later) we will march 10-20 miles and outweigh the kulaks, priests, and landowners. 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 taking advantage of the famine in the Volga region and confiscating church valuables. This action, in his opinion, “must be carried out with merciless determination, certainly stopping at nothing 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 now necessary to teach this public a lesson so that for several decades they will not dare to think about any resistance.”2 Stalin perceived Lenin's recognition of state terror as a high-government matter, power based on force and not on law.

It is characteristic that the Cheka’s right to extrajudicial killings, composed by L.D. Trotsky, signed by V.I. Lenin; the tribunals were given unlimited rights by the People's Commissar of Justice; The resolution on the Red Terror was endorsed by the People's Commissars of Justice, Internal Affairs and the head 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 warring parties, as it allowed any actions by reference to the enemy.

The commanders of all the armies appear to have never been subject to any control. We are talking about the general savagery of society. The reality of the civil war shows that the differences between good and evil have faded. Human life has become 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 bitterness of society and especially its new ruling class.

"Litvin A.L. Red and White Terror in Russia 1917-1922 // Russian History. 1993. No. 6. P. 47-48.1 2 Ibid. P. 47-48.

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

The political regimes established in Russia in 1918 are quite comparable, first of all, in their predominantly violent methods of resolving issues of organizing 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 talk about support for his policies in Siberia and the Urals, if out of approximately 400 thousand Red partisans of that time, 150 thousand acted against him. The government of A.I. was no exception. Denikin. In 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 and 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 as senseless in achieving its 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 casualties 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.

Reasons for the defeat of the white movement. Results of the civil war

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 dwindling ranks, the whites also had to resort to mobilization.

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

the conditions and experience of the civil war had a decisive influence on the political culture of Bolshevism: the curtailment of intra-party democracy, the perception by the broad party masses of an orientation towards methods of coercion and violence in achieving political goals - the Bolsheviks were looking for support in the lumpen sections of the population. All this paved the way for the strengthening of repressive elements in state policy. The Civil War is the greatest tragedy in Russian history.

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

After the victory of the October Revolution, the Soviet government for 8 months did not resort to judicial or extrajudicial executions of its political opponents. “Lenin condemned certain cases of lynchings against representatives of the old government (the murder by sailors of two former ministers of the Provisional Government who were in the Peter and Paul Fortress, the murder of the commander-in-chief of the old army, General N. N. Dukhonin, by soldiers in Mogilev, etc.).”* Until the summer of 1918 Not a single political opponent of Soviet power was shot.

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

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

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

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

Of these people, 109 remained alive. Mass terror was carried out in areas captured by the White Guards and interventionists. According to approximate data of the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs of the RSFSR, “in July-December 1918, in the territory of 13 provinces alone, the White Guards shot 22,780 people.”* * White Generals. Rostov-on-Don. 1998. P. 205.

On August 30, the former cadet of the Mikhailovsky Artillery School, “people's socialist” L. Kanegisser, on instructions from the underground group of the right Socialist Revolutionary Filonenko, shot and killed the chairman of the Petrograd Cheka, the Bolshevik M. S. Uritsky. At the same time, the Higher Military Inspectorate train crashed, in which the chairman of the Military Military Inspectorate, N.I. Podvoisky, miraculously survived. Earlier, a prominent Bolshevik, V. Volodarsky, was killed. A group of Socialist Revolutionary terrorists who arrived in Moscow after the murder of Volodarsky, under the leadership of the militant Semenov, began surveillance of V. I. Lenin. The city was divided into several sectors, each of which was assigned a terrorist executor. Among them was F. Kaplan. On August 30, she seriously wounded V.I. Lenin with two bullets. It is from this assassination attempt that the “Red Terror” should be counted.
On September 5, 1918, the Council of People's Commissars adopted a resolution that went down in history as the resolution on the Red Terror, signed by the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs G.I. Petrovsky, the People's Commissar of Justice D.I. Kursky and the head of the affairs of the Council of People's Commissars V.D. Bonch-Bruevich. It said: “The Council of People's Commissars, having heard the report of the chairman of the Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolution on the activities of this commission, finds that in this situation, ensuring the rear through terror is a direct necessity; that in order to strengthen the activities of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission and introduce greater systematicity into it it is necessary to send there as many responsible party comrades as possible; that it is necessary to protect the Soviet Republic from class enemies by isolating them in concentration camps; that all persons involved in White Guard organizations, conspiracies and rebellions must be published; application of this measure to them."* * Golinkov D. L. The collapse of the anti-Soviet underground in the USSR. Book 1. M., 1980. P. 178.

Among those repressed by the decree of September 5 were many ardent counter-revolutionaries who distinguished themselves by their cruelty during the times of tsarism. Among them are monarchists - Minister of Internal Affairs A. N. Khvostov, Director of the Police Department S. P. Beletsky, Minister of Justice I. G. Shcheglovitov, high-ranking officials of the gendarmerie and security departments. Those servants of the old regime who did not take part in counter-revolutionary actions also came under repression and execution. “There were cases when, in order to seize surplus grain, and sometimes non-surplus, requisition detachments used violence not only against the kulaks, but also against the middle peasants or subjected rebel Cossack villages, and sometimes villages, to artillery fire.”* * Shevotsukov P. A. Decree . Op. P. 271.

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

Condemning the Red Terror, some authors writing on this topic not only do not compare the White and Red Terror, but generally deny the existence of the former. Nevertheless, the comparison shows that the White Terror was more widespread and incredibly cruel. "For nine months (June 1918 - February 1919), the extraordinary commissions of the Soviet government shot 5,496 criminals on the territory of 23 provinces, including about 800 criminals. The White Guards, in seven months of 1918, killed 4 s in only 13 provinces more than times more people. In Siberia alone in the spring of 1919, Kolchak’s men shot several tens of thousands of workers and peasants.”* * Sokolov B.V. Decree. Op. P. 422.

Already on November 6, 1918*, by resolution of the VI Congress of Soviets, the first all-Russian amnesty was announced. All hostages were released from imprisonment, except those whose temporary detention was necessary as a condition for the safety of comrades who had fallen into the hands of enemies. From now on, only the Cheka could take hostages. The Central Committee appointed a political audit of the Cheka by a commission from the Central Committee consisting of Kamenev, Stalin and Kursky, instructing it to “examine the activities of the emergency commissions without weakening their fight against counter-revolutionaries.”* * Ibid. P. 431.

At the same time, M. Ya. Latsis, member of the Cheka commission, chairman of the Cheka Eastern Front, in the magazine “Red Terror” published in Kazan, spoke about the advisability of strict legal regulation of the activities of the Cheka. The article contained the following instructions to the local authorities of the Cheka: “Do not look for incriminating evidence in the case; whether he rebelled against the Soviets with weapons or in words. The first duty you must ask him is what class he belongs to, what origin he is, what education he has and what is his profession. These are the questions that should decide the fate of the accused.”* After criticizing this article in Pravda, I. Yaroslavsky M. Ya. Latsis, responding to him, argued that “... at the moment of the most desperate class struggle, one cannot seek material evidence. When a class has completely rebelled against a class, then the most valuable information for the investigation is precisely the data on the (current) affiliation to the class about origins."* * Civil War in Russia. Crossroads of opinions. Decree. Op. P. 220.

Regarding the spread of the Red Terror, Lenin, in a speech to employees of the Cheka in November 1918, noted: “When we took control of the country, we naturally had to make many mistakes and it is natural that the mistakes of the emergency commissions are most striking. individual mistakes of the Cheka, we cry and rush with them. We say: we learn from mistakes, where determination, speed, and most importantly - loyalty are required. When I look at the activities of the Cheka, and compare it with attacks, I say: These are philistine rumors that are worthless.”* It would not hurt to think about these Leninist words for the authors of those publications who are inclined to reduce all the activities of the Cheka to terror, mistakes, and arbitrariness. Such statements, as we see, are not new, and they are far from reality.

In general, the use of red terror was more conscious and logical than white terror. On this occasion, we recall the Tambov uprising, which was led by the former rural teacher, Social Revolutionary A. Antonov. The uprising began in mid-1920, when Antonov’s detachment, numbering 500 people, defeated the guard battalion sent against him. At the beginning of 1921, Antonov’s army already had 20 thousand people. At the end of 1921, Tukhachevsky, who had already distinguished himself in suppressing the Krondstadt uprising, was appointed commander of the troops of the Tambov province. On May 12, the day of his arrival in Tambov, Tukhachevsky issued extermination order No. 130. A popular summary of this order was published on May 17 by the Plenipotentiary Commission of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee for the fight against banditry in the Tambov province, entitled “Order to members of bandit gangs”: 1) Workers' and Peasants' the authorities decided to put an end to robbery and robbery in the Tambov province as soon as possible and restore peace and honest work in it; 2) The workers' and peasants' government has sufficient military forces in the Tambov province. All those who take up arms against Soviet power will be exterminated. You, members of gangs of bandits, have one of two options: either die like mad dogs, or surrender to the mercy of Soviet power; 3) According to the order of the Red Command No. 130 and the “Rules on the Taking of Hostages”, published by the Plenipotentiary Commission on May 12, the family of those who evaded appearing at the nearest Red Army headquarters to surrender their weapons are taken as hostages, and their property is seized.”* * Sokolov B . V. Decree pp. 420.

On June 11, an even more formidable order No. 171 appeared. It ordered citizens who refused to give their names to be shot on the spot without trial. The families of the rebels were expelled, and the senior worker in the family was shot. Hostages from villages where weapons were found were also shot. This Order was carried out “...severely and mercilessly.”* Cruelty and superiority of forces were on the side of the Red Army and decided the matter. The uprising began to wane. By the end of May, concentration camps for 15 thousand people were hastily created in Tambov, Borisoglebsk, Kirsanov and other cities of the province and a list of “bandits” was ordered for each village. By July 20, all large detachments of Antonovites were destroyed or “scattered.” During the operation to eliminate the Antonov gangs, Tukhachevsky used chemical weapons. The rebellious province was blocked and there was no supply of food there. And it is unlikely that under the conditions of the NEP, yesterday’s rebels would have wanted to return to the forests after the end of the harvest season. But it was necessary to teach the rebels an objective lesson so that not only they, but also their children and grandchildren would be discouraged from rebelling. This was why the shooting of hostages and gas attacks against those seeking refuge in the forests were necessary. Antonov himself died in a shootout in June 1922.

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

The main armed struggle for power during the Civil War was waged between the Bolshevik Red Army and the armed forces of the White movement, which was reflected in the stable naming of the main parties to the conflict “Red” and “White”. Both sides, for the period until their complete victory and pacification of the country, intended to exercise political power through dictatorship. Further goals the following were proclaimed: on the part of the Reds - the construction of a classless communist society, both in Russia and in Europe through active support of the “world revolution”; on the part of the Whites - the convening of a new Constituent Assembly, with the transfer to its discretion of deciding the issue of the political structure of Russia.

A characteristic feature of the Civil War was the willingness of all its participants to widely use violence to achieve their political goals.

An integral part of the civil war was the armed struggle of the national “outskirts” of the former Russian Empire for their independence and the insurgency of broad sections of the population against the troops of the main warring parties - the “reds” and the “whites”. Attempts to declare independence by the “outskirts” provoked resistance both from the “whites,” who fought for a “united and indivisible Russia,” and from the “reds,” who saw the growth of nationalism as a threat to the gains of the revolution.

The civil war unfolded under conditions of foreign military intervention and was accompanied by combat operations on Russian territory by both troops of the Quadruple Alliance countries and troops of the Entente countries.

The civil war was fought not only on the territory of the former Russian Empire, but also on the territory of neighboring states - Iran (Anzel operation), Mongolia and China.

Among the most important causes of the Civil War in modern historiography, it is customary to highlight the social, political and national-ethnic contradictions that persisted in Russia even after the February Revolution. First of all, by October 1917, such pressing issues as ending the war and the agrarian question remained unresolved.

The proletarian revolution was considered by the Bolshevik leaders as a “rupture of civil peace” and in this sense was equated to a civil war. The readiness of the Bolshevik leaders to initiate a civil war is confirmed by Lenin’s thesis of 1914, later formalized in an article for the Social Democratic press: “Let’s turn the imperialist war into a civil war!” In 1917, this thesis underwent dramatic changes and, as Doctor of Historical Sciences B.I. Kolonitsky notes, Lenin removed the slogan about civil war, however, as the historian writes, culturally and psychologically the Bolsheviks, even after removing this thesis, were ready to start a civil war for the sake of transforming world war into world revolution. The desire of the Bolsheviks to retain power by any means, primarily violent, to establish the dictatorship of the party and build a new society based on their theoretical principles made a civil war inevitable.

An integral part of the civil war was the armed struggle of the national “outskirts” of the former Russian Empire for their independence and the insurrectionary movement of broad sections of the population against the troops of the main warring parties - the “Reds” and the “Whites”.

"Red" and "white" terror.

The very concept of “red terror” was first introduced by the Socialist-Revolutionary Zinaida Konoplyannikova, who stated at the trial in 1906:

“The party decided to respond to the white, but bloody terror of the government with red terror...”

In turn, the term “red terror” was then formulated by L. D. Trotsky as “a weapon used against a class doomed to death that does not want to die.”

Of the millions killed in Russia by the Communists, many millions died with faith, prayer and repentance on their lips and in their hearts. Many of them were killed for political unreliability towards the Soviet communist regime. Reliability for the power of atheists, enemies of the faith and truth of Christ, is a betrayal of God, the Church of Christ and the moral law. Martyrs and innocent victims are all those who suffered and were killed solely for their origin or for belonging to a certain social class. These never imagined that being a military man, bearing a high title, being a nobleman, merchant, landowner, manufacturer, Cossack, or just being born into these families is already a crime worthy of death in the eyes of the security officers.

Drunken crowds of sailors and “mobs”, inspired by “freedom” (for no reason, found fault and, as a rule, killed generals, officers, cadets and cadets. Even if there were no shoulder straps and cockades, this “beauty of the revolution” defined “officers” by to an intelligent person. Some officers at that time did not shave on purpose, they wore rags to look like their “comrades.” The education of the officers did not allow them to watch indifferently as gangs of these “comrades” robbed stores and raped women in accordance with Lenin’s call for “expropriation of expropriators and their socialization.” women." Many officers paid with their lives just because they dared to stand up for women in front of a besotted crowd of "comrades."

After the October coup, the extermination of officers took place in an organized manner, with the help of special “Extraordinary Commissions” composed of notorious executioners of all nationalities: Latvians, Chinese, Jews, Hungarians, Russians, under the leadership of the Chief Executioner Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky. For organizing the Red Terror, for the murder of millions of Russians, some no longer respected politicians are trying to restore the monument to the Chief Terrorist Dzerzhinsky.

..." A typical impression of an officer: "It is impossible to describe in human words what was going on around us in our 76th Infantry Division, in the one neighboring ours and in general, according to rumors, in the entire Active Army!... Until quite recently, our Christ-loving Army, almost uncontrollable attacks with bayonets achieved incredible victories over the enemy, and now... unbridled, disheveled, always half-drunk, armed to the teeth gangs, deliberately incited by some numerous “comrades” with characteristic noses to kill all officers, to violence and reprisals "

The concept of “White terror” became part of the political terminology of the period of the revolution and the Civil War and is traditionally used in modern historiography, although the term itself is conditional and collective, since the anti-Bolshevik forces included not only representatives of the White movement, but also other very heterogeneous forces. A number of historians believed that, unlike the “Red Terror” proclaimed by the Bolsheviks as a means of establishing their political dominance, the term “White Terror” itself had neither legislative nor propaganda approval in the White movement during the Civil War. The white armies were not alien to the cruelty inherent in war, but the “black pages” of the white armies differed fundamentally from the terrorist policies of the Bolsheviks:

Whites never and nowhere created organizations similar to the Soviet Extraordinary Commissions and revolutionary tribunals;

the leaders of the White movement never called for mass terror, for executions on social grounds, for the taking and execution of hostages if the enemies did not fulfill certain demands;

Participants in the White movement did not see any need for mass terror - neither ideological nor practical.

This was explained by the fact that the goal of the Whites’ military actions was not a war against the people or any specific social classes, but a war against a small party that had seized power in Russia and used the socio-economic and political situation, as well as market conditions, to its advantage to achieve the goal. changes in the mood of the lower classes of Russian society.

According to V.V. Erlikhman, about 300 thousand people died from the “white terror”. This number includes both victims of extrajudicial killings of the white troops and governments themselves (approximately 111 thousand people), as well as victims of foreign occupiers and interventionists and victims of national border regimes that arose as a result of the collapse of the Russian Empire.

The civil war was generated by a complex set of social contradictions, economic, political, psychological and other reasons and became the greatest disaster for Russia.

The deep, systemic crisis of the Russian Empire ended with its collapse and the victory of the Bolsheviks, who, with the support of the masses, defeated their opponents in the civil war and were given the opportunity to put into practice their ideas about socialism and communism.

Historical experience teaches that it is easier to prevent a civil war than to stop it, which the Russian political elite must constantly remember.

The victory of the Bolsheviks in the Civil War was determined by a number of factors, in many ways similar to those that ensured their victory in the October Revolution: the political unity of the Bolsheviks, led by a super-centralized party, and in the hands of which was a huge state apparatus, while in the White movement there were internal antagonisms, inconsistency of actions, contradictions with national regions and Entente troops; the ability of the Bolsheviks to mobilize the masses.

In contrast, the White movement, which was largely heterogeneous, failed to unite the bulk of the population under its slogans; the Bolsheviks, under whose rule the central regions of the country were, had powerful economic potential (human resources, heavy industry, etc.); superiority of the Red Army over the White Army in numbers; the defeat of the parties that advocated the second path of development was explained by the weakness of the social forces behind them and the weak support of workers and peasants.

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