The Red Terror in Russia
9781465601094
418 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
Uritsky, People’s Commissary of the Northern Commune, and a leading spirit of the Che-Ka of Petrograd, was assassinated on August 17, 1918, by a Socialist ex-student named Kannegiesser, who during the war had been a military cadet. In the official report of the assassination it was said: Leonid Kannegiesser asserts that he killed Uritsky solely of his own free will, in revenge for the arrest of certain army officers, and for the execution of his friend Peretzweig, but in no case in obedience to orders from any political party or association. On August 28 another Socialist—in this instance a Madame Kaplan—attempted similarly to assassinate Lenin. And how did the Soviet Government respond to these terrorist acts? A semi-official communiqué published in the issue of the Che-Ka’s Weekly of October 20 reported that, by a decree of the Che-Ka, 500 hostages had been shot! Nor yet is the true number of these victims known. And probably it never will be known. And the same with regard to the victims’ names. Nevertheless, it can at least be asserted that the real figure greatly exceeded the figure given in the semi-official communiqué, and that the original of the report was never published at all. In August last two barge-loads of Russian officers were scuttled in the Gulf of Finland, and some of the officers’ bodies washed up on the shores of a property belonging to a friend of mine—lashed together with barbed wire in twos and threes. Will this be deemed an exaggeration? Yet Moscow and Petrograd still contain numbers of persons who could confirm the facts, whilst another source tells us that as late as the year 1921 the Bolshevists were disposing of their political opponents in the same barbarous manner. From another eye-witness of events in Petrograd of the period we have the following details: As regards Petrograd, it is usual to place the number of executions for the year 1918 at 1300. True, the Bolshevists admit to 500 only, but that is because they take care not to include in the estimate the hundreds of officers and ex-civil servants and private individuals who were shot in Kronstadt and the Fortress of SS. Peter and Paul—shot not by actual order of the central authorities, but by order of local soviets. Kronstadt alone saw 400 shot in a night after being posted before three huge graves dug in the courtyard of the fortress. Interviewed by a newspaper correspondent at this period, Peters, one of the chiefs of the All-Russian Che-Ka, described the Terror as “a terror simply of hysteria.” Then he went on: “In spite of popular rumour, I am not as bloodthirsty as I am represented to be. All that has happened is that a few over-excitable revolutionaries lost their heads, and showed too much zeal. As regards Petrograd, no shootings at all took place before Uritsky’s murder, though there have been many since, and sometimes the shooting was indiscriminate; and as regards Moscow, its only response to the attempt upon Lenin has been the execution of a few ex-monarchical Ministers.” “But,“ added the “merciful” Peters meaningly, “I should like to say that every endeavour on the part of the Russian bourgeoisie to raise its head again will be met with such a rebuff, with such a chastisement, as will throw even the Red Terror into the shade.”
