Red and white terror - comparison. Red and White Terror in the Civil War

Red terror.

One of the most difficult and destructive manifestations of the civil war was terror, the sources of which were both the cruelty of the lower classes and the directed initiative of the leadership of the warring parties. This initiative was especially evident among the Bolsheviks. The Red Terror newspaper of November 1, 1918 frankly admitted: “We are not waging war against individuals. We are exterminating the bourgeoisie as a class. During the investigation, do not look for materials and evidence that the accused acted in deed or word against the Soviets. The first question you should ask him is what class he belongs to, what origin, upbringing or profession he is. These questions should determine the fate of the accused. This is the meaning and essence of the Red Terror.”

The Bolsheviks rigidly and assertively implemented their theoretical ideas in practice. In addition to a variety of sanctions against direct participants in the anti-Bolshevik movements, they widely used the hostage system. For example, after the murder of M. Uritsky, 900 hostages were shot in Petrograd, and in response to the murder (in Berlin!) of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, the Tsaritsyn Council ordered the execution of all hostages under arrest. After the assassination attempt on Lenin, several thousand people were executed in different cities. The anarchist terrorist attack on Leontievsky Lane in Moscow (September 1919) resulted in the execution of a large number of those arrested, the vast majority of whom had nothing to do with the anarchists. The number of similar examples is large.

Executions were associated not only with hostage taking. In St. Petersburg, Odessa, Sevastopol, Kiev, mass executions of officers took place in 1918; after the workers' strike in Astrakhan in 1919 - only according to official data - over 4 thousand people were shot. “Ruthless mass terror” was declared against the Cossacks.

Repression affected both entire sections of the population and individuals. On the night of July 16-17, 1918 in Yekaterinburg, Nicholas II and his family were shot in the basement of the Ipatiev House. Even earlier, on the night of June 12-13, on the outskirts of Perm, the last of the Romanovs who bore the title of emperor, Mikhail, was shot.

Repressive actions were initiated by the central and local bodies of the Bolshevik government, but no less often they were manifestations of the cruelty of ordinary participants in the war. “A special commission to investigate the “atrocities of the Bolsheviks,” which worked in 1919 under the leadership of Baron P. Wrangel, identified numerous cases of cruel, bordering on sadism, treatment of the population and prisoners by the Red Army. On the Don, in the Kuban, in the Crimea, the commission received materials testifying to the mutilation and murder of the wounded in hospitals, to the arrests and executions of everyone who was pointed out as opponents of the Bolshevik government - often together with their families. All executions, as a rule, were accompanied by requisitions of property. White Terror Cruelty was also inherent in whites. Orders to bring prisoners from among those who voluntarily joined the Red Army to court martial were signed by Admiral Kolchak. Reprisals against the villages that rebelled against Kolchak’s followers were carried out in 1919 by General Maikovsky. Several concentration camps were created in Siberia for Bolshevik sympathizers. In the Makeevsky district in November 1918, a commandant from General Krasnov’s close circle published an order with the words “... all arrested workers should be hanged on the main street and not removed for three days.” At the same time, the whites did not have organizations like the Cheka, revolutionary tribunals and revolutionary military councils. Top management The White movement did not make calls for terror, hostages, or executions. At first, the whites, despite all the inhumanity of the civil strife, tried to adhere to legal norms. But the defeats of the Whites at the fronts “opened an abyss of despair before them” - they could not count on the mercy of the Bolsheviks. Doom pushed whites to commit crimes. The Ataman regime brought a lot of suffering to the civilian population of Siberia. Robberies, pogroms and brutal executions accompanied Grigoriev's uprising in Ukraine. “The white movement was started almost by saints, and it ended almost by robbers,” one of the “white” ideologists, Vladimir Shulgin, bitterly admitted.

Many figures spoke out against the senseless cruelty of the civil war Russian culture- V. Korolenko, I. Bunin, M. Voloshin and others. “Russian cruelty” was branded by M. Gorky. The total losses in the civil war, which was fratricidal in nature, amounted to about 10% of the country's population (more than 13 million people).

“Red terror” - this topic is constantly being discussed by both pro-Western and pro-Kremlin groups, especially on the eve of a birthday or November 7th. As a rule, numerous articles boil down to one thesis: “red terror”, expressed in the mass extermination of dissenters (or even everyone in a row)
, — business card domestic policy Bolsheviks during the years of the revolution and the Civil War, which, of course, was unleashed by the communists themselves, led by Lenin.

But the first one is famous terrorist attack in the Civil War it was not the Bolsheviks who committed it, but the whites in 1918. Having captured the Kremlin and captured more than 500 Red Army soldiers, they put them against the wall and shot them right at the Kremlin wall.

The first concentration camps were also built not by the Bolsheviks, but by the Americans in the Arkhangelsk region. Not only prisoners, but also civilians were driven here. Tens of thousands of arrestees passed through the prisons on Mudyug Island, many of whom were shot, tortured or died of starvation.

So are the Bolsheviks to blame for starting the Civil War? In bringing forward this grave accusation, anti-communists, as a rule, rely on Lenin’s well-known slogan about “transforming the imperialist war into a civil war.” But, firstly, this slogan had a purely theoretical meaning, since the Bolsheviks, due to their small numbers, had practically no political influence in the country before February. And secondly, this slogan was intended to be used by the proletariat of all warring countries.

After February, this slogan was removed and replaced by a new one - “about a just world.” And after October, during the German offensive, a new slogan, “The Socialist Fatherland is in Danger,” was again put forward. What does this mean? First of all, Lenin was never a dogmatist of Marxism. On the contrary, he always kept his finger on the pulse of the times and clearly responded to the slightest changes in current events. The situation in the country changed, and the slogans also changed.

Facts show that the Bolsheviks did not at all want civil war in their country and made every effort to prevent it. It was the Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, who, until July 3-4, 1917, proceeded from the possibility and desirability of the peaceful development of the revolution after February. Who prevented this? Provisional Government, Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries.

After the failure of the Kornilov rebellion, Lenin, in his article “On Compromises,” proposed creating a government of Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, controlled by the Soviets.

“Such a government,” he wrote, “could be created and strengthened quite peacefully” (Vol. 34, pp. 134-135). And who thwarted this opportunity for a peaceful transfer of power into the hands of the working people in the person of the Soviets? Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks together with Kerensky.

In his pre-October works, V.I. Lenin repeatedly returned to the issue of intimidation of a civil war in Russia by the bourgeois press if power passed to the Bolsheviks. In response, he expressed his firm belief that if all socialist parties united, as they did during the Kornilov rebellion, then there would be no civil war. But the Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries remained deaf to these reasonable calls.

Having taken power almost bloodlessly (except for the “assault” of Winter Palace, during which 6 people were killed and 50 wounded), the Bolsheviks tried to win over all classes to their side. All parties, the intelligentsia, and the military were invited to cooperate.

The fact that the Soviet government hoped for peaceful development is evidenced by the plans for the economic and cultural development of the country and especially the beginning of the implementation of major programs. For example, the opening of 33 scientific institutes in 1918, the organization of a number of geological expeditions, and the beginning of the construction of an entire network of power plants. Who starts such things if they are preparing for war? The Soviet government tried to create mechanisms to prevent the outbreak of civil war in the country, but it had too few forces and too many enemies. And therefore the development of events took a different path.

Already on October 25, by order of the former head of the Provisional Government, Kerensky, the 3rd Corps of General Krasnov was moved to Petrograd. And the so-called Committee for the Salvation of the Motherland and the Revolution, consisting of liberals, Socialist Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, raised a revolt of the cadets. But already on October 30, the troops of Kerensky-Krasnov, and even earlier, the rebellion of the cadets were defeated. This is how the Civil War began in Soviet Russia. So who was its instigator? The answer is clear and understandable. And, nevertheless, at first the Soviet government treated its opponents quite humanely. Participants in the first Soviet revolts and their leaders (generals Kornilov, Krasnov and Kaledin) were released “on their word of honor” that they would not fight Soviet power. No reprisals followed either members of the Provisional Government or deputies Constituent Assembly.

And how did the enemies they forgiven respond to the humane actions of the Bolsheviks? Generals Kornilov, Krasnov and Kaledin fled to the Don and organized a White Cossack army there. After their release, many tsarist officers took an active part in conspiracies and counter-revolutionary actions.

Conspiracies, sabotage, and murders of government officials forced the Bolsheviks to take measures to defend the revolution. In May 1918 (only seven months after the October events) the Central Committee of the RCP (b) decided: “... to introduce death sentences for certain crimes.” It should be noted that in many cities local authorities, faced with acts of terror, sabotage, torture and murder, demanded that the central government adopt decisive measures, and sometimes they themselves took retaliatory measures. The Central Committee, headed by Lenin, had to sharply condemn such “amateur activity.” For example, a letter from the Central Committee to the Yelets Bolsheviks said: “Dear comrades! We consider it necessary to point out that we consider any repressions against the Yelets Left Socialist-Revolutionaries to be completely unnecessary” (July 1918).

And this is after the security officers seized documents from the Socialist Revolutionary headquarters about the preparation of terrorist attacks: “... in the interests of the Russian and international revolution, it is necessary to put an end to the so-called respite, created thanks to the ratification of the Brest Peace Treaty by the Bolshevik government in the shortest possible time... The Central Committee of the party (Socialist Revolutionaries) considers it possible and it would be expedient to organize a series of terrorist acts...” (From the minutes of the meeting of the Central Committee of the Left Socialist Revolutionary Party on June 24, 1918).

Trying to pit the Bolsheviks against the Germans, the Left Social Revolutionaries kill the German ambassador Mirbach. The Soviet government is forced to take retaliatory measures against terrorists. But can these measures be called “red terror” if the direct killers of the German ambassador, Blyumkin and Andreev, were sentenced by the Revolutionary Tribunal of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee on November 27, 18 to three years of forced labor. The organizers of the murder, Spiridonov and Sablin, received one year in prison. Having learned about such an “ultra-cruel” sentence, Blumkin voluntarily surrendered to the security officers and was released early on May 16, 1919. But the failure of the peace treaty threatened the continuation of the war and hundreds of thousands of dead.

The terrorists considered this policy a weakness of the Bolsheviks, and terrorist attacks began to follow one after another. However, until the autumn of 1918, the terror of the Soviet regime did not have a mass character, and the repressions themselves took a mild, humane form.

Nevertheless, anti-communists still accuse Lenin and the Bolsheviks of cruelty, and for proof they cite the “terrible” phrase spoken by Ilyich: “We must encourage the energy and mass character of terror.” At the same time, as usual, they take it out of context and do not explain why it was said. They seem to lead the average person to the idea that since terror is massive, it means it is directed against masses, primarily against peasants and workers.

The full phrase reads like this: “Terrorists will consider us wimps. It's arch-war time. It is necessary to encourage the energy and mass scale of terror against counter-revolutionaries, and especially in St. Petersburg, whose example decides.” Written by Lenin (letter to Zinoviev dated June 26, 18) in response to the murder of Volodarsky. As we see, Ilyich proposed directing the energy and mass scale of terror against terrorists, and not against the people.

The “red terror” became massive and cruel after the serious wounding of V. I. Lenin, the murder on the same day of the chairman of the Petrograd Cheka M. S. Uritsky, and even earlier the prominent Bolshevik V. Volodarsky. This was a forced response of the Soviet government to the intensified terror on the part of its enemies. On September 5, the Council of People's Commissars issued a resolution on the “Red Terror” and entrusted its implementation to the Cheka. Only after this did the executions of people imprisoned for political reasons begin.

The largest action of the “Red Terror” was the execution in Petrograd of 512 representatives of the bourgeois elite (former dignitaries, ministers and generals). According to official data, in total about 800 people were shot in Petrograd during the “Red Terror”. The “Red Terror” ended on November 6, 1918, and in fact in most regions of Russia it was completed in September-October.

Generally speaking, terror (from the French word for “horror”) of a state aims to suppress the actions of its internal enemies by creating a climate of fear that paralyzes its will to resist. For this purpose, a brief but very intense and visual shock-inducing repression is usually carried out. In Russia at that time, the idea of ​​terror was shared by all revolutionary parties without exception.

But the Bolsheviks failed to paralyze resistance to Soviet power with the help of terror. It’s just that obvious enemies of the Bolsheviks fled to the places where the White Army was formed or to areas where Soviet power was overthrown. The final demarcation of the “whites” and “reds” took place, and the rear was cleared of counter-revolutionaries. After this, the “Red Terror” was officially ended, since there was no longer any point in it.

And when on September 25, 1919, terrorists threw two bombs into the meeting room of the Moscow Party Committee in Leontyevsky Lane, building 18, where a party meeting was taking place, as a result of which about 40 people were killed and injured, including the secretary of the Moscow Party Committee V. M. Zagorsky, no terror was declared in response. The Central Committee of the RCP (b) sent a circular to all provincial committees: “The Central Committee decided: the assassination attempt committed in Moscow should not change the nature of the activities of the Cheka. Therefore, we ask: do not declare terror” (4.10. 1919).

Particular mention should be made of the terror on the fronts during the Civil War. There is a lot of evidence that both whites and reds showed considerable cruelty towards each other. But in war it’s like in war. Either you kill or you will be killed. And the war became a reality when a large-scale intervention by the Entente countries took place (it began with the landing of the Japanese in April 1918). And here Lenin, as a man of action, acted decisively and mercilessly, because he no longer had a choice.

There is a lot of evidence about white terror among the participants of the white movement themselves. Thus, in Roman Gul’s book “The Ice March,” dozens of pages are devoted to white terror. Here is a fragment from this book: “50-60 people are leading from behind the huts... their heads and hands are lowered. Prisoners. Colonel Nezhintsev overtakes them... “Those who want to be killed! - he shouts... About fifteen people came out of the ranks... It came: pli... The dry crackle of shots, screams, groans... People fell on each other, and from about ten steps... they were shot at, hastily clicking shutters. Everyone fell. The moans stopped. The shots stopped... Some finished off the living with bayonets and rifle butts.”

Not all officers took part in such savage massacres, but many did. As R. Gul shows, there were among them those who simply felt a zoological hatred of workers and peasants, of the “cattle” who dared to encroach on their private property.

An even more gloomy picture is painted by the chief of staff of the 1st Army (Volunteer) Corps, Lieutenant General E.I. Dostovalov, in his memoirs under the characteristic title “On the Whites and the White Terror.” “The path of such generals,” he writes, “like Wrangel, Kutepov, Pokrovsky, Shkuro, Slashchev, Drozdovsky, Turkul and many others, was littered with those hanged and shot without any reason or trial. They were followed by many others, of lesser rank, but no less bloodthirsty.” One commander of a cavalry regiment showed the author of the memoirs in his notebook the number 172. This was the number of Bolsheviks he personally shot. “He hoped,” General Dostovalov writes further, “that he would soon reach 200. And how many were shot not with his own hands, but on orders? And how many of his subordinates shot innocent people without orders? I once tried to do some approximate calculations of those shot and hanged by the white armies of the South alone and gave up - you could go crazy.”

Here it is, genuine, without embellishment, the truth, about the Civil War and the White Terror. General A.I. Denikin also writes about this in his “Essays on Russian Troubles.” He bitterly admits that it was the “white terror” that discredited the “white idea” and alienated the peasants from the whites. Blind rage towards the “cattle” who dared to raise a hand against their masters pushed the whites to extrajudicial executions of tens of thousands of ordinary Red Army soldiers - workers and peasants. Thus, the memoirs of participants in the white movement, in contrast to modern “liberal democrats,” indicate that it was the whites, and not the reds, who subjected the working people of Russia to mass terror. That is why the workers and peasants for the most part supported the Bolsheviks led by V.I. Lenin, and not the white guard of Denikin, Wrangel and Yudenich.

Sholokhov devoted many pages to the white and red terror in his immortal epic “Quiet Don”. And if the Reds, as follows from the novel, terrorized, first of all, rich Cossacks, officers, atamans and merchants, then the Whites terrorized mainly captured Red Army soldiers, whom they either simply shot, starved, or hanged to intimidate the population. But they mocked the commanders and commissars in a sophisticated manner. This is how Sholokhov describes the death of the commander of one of the red detachments under torture by the rebel Cossacks.

“The next day they drove him to Kazanskaya. He walked ahead of the guards, lightly stepping on the snow with bare feet... He died, seven miles from Veshenskaya, in the sandy, stern breakers, the guards brutally hacked him to death. The living man's eyes were gouged out, his hands, ears, and nose were cut off, and his face was mangled with sabers. They unbuttoned their pants and violated and desecrated a large, courageous, beautiful body. They violated the bleeding stump, and then one of the guards stepped on the flimsily trembling chest, on the prone body, and with one blow cut off the head obliquely.”

How the whites abused the civilian population in the Far East was described in the newspaper “Duel” dated February 25, 2003 in an essay about the popular commander of the Red Cossack detachment, Gavriil Matveyevich Shevchenko (1886-1942). He carried out many successful operations against the White Guards and Japanese invaders and rose to the rank of deputy commander of the Ussuri Front. The Japanese even put a reward of ten thousand yen on his head. But Shevchenko was elusive. Then the faithful dog and hired the Japanese, Ataman Kalmykov, ordered his mother to be stripped naked along with her daughters-in-law and, through the autumn slush, drove them captives along the main street of the city of Grodekov. Then they tracked down the commander’s younger brother Pavlushka in the neighboring area, cut off his nose, lips, ears, tore out his eyes, and cut off his arms and legs with sabers. Only after this they cut the body into pieces. As you can see, reader, both on the Don and in the Far East the White Guards behaved the same way.

Shevchenko still continued to attack white outposts and derail trains. Then Kalmykov doused the commander’s hut with kerosene and burned it and his family.

For sympathy or assistance to the partisans, the White Guards shot peasants, and their families were mercilessly flogged with ramrods and their huts were burned. And sometimes people were grabbed on the street without any pretext or raided. The prey was dragged into the “death train”, where drunken sadists mocked innocent victims. Ataman Kalmykov himself loved to observe medieval torture. From this he quickly went into a rage and took his vile soul away by torturing people. On the “death train,” those arrested were flogged with whips with wire ends, their noses, tongues and ears were cut off, their eyes were gouged out, bloody skin was torn off, their stomachs were ripped open, and their arms and legs were chopped off with butcher axes. This is how the whites were sophisticated throughout the Kolchak era. reliable protection Japanese invaders.

And there were quite a lot of executioners in the White Guard like Ataman Kalmykov: atamans Dutov and Semyonov, Baron Ungern and others, not to mention Admiral Kolchak himself. It is not surprising that the people, having experienced all the delights of Kolchakism on their own skin, joined the partisans and resisted as much as possible.

Other materials on the topic:

47 comments

cat Leopold 29.09.2014 19:03

..."General A.I. Denikin also writes about this in his “Essays on the Russian Troubles.” He bitterly admits that it was the “white terror” that discredited the “white idea” and alienated the peasants from the whites...
Thus, the memoirs of participants in the white movement, in contrast to modern “liberal democrats,” indicate that it was the whites, and not the reds, who subjected the working people of Russia to mass terror. That is why the workers and peasants for the most part supported the Bolsheviks led by V.I. Lenin, and not the white guard of Denikin, Kolchak, Wrangel and Yudenich.”
And for the “liberal democrats”, lies and fraud are the only way to stay afloat. True, the limit of this method is almost over for them.

Maryana Zavalikhina 30.09.2014 13:33

Don't cheat, dear cat Leopold. If A.I. Denikin, as an educated Russian officer and a talented writer, who put the personal dignity of a person at the head of his work, condemned cruelty, including his subordinates, which in those conditions was not always possible to resist, this does not mean that there was no cruelty with the opposing sides. Moreover, publicly available archival documents indicate atrocities on both sides. And this dispute is resolved very simply. We open any search engine and look at photos of the Bolsheviks in the dungeons of tsarism, sitting in prison cells with books in their hands and eating “inkwells” made of soft bread with milk poured into it and photos of “enemies of the people” in the dungeons of the NKVD, when the civil war had officially ended long ago . And no comments are needed. And, by the way, it was not Nicholas II who called on his gendarmes to throw acid in the faces of the Bolsheviks, but V. Lenin who called on his supporters to throw acid in the faces of the gendarmes.

Maryana Zavalikhina 04.10.2014 01:48

Who is this Lavrov?

Vilorik Voytyuk 29.09.2014 19:31

The history and meaning of the Civil War are distorted by Bolshevik historians. The Reds were those who voted in the elections to the Constituent Assembly for the Socialist Revolutionary Party and for the socialism that was proclaimed by the leadership of this party that won the elections. The Whites were those who fought against the results of the February Revolution and for the revival of the monarchy and power. landowners in the country, no one represented the Bolshevik meaning in this war EXCEPT THE COMMISSARS AND REVIEW COMMITTEES, THE HERO OF THE CIVIL

Maryana Zavalikhina 30.09.2014 13:49

Leave the Constituent Assembly alone. The very fact that the Bolsheviks took power from him speaks of his non-viability. And I want to make a note to you, V. Voytyuk, that before you begin discussing a subject, you need to study it. And the study of the creativity of A.I. Denikin gives us the discovery that both he and his comrades in the White movement, while remaining convinced monarchists at heart, accepted the choice of the Russian people during the February Revolution and continued to serve it. And it should be noted that, in their understanding of personal dignity and honor, they turned out to be completely superior to the SA and Navy officers who, 70 years later, found themselves in a similar situation.

Vilorik Voytyuk 01.10.2014 00:31

THE ENTIRE TRUTH ABOUT THE PARTICIPANTS AND HEROES OF THE WAR IS EXPRESSED IN THE WORDS OF THE COMMANDER OF THE SECOND CAVED ARMY MIRONOV, WHO TOGETHER WITH THE MAKHNO DIVISION LIBERATED THE CRIMEA FROM VRANKEL. NOT FRUNZE AND BUDYONNY, BUT MIRONOV AND MAKHNO DID THIS. SO, MIRONOV SAID AT THE RALLY, LET'S BREAK DENIKIN - LET'S TURN BAYONETS TO MOSCOW.

Vilorik Voytyuk 01.10.2014 00:47

The entire Russian history, smeared with fraudulent classism, must be washed clean. So, Pugachev’s uprising was not an uprising of peasants and Cossacks with landowner Russia. The people’s uprising under the leadership of Pugachev was a campaign for the salvation of the Motherland. In St. Petersburg, the Orthodox Tsar was killed and power in the country was seized by the Germans, Basurmans, and Latins.

Maryana Zavalikhina 01.10.2014 04:06

I draw the attention of V. Voytyuk and his associates that both K. Marx and V. Lenin were right when they said that nothing can be understood in politics and economics if one does not see class interest. Another thing is that, in addition to the fact that K. Marx made a number of miscalculations and mistakes in his theory, which are well known, as well as the reasons that caused them are known, communist political parties pull out parts from K. Marx’s theory to satisfy their party interests. And V. Lenin cannot be blamed for the fact that he turned out to be more dexterous than the leaders of other political parties of a communist orientation. Moreover, due to the fact that I have already given an example of Lenin’s article, in which he got confused in his thoughts and spoke nonsense, among V. Lenin’s political opponents there was no one who would theoretical level exposed his demagoguery (as indeed today). And the problem of today's communists is that they are going to continue to extract fragments from the theory of K. Marx to satisfy their party interests, in which, in addition to the already known miscalculations and mistakes, the moral obsolescence of the political economy of the 19th century was added. Not only among the communists, but also among their political opponents from the “left,” there is no one visible who would simply try to give a new principle for defining classes that fits into the logic of the developing modern political economy and globalization of the economy.

Vilorik Voytyuk 01.10.2014 17:13

RUSSIA, THANK GOD, HAS NOT LIVED TO SUCH IDIOTISM THAT SOME CLASSES APPEARED IN A NORMAL ORTHODOX HUMAN ENVIRONMENT. BUT SHE LIVED UNTIL THE TIME WHEN FOREIGN SCAMBLERS BEGAN TO USE THIS FOLLOWING WORD TO DIVIDE PEOPLE AND PICK THEM AGAINST EACH OTHER, WHILE STAYING ALONG. ABOUT THE CIVIL WAR TROTSKY SAID ‘THE NON-JEWS ARE KILLING HER VREEV.Long live the civil war.

Vilorik Voytyuk 01.10.2014 17:21

MARX WOULD BE ROLLING IN HIS GRAVE IF HE KNEW THAT SOMEONE WAS USING HIS THEORY IN APPLICATION TO RUSSIA.

Vilorik Voytyuk 01.10.2014 17:31

Fraudsters and only scammers can explicitly or implicitly introduce Marxism in Russia. Russia has its own from head to toe and its own millennial socialism.

Vilorik Voytyuk 01.10.2014 17:58

Russia is the country of the world, if we take the development of the human spirit on Earth as progress and history, and not something else, albeit important. RUSSIA HAS PROVED THIS IN THE LAST THREE HUNDRED YEARS OF EUROPEAN HISTORY. And the rich West is the most reactionary piece of territory on this very Earth..

Maryana Zavalikhina 02.10.2014 00:50

I won’t even ask V. Voytyuk what the theory of the ruling class and the source of income of the ruling class have to do with Orthodox teaching, for the simple reason that he is illiterate in both.

Vladlen 02.10.2014 02:30

02.10.2014 07:18

Maryana, you are in vain bad opinion about the officers. Especially about the Soviet ones. It was they who all unanimously wrote reports in the 90s about their dismissal from the Ukrainian army that was then being formed, and it was they, as I see from information in the media, and under their leadership in Donbass and Lugansk who defended the right of people to their lives.
In general, history cannot be perceived and interpreted one-sidedly and based on unverified sources; it cannot be conjectured without reservations. Otherwise, in Russia it will be the same as in Ukraine: a big historical lie that causes mass deaths of innocent people (children).

Alexander Chelyab.reg.city of Asha 04.10.2014 20:15

Well, let them “knock them out.” You have nothing to be ashamed of: after all, they won’t give you too much anyway. If you don’t remind them, they won’t remember.

Alexander Chelyabinsk region Asha 02.10.2014 07:24

The big historical lie becomes, in the hands of unclean-minded people (non-humans), a political and ideological tool for manipulating people’s consciousness.

cat Leopold 02.10.2014 14:36

Hello, Alexander. Haven't met for a long time. Always glad to hear from you. What's up? What worries?

Alexander Chelyabinsk region Asha 02.10.2014 15:28

Hello, cat Leopold! My life is busy. I've been very busy all summer. Over the summer, he completely withdrew from political life. I watched and worried only about our “Kievan Rus”.
Now the computer at home is broken, we need to fix it. In short, it’s a mess. That’s why I can only communicate briefly at work. And now I’m already heading home. I wish you all the best, and I always praise the editors of the site for feedback with fans of the site. Such consistency will lead in the future to a qualitative change in communist propaganda work.

cat Leopold 03.10.2014 10:35

All the best to you too, Alexander.

Alesya Yasnogortseva 02.10.2014 21:37

The White Terror, of course, was 100 times worse than the Red Terror. It's clear why.
http://knpk.kz/wp/?p=38575
http://knpk.kz/wp/?p=48026
Another thing is not clear: why was Grevs not quoted in Soviet times? Where he says: “I will not be mistaken if I say that for every one person killed by the Bolsheviks, there are 100 people killed by anti-Bolshevik elements.”

Vilorik Voytyuk 03.10.2014 10:45

Alesya, you are talking about the white terror, that it was worse than the red one. Alesya, the Civil War was one part of the Russian people against another part of the also Russian people. The third force - the Bolsheviks did not go to the bayonet and did not participate in saber attacks, but sat in Moscow with their tail between their legs, waiting for who would take it, and also because their interests did not coincide with the interests of the Reds and Whites.b They had their own special interest - how to defeat the Russian people, invincible for a thousand years, and create their own on the site of the former Russian Empire nation state Stalin was the first to disperse them in 1937

Vilorik Voytyuk 03.10.2014 11:13

Stalin was the first to figure out the secret meaning of the Bolsheviks - these Kremlin pederasts / Stalin... and destroyed them all.. Stalin was the first. who began to build real socialism in Russia, relying on its indigenous people. I stopped calling the Communist Party Bolshevik. AND YOU ARE HERE ON THIS page, whatever you want, whatever you don’t like..

Maryana Zavalikhina 03.10.2014 13:27

Stop the fight! I. Stalin was the only Bolshevik who consistently carried out the work of V. Lenin. And if someone cannot understand this, then this is his personal problem. It seems that this site claims to be a Marxist-Leninist site, but its readers, it is not clear what relation they have not only to Leninism, but also to Marxism in general.

Maryana Zavalikhina 03.10.2014 14:13

And regarding which terror was more terrible, white or red, I note that in the Far East, the Red Guard detachments were mainly led by representatives of the criminal world, who had the opportunity, on behalf of the working people’s power, to rob those who could previously give them a worthy rebuff. By the way, the pogrom of the monastery, in the buildings and on whose territory the Shmakovsky military sanatorium was located, by a detachment of the Red Guard began with the abbot driving a rifle bayonet into his foot with a demand to tell where the treasury was hidden. And what is curious is that traces of the valuable things collected in the monastery were lost immediately outside the gates, after the Red Guards left. Yes, what can I say, if you just look at sites selling antiques, where countless personalized jewelry is offered for sale, including crosses, not always made of precious metals, made in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Vilorik Voytyuk 03.10.2014 20:42

Maryana is talking about some matter. Lenin. This person never thought about socialism in Russia. Speaking before the security officers, where not a single person was Russian, this socialist said, “Let 90 percent of Russian people die, if only 10 percent live to see communism'. Obviously, in order to have someone to sweep the streets and clean the toilets.

Maryana Zavalikhina 04.10.2014 02:22

Really, how stubborn you are, you think that you surprised someone with your discovery, if more than one generation of Soviet people studied from a school textbook that told how the Bolsheviks were preparing the world revolution.

Vilorik Voytyuk 05.10.2014 03:09

Marxism-Leninism in the field of sociology and philosophy is the same fraud as abstract art in painting, like tarpabarism in music, like the soulless ballet of Plisetskaya, Bejart, Grigorovich. The authors of this common soulless, nationalless, cosmopolitan, deceptive creation are the characters of the famous to the whole world of nationality in order to fool the European nations and in such a deceptive way to finally establish themselves, persecuted and unfortunate from everywhere, on European soil. The Russian people especially suffered from this Zionist cosmopolitan idea

Vilorik Voytyuk 05.10.2014 03:24

Wake up, Maryana. WE NEED REAL SOCIALISM AND OUR OWN NATIONAL WORLDVIEW..We don’t need to be taught how to live. We have existed for a thousand years and we defeated Napoleon

Vilorik Voytyuk 05.10.2014 06:59

The case of Lenin, Sverdlov, Trotsky is the genocide of the Russian people...; The best territory is empty space. This was the case with the Indians in America, and it will also be with Russia ‘Trotsky.

Maryana Zavalikhina 05.10.2014 15:04

Dear V. Voytyuk! The truth will be with those who will be the first to present the concept of building a modern state capable of uniting Russian society around itself. Everything else is demagoguery that has a very specific purpose - split Russian society.
It’s a pity that you advertise your lack of your own national worldview. I don’t need to wake up, because the noodles falling on my ears don’t let me sleep.

Nicholas II demonstrated real atrocity by not caring about his responsibility to Russia and handing over the reins of government to an absolutely incompetent Constituent Assembly, consisting of political punks who never fully realized that they had become the head of the Great State.

Vilorik Voytyuk 06.10.2014 08:07

The real atrocities were demonstrated not by the Reds and Whites, but by a third force - hired foreigners, who were widely used by the Bolsheviks. Among the Russian people, as the results of the elections to the Constituent Assembly showed, these people, for obvious reasons, did not enjoy SUPPORT. Then they decided to help the foreigners of Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland and Bessarabia in exchange for a promise of independence to them. Add here 40 thousand prisoners of Austro- Hungarians and 2oo thousand Chinese thugs, from whom they formed punitive detachments. THE 6TH LATVIAN REGIMENT LOD UNDER THE LEADERSHIP OF URITSKY SHOOTED A DEMONSTRATION IN SUPPORT OF THE CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY, FINNISH SPECIAL FORCES UNDER THE COMMAND OF SMILGI ARRESTED THE PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT, and AUSTRO-VEN GRY and MRE NAD BAYONETED THE CHILDREN OF THE RUSSIAN TSAR, THE CHINESE MERCENARIES TOGETHER WITH LATTIVANS SUPPRESSED THE PEASANT UPRISING IN THE TAMBOV PROVINCE. IN LENIN’S PERSONAL GUARD CONSISTED OF 70 CHINESE...LATVISH REGIMENTS SUPPRESSED WITH THE HELP OF CANnonS THE MUTINY OF LEFT SOCIALIST REVOLUTIONARIES IN MOSCOW’.

Vilorik Voytyuk 06.10.2014 08:41

The Tsar of Maryana transferred power to his brother Mikhail, whom the Bolsheviks killed. And the many millions of people of Russia elected not punks, as you say, to the Constituent Assembly. and the overwhelming majority of deputies from the Socialist Revolutionary Party, who proclaimed the country's transition to socialism.

Alexander Chelyabinsk region Asha 08.10.2014 06:28

Vilorik Voytyuk, where did you get this from? And in what place did the peasants (approximately no less than 93% of the population) in the conditions of the First World War “many millions” choose the Constituent Constitution?

Vilorik Voytyuk 11.10.2014 07:47

Maryana, the Zionists were the first to introduce the form of statehood of Russia in October 1917, and to this day they have not given this concept to anyone. They sank their teeth in. They even managed to remove the huge titular Russian people from the legal field, taking away two capitals from them and forgetting about their existence altogether..

Vilorik Voytyuk 12.10.2014 06:28

Maryana says that Vilorik Voytyuk is illiterate. Well, if five years at the Faculty of Philosophy of Moscow State University is not enough for her, then I don’t know what else she needs.

Masha Smart 06.08.2015 03:07

two idiots (Vilorik and Maryana) have gathered and are talking complete nonsense to each other.)) one blames some Jewish Bolsheviks for everything (apparently he has such a new race :)), and the other positions herself as a kind of communist, but at the same time vows to the Red Guards , thanks to which, by the way, Soviet power and socialism took place in the country (and secretly probably pities the white officers as representatives of the “white and fluffy” last intelligentsia).)) in short, a parade of schizophrenics.)))

vilora73 29.08.2016 09:11

Masha is smart, you are talking about two idiots, but add yourself, because God loves a trinity.

vilora73 29.08.2016 09:30

Alexander from Asha, there were no military actions on Russian territory, so the elections to the Constituent Assembly took place normally and calmly. Another interesting thing is that the Bolsheviks received a crushing minority in the elections, even taking into account the alliance with the left Socialist Revolutionaries.

Vasilina 21.12.2016 16:55

White terror served as a victory for the common man. They not only simply killed, they executed the Reds and those who sympathized with them. There is testimony from an American general and the Whites themselves. The destruction of churches was transferred to the Reds, but this is what the Whites did when they went abroad, and they also had to destroy parish books, Indeed, many remained in Russia and changed documents, etc. Vasilina

Adolf 22.05.2018 01:10

What are you ignoramuses arguing about? Apart from Soviet propaganda, you haven’t read anything and haven’t spoken to any of the eyewitnesses?
First, ask yourself why the “revolutionaries” were all Jews and came from Switzerland, England and the USA, where they lived on handouts from Jewish bankers? Why did their numerous guards initially also consist of foreigners: Latvians, Finns, Poles, and Chinese? Why were numerous urban and peasant riots suppressed by the Latvians, Magyars and Chinese? And has no one really thought about how peasants and tsarist officers (some) were driven into the “Red Army”, and who did the driving? If you are faced with the question of choosing to join the Red Army or the death of you or your family, what could people do? Thank you, Stalin gained power, cleaned up a lot of Jews and non-Russians, whose hands were up to their elbows in blood. And you don’t have to discuss the “whites”, these are Russian people and this was their land and fatherland, which cannot be said about the Jew, especially about the one who lived outside Russia for decades and did nothing for Russia.

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 Cadet 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 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 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-monarchist 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 harder the Bolsheviks tried to impose “communist relations” in the countryside, the tougher 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 full 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 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 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 for the ataman system, 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 Kolchak off from 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 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.

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 ed.).

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 didn’t 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 who longed 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. 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 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 justification and was systemic, governmental in nature, while 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.

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 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 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 a non-legal state, where arbitrariness became the norm and terror was 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.

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.

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.

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. 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.

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 insurrectionary movement 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 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 intelligent person. Some officers at that time did not shave on purpose, they wore rags to look like their “comrades.” The education of 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 “the expropriation of expropriators and the socialization of their 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.

The exact number of victims of the “White Terror” has not been established, but the policy of “White Terror” caused such discontent among the population that, along with other factors, it served as one of the reasons for the defeat of the White Movement in the Civil War.

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.

Terror flowed from the very essence of the struggle. Some imposed a totalitarian regime, others fought to restore law and order. Laws are the first thing that whites tried to restore in the liberated territories. They acted in the South pre-February laws Russian Empire wartime. In the north there is the most lenient legislation Provisional Government.

Yes, the whites executed their enemies. But the executions were personal, not general. By court verdict. And the death sentence, by law, was subject to approval by a person no lower than the commander of the army. The same order existed in Petlyura. In Ostrovsky’s novel “How the Steel Was Tempered” there is an episode where the Petliurists deliberate whether to impute several years to the arrested person, since the “chief ataman” will not approve the sentence of the minor.

Red leaders sacrifice Russia to the International

The descriptions of white counterintelligence - with torture, dungeons and executions (copied from Cheka). Counterintelligence had many shortcomings, but did not have the right to execute or pardon. Its functions were limited to arrest and preliminary inquiry, after which the materials were transferred to the judicial investigative authorities. How could she carry out torture and torment without her own prisons? Those arrested were kept in citywide prisons or guardhouses. How, after torture, would she present those arrested to a court staffed by professional lawyers who would immediately make a fuss about the violation of the law? In Yekaterinoslav, the public and the legal profession expressed a stormy protest against the excesses of counterintelligence: they kept those arrested for 2-3 days without questioning or bringing charges. When the whites abandoned the cities, the Soviet side did not document any “creepy dungeons” - unlike the whites, who repeatedly did this when the Bolsheviks abandoned the cities.

The courts determined the guilt of the accused communists personally. In the spring of 19, several dozen people were caught red-handed in Dagestan, the entire underground revolutionary committee and the Bolshevik committee, at the last meeting, on the eve of the impending uprising. Five of them were executed. 22.4.20 in Simferopol arrested in in full force a meeting of the city party and Komsomol committees, also several dozen people. Nine were sentenced to death.

Literature about “white terror” usually ends with phrases about how the advancing Reds liberated prisons full of workers. Forgetting to clarify why these “workers” were imprisoned: for their beliefs or for theft and banditry? Regarding specific facts, the accusations are lame. Solid work by Yu. Polyakov, A. Shishkin and others. “Anti-Soviet intervention of 1917–1922.” and its collapse” gives as many as... two examples of reprisals between officer-landowners and peasants who plundered their estates. This is for the entire Kolchak front (Kolchak prohibited such actions, as did Denikin). The example given is repeated from book to book. Furmanov V " Chapaev" - about drunken Cossacks who hacked to death two red cooks who accidentally stopped by their location. But the same Furmanov quite calmly describes how he himself ordered an officer to be shot simply because he was found with a letter from his fiancée, where she writes how bad life is under the Reds.

There were atrocities and lawlessness on the part of the whites. But they were carried out against the will of the command. And they were not widespread, but isolated cases. So " green Commander-in-Chief N. Voronovich told how the punitive detachment of Colonel Petrov, suppressing a peasant rebellion, shot 11 people. But this execution was the only one. As Voronovich writes:

“What happened then... in its... monstrous cruelty surpasses all the massacres committed before and after by volunteers...”

And this reprisal cost the Denikins a powerful uprising in the Sochi district... In Stavropol in 1920, when the front was already collapsing, the Cossacks, brutalized by defeat, killed about 60 people. political prisoners. The entire local public was outraged, and protests followed at all levels of the city prosecutor Krasnov (who soon became the Minister of Justice in the Denikin government). But this case was also one of a kind. On the contrary, in a number of cases, for example, in Yekaterinodar, communist prisoners were released to prevent the atrocities of those joining the Reds.

Among Wrangel's officers, the prevailing belief was that the main mistake of the whites was softness in the fight against Bolshevism.

Red and white. Civil War era poster

An eloquent example is given by former General Danilov, who served at the headquarters of the 4th Soviet Army. In April 1921, the Bolsheviks decided to hold a solemn funeral for the victims of the “White Terror” in Simferopol. But only 10 underground members were found and hanged by a military court. The figure seemed “unrespectable,” and the authorities took the first dead people they found from hospitals, bringing the number of coffins to 52, which were buried magnificently after the solemn meeting. And the Reds themselves have already shot 20 thousand people in Simferopol...

Based on materials from the book “White Guard” by V. Shambarov