Discussions about Russian History > The Russian Revolution
Was Lenin's terror justifiable or necessary?
C.J._Griffin:
--- Quote ---I think it's something of a misnomer to speak of "Lenin's terror." Lenin was certainly pragmatic, and capable of complete ruthlessness in establishing the Cheka. But the "Red Terror" proper did not historically commence until September of 1918, after Kaplan's assassination attempt on Lenin; after this attempt, a great deal of evidence suggests that Lenin was largely out of the picture except in a symbolic way, and certainly his health deteriorated rapidly, so that in the last few years of his life he was ruling Russia in name only. Speaking of the millions killed or purged under Lenin and Stalin, therefore, isn't really correct-it's Stalin who was responsible for the overwhelming majority of the repression and mass murder that took place.
That isn't to say that Lenin didn't fail to respond to brutality and terror; he was the epitome of Realpolitik, and would clearly have ruthlessly crushed anyone who stood in his way. But the majority of the brutality and killing rests with Stalin, not Lenin.
Greg King
--- End quote ---
Documents from the archives quote Lenin giving bloodthirsty orders for mass executions, deportation to concentration camps and the use of mass terror in general:
"The dictatorship - and take this into account once and for all - means unrestricted power based on force, not on law."
"It is a great mistake to think that the NEP put an end to terror. We shall return to terror and to economic terror."
"If for the sake of Communism it is necessary for us to destroy 9/10ths of the people, we must not hesitate."
"The point of the uprising is the seizure of power; afterwards we will see what we can do with it."
"One out of ten guilty of parasitism will be shot."
"Merciless war against the kulaks! Death to the kulaks!"
"The more representatives of the reactionary clergy we shoot, the better."
"impose mass terror immediately, shoot and deport hundreds of prostitutes who have been getting soldiers, former officers, and so on drunk. Not a minute's delay."
"Hang (by all means hang, so people will see) no fewer than 100 known kulaks, fat cats, bloodsuckers."
"launch merciless mass terror against kulaks, priests, and White Guards. Suspicious individuals to be locked up in concentration camp outside city."
Lenin was indeed a mass murderer and a war criminal:
"Vladimir Ilyich Ulianov (Lenin): Chairman of the first Soviet government after the violent seizure of power in 1917. Exponent of mass terror, violence, the dictatorship of the proletariat, class struggle and other inhuman concepts. Organizer of the fratricidal Russian civil war and the concentration camps, including camps for children. Incessant in his demands for arrests and capital punishment by bullet or rope. Personally responsible for the deaths of millions of Russian citizens. By every norm of international law, posthumously indictable for crimes against humanity." - A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia by Alexander Yakovlev, pg 15
"Another comment is in order. There are still some people who credit the myth that these mass repressions were the work only of Stalin and his underlings; in Lenin's time, they claim, it was different. Others maintain that the measures taken in Lenin's day were random or necessitated by specific events. alas, these assertions are not borne out by the facts. The truth is that in his punitive operations Stalin did not think up anything that was not there under Lenin: executions, hostage taking, concentration camps, and all the rest." - A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia by Alexander Yakovlev, pg 20
"With the evidence currently available it becomes difficult to deny that Lenin was, not an idealist, but a mass murderer, a man who believed that the best way to solve problems - no matter whether real or imagined - was to kill off the people who caused them. It is he who originated the practice of political and social extermination that in the twentieth century would claim tens of millions of lives... The practice of taking and executing hostages alone would qualify him as a criminal under current international law." - The Unknown Lenin, edited by Richard Pipes, pg 181
AGRBear:
"Another comment is in order. There are still some people who credit the myth that these mass repressions were the work only of Stalin and his underlings; in Lenin's time, they claim, it was different. Others maintain that the measures taken in Lenin's day were random or necessitated by specific events. alas, these assertions are not borne out by the facts. The truth is that in his punitive operations Stalin did not think up anything that was not there under Lenin: executions, hostage taking, concentration camps, and all the rest." - A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia by Alexander Yakovlev, pg 20
Just repeating this quote for those who didn't want to read everything written by JC Griffin.
AGRBear
Dashkova:
I don't think anyone here is donning rose colored glasses with regard to Lenin.
What many here seem not to be able to admit or even grasp is that what came before the Revolution was horrible for most Russians, what came after was horrible in different ways. AND that the Soviet experience was a mix of good and bad, whereas the Imperial regime was good for only a precious few during its entire existence.
Why is it that this FACT is ignored?? We ALL know about the horrors of Imperialism and Bolshevism.
Who ultimately IMPROVED the lives of Russians?
It was NOT the tsars.
rskkiya:
CJ
I am so happy to see that you have read Orlando Figes book and no doubt you will be familiar with the similar horrorshows of the Whites. Noone ever comes out of a civil war with their hands clean.
Rskkiya
BB I am still expecting an apology from you.
C.J._Griffin:
--- Quote ---I don't think anyone here is donning rose colored glasses with regard to Lenin.
What many here seem not to be able to admit or even grasp is that what came before the Revolution was horrible for most Russians, what came after was horrible in different ways. AND that the Soviet experience was a mix of good and bad, whereas the Imperial regime was good for only a precious few during its entire existence.
Why is it that this FACT is ignored?? We ALL know about the horrors of Imperialism and Bolshevism.
Who ultimately IMPROVED the lives of Russians?
It was NOT the tsars.
--- End quote ---
I don't see anything good in totalitarianism, with its use of censorship, secret police, concentration camps, etc. whether it's on the political Right (Hitler, Mussolini, Franco) or on the Left (Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot).
Sure, life was terrible under the Tsars, but paled in comparison to what the Bolsheviks had in store for the Russian people: "The Cheka's most effective method of dealing with opposition was terror. Though its liking of quantification did not extend to calculating the number of victims, it is clear that the Cheka enormously outstripped the Okhrana (tsarist secret police) in both scale and ferocity of its onslaught on political opposition. In 1901, 4,113 Russians were in internal exile for political crimes, of whom only 180 were on hard labor. Executions for political crimes were limited to those invoilved in actual or attempted assassinations. During the civil war, by contrast, Cheka executions probably numbered as many as 250,000, and may well have exceeded the number of deaths in battle." - The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB by Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, pg 28
Things would have truly improved for the Russian people had the Bolsheviks had not overthrown Kerensky and destroyed the last vestige of democratic government by disbanding the Constituent Assembly at gunpoint. If the provisional government had stayed in place, Russia's transition to democracy might have happened much, much sooner and with less difficulty. 70 years of totalitarian self-destruction under Leninism-Stalinism has had a terrible impact on Russia and Eastern Europe's transition to democracy. It looks like, under Putin's leadership, Russia might slide back to some sort of authoritarianism.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version