All indecisive action in this regard by one or another organ of local soviets must be instantly communicated … to the People’s Commissariat of the Interior.
The rear of our armies must be finally completely rid of all White Guardists and all vile conspirators against the authority of the working class and the poorer peasantry. Not the slightest hesitation, not the slightest indecisiveness, in the application of mass terror.
Confirm acceptance of the aforesaid telegram. Pass on to
Commissar of the Interior, Petrovskii.80
This extraordinary document not only permitted but required indiscriminate terror under the threat of punishment for what it termed displays of “slackness and pampering”—in other words, humaneness—toward its designated victims. Soviet officials were required to perpetrate mass murder or else risk being charged with complicity in the “counterrevolution.”
The second decree instituted the Red Terror with the adoption on September 5, 1918, of a “Resolution” approved by the Sovnarkom and signed by the Commissar of Justice, D. Kurskii.81 It stated that the Sovnarkom, having heard a report from the director of the Cheka, decided that it was imperative to intensify the policy of terror. “Class enemies” of the regime were to be isolated in concentration camps and all persons with links to “White Guard organizations, conspiracies, and seditious actions [
Communist documentary and historical literature passes over in silence the origins of these orders: they are not to be found in collections of Soviet decrees. Lenin’s name has been scrupulously disassociated from them, although he is known to have insisted on hostage-taking as essential to class war.82 Who, then, was the author of these decrees? On the face of it, Lenin was at the time too weak from the loss of blood to take part in affairs of state. Yet it is difficult to believe that measures of such importance could have been taken by two commissars without his explicit approval. The suspicion that Lenin authorized the two decrees that launched the Red Terror receives support from the fact that on September 5 he managed to affix his signature to a very minor decree dealing with Russo-German relations.83 If its existence does not conclusively prove Lenin’s personal involvement, then at least it removes physical disability as a counterargument.
On August 31, even before official instructions to this effect had been issued, the Cheka at Nizhnii Novgorod rounded up 41 hostages identified as from the “enemy camp” and had them shot. The list of victims indicated that they consisted mainly of ex-officers, “capitalists,” and priests.84 In Petrograd, Zinoviev, as if wishing to make up for the “softness” for which Lenin had reprimanded him, ordered the summary execution of 512 hostages. This group included many individuals associated with the
Cheka agents now were told they could deal with enemies of the regime as they saw fit. According to Cheka Circular No. 47, signed by Peters: “In its activity, the Cheka is entirely independent, conducting searches, arrests, and executions, accounts of which it renders subsequently to the Sovnarkom and Central Executive Committee.”86 With this power, and spurred by Moscow’s threats, provincial and district Chekas all over Soviet Russia now energetically went to work. During September, the Communist press published a running account from the provinces on the progress of the Red Terror, column after column of reports of executions. Sometimes only the number of those executed was given, sometimes also their last names and occupations, the latter of which often included the designation “
