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Your take on the Red Terror? (hexbear.net)

submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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The existing assumption of facts I have going into this is that from a period between 1918 and 1922 an estimated 50,000 to 200,000 people were executed by the Bolsheviks. What isnt clear to me is was this just mopping up what was left of the Whites and couter-revolutionaries, or was any dissent against the Bolsheviks liable to put you in the line of fire? Was the high death count justified or not? Thoughts?

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago (4 children)

It was a bit excessive, and they put far too much effort into quelling other socialists or anarchists, rather than the actual White Movement. The very first targets were the Socialist Revolutionaries! They killed people for being family of anarchists! These other revolutionaries were basically easy targets, often already in proximity to the Bolsheviks and generally not putting up much of a resistance, for a variety of reasons, including how many where more focused on fighting the Whites.

It wasn't all bad, after that first bit they mostly got on track killing the right people, and the vast majority of those killed were proper Whites. Yes, the death count was justified, and it really should have been higher, but they let a fair number of supporters of the previous regime alone to keep the government running. Still, the killings of socialists and anarchists sour me on the whole deal.

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/emma-goldman-alexander-berkman-bolsheviks-shooting-anarchists

[–] [email protected] 23 points 9 months ago

There was an active civil war, foreign armies invaded, and anarchists and SRs took an active role in the fighting against the fledgling socialist state, not with protests but actually making common cause with the white armies.

I'm not saying that many weren't purged unnecessary. All I'm saying that the USSR lived in war time it's entire existence, and trying to paint it as vicious is a huge oversimplification.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 9 months ago

well to be fair, the lady who shot Lenin was in the left SRs sans-shrug

[–] [email protected] 21 points 9 months ago

The Socialist Revolutionaries who assassinated a German diplomat in an attempt to sabotage peace talks and keep the war with Germany going?

Come on.