Red Terror - Definition and Overview

The Red Terror was mass terror targeted at perceived counterrevolutionaries conducted in Russia by the Bolsheviks, shortly after the simultaneous successful assassination of Petrograd Cheka head Moisei Uritsky, and attempted assassination of Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin by Fanya Kaplan on August 30, 1918. The first announcement, published in Izvestiya, "Appeal to the Working Class" in September 3, 1918 called for the workers to "crush the hydra of counterrevolution with massive terror". This was followed by the decree "On Red Terror", issued September 5, 1918 by the Cheka. Casualties in the fall of 1918 exceeded 10,000.

This campaign marked the beginning of the Gulag with 70,000 imprisoned by September, 1921.

In an analogy, the term "White Terror" was used for killings of representatives of the Soviet power by White Army.

Further reading

• Nicolas Werth, Karel Bartosek, Jean-Louis Panne, Jean-Louis Margolin, Andrzej Paczkowski, Stephane Courtois, Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, Harvard University Press, 1999, hardcover, 858 pages, ISBN 0674076087. Chapter 4: The Red Terror

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