The Russian Revolution полностью

A curious aspect of the Red Terror in this early phase was that it did not strike at that political party which the Bolsheviks from the outset had identified as the main culprit of the anti-regime violence: the Socialists-Revolutionaries. Whether Moscow did not proceed against them because of their popularity with the peasantry, or because it needed their support in the struggle against the Whites, or because it feared the SRs unleashing a wave of terror against Bolshevik leaders, it never carried out the threat to arrest and shoot masses of SR hostages. During these so-called Lenin Days of the Red Terror, only one SR was executed in Moscow.⁹¹ The great majority of the Cheka’s victims were men of the ancien régime and ordinary well-to-do citizens, many of whom approved of the harsh repressions of the Bolsheviks. There is evidence of conservative bureaucrats and tsarist officers applauding, while in jail, Bolshevik repression, in the belief that such draconian measures would bring Russia out of chaos and restore her as a great power.⁹² We have noted the conciliatory tone adopted in the spring of 1918 toward the Communist regime by the monarchist Vladimir Purishkevich, who praised it for being much “firmer” than the Provisional Government.⁹³ The fact that the Cheka selected its victims mainly from these groups—politically harmless and in some ways even supportive—confirms that the purpose of the Red Terror was not so much to destroy a specific opposition as to create an atmosphere of general intimidation, for which purpose the attitudes and activities of the terror’s victims were a secondary consideration. In a sense the more irrational the terror, the more effective it was, because it made the very process of rational calculation irrelevant, reducing people to the status of a cowed herd. As Krylenko put it: “We must execute not only the guilty. Execution of the innocent will impress the masses even more.”⁹⁴

In recent years, the Soviet political police seems to have felt a strong urge to glorify its prototype, the Cheka. In the literature which it lavishly subsidizes, Chekists are depicted as heroes of the Revolution who carried out harsh and unpleasant duties without sacrificing their moral integrity. The typical Chekist is portrayed as uncompromisingly severe in his actions and yet sentimentally tender in his feelings, a spiritual giant with the rare courage and discipline to stifle in himself an inborn humanitarianism in order to accomplish a vital mission on humanity’s behalf. Few deserved to join its ranks. As one reads this literature, one cannot help recall a speech by Himmler in 1943 to SS officers in which he hailed them as a superior breed because while massacring thousands of Jews they managed to retain their “decency.” The effect of such remarks is to make terror seem harder on the perpetrators than on its victims.*

What it was really like and what kind of people the Cheka attracted can be reconstructed from the testimony of Chekists who either defected to the Whites or fell into their hands.

The procedures followed in taking and executing hostages was described by an ex-Chekist named F. Drugov.⁹⁵ According to his testimony, the Cheka initially had no method: it seized hostages for such diverse reasons as occupying important positions under tsarism (especially in the Corps of Gendarmes), holding high rank in the armed forces, owning property or criticizing the new regime. If something happened that in the opinion of the local Cheka office called for the “application of mass terror,” an arbitrarily set number of such hostages were taken out of their prison cells and shot. There is evidence to support Drugov’s account from one provincial city. In October 1918, in response to the killing of several Soviet officials in Piatigorsk, a North Caucasian city in which many notables of the old regime had taken refuge, the Cheka executed fifty-nine hostages. The published list of the victims (which provided neither first names nor patronymics) included General N. V. Ruzskii, who had played an important role in the abdication of Nicholas II, S. V. Rukhlov, the wartime Minister of Transport, and six titled aristocrats. The remainder were mainly generals and colonels of the Imperial Army, with a smattering of others, including a woman identified only as “the daughter of a colonel.”⁹⁶