askchapo

Civil wars are messy. Accuracy of information becomes hard to verify. There were excesses that occurred, just like how there are fabrications that occurred. From what little I've read so far into the Civil War, in the beginning stages the Reds tended to be more merciful and normal in their treatment of their enemies whereas the Whites were barbaric, brutal, misanthropic, and prevaricators. As the civil war escalated, the Reds would begin to match the brutality of the Whites - as they realize they wouldn't be shown any mercy - yet were always outmatched in the inhumanity the Whites exhibited.

I'm rather positive that I share their thoughts that if peaceful transition was possible, it would be infinitely preferable to bloodshed. But history shows us that a path towards peaceful or democratic transition to socialism ends with the broken bodies of our dead martyrs.

You don't win by dying for your cause. You win by making the other poor bastards die for theirs.

White Terror actually murdered more civilians, but for some reason some historians don't count the antisemitic mass murders committed by the Whites.

Consequences of a tough crackdown on groups and individuals that immediately threatened the maintenance of the USSR; it was a must to slam down, those caught in the quake were unfortunate byproducts. Herberg points out in regards to Stalin, and in passing Lenin, that none of the Western journalists or press shed a tear for the assassination of Bolsheviks, but they wept for those whites and counter-revolutionaries who were killed; one might say it is unfair, the difference of size, but it is the fate of everything, and everything must be done to preserve it.

What's done is done. Purges are going to be inevitable. Just look at what's happening in Burkina Faso. Sankara was betrayed by a man who he thought was his friend, so the current president Ibrahim Traore is now ruthlessly purging people who are plotting against him. Traore even referenced Sankara's betrayal in a recent interview and how he will not make the same mistake Sankara did.

If revolution happened in the imperial core tomorrow, I simply can't imagine the number would be that low

One of the reasons why you shouldn’t commit war crimes is because it usually encourages the other side to say “fuck it. We ball too”. The Russian civil war was rather chaotic because decades were happening before the war even started and decades kept happening after the civil war.

Countries like china and Vietnam and Cuba were embroiled in civil wars too, but I think they were able to study from the USSR’s history as well as have more time to deepen communist ideology to keep them mostly disciplined and restraint compared to the red terror. In fact, Cuban revolutionaries tried to avoid a Cuban red terror after the war, but peasants and other workers were demanding Batista blood and carrying out executions so much that the government had to reign the fervor in by officially executing Batista soldiers.

Look at the number of reactionaries that survived.

However many died = X.

The amount that needed to die = Y.

Y is > X and therefore no matter what actually happened it wasn’t far enough.

My understanding is that according to the soviet archives 750,000 people were killed. i have no idea how they decided who to kill.

i have seen some journals and diaries at the time suggesting workers approved of the red terror and viewed it as protecting the soviet state and the rev from counter-revolutionaries. idk how seriously to take the scattered documents i've come across, but it sounds like the worker on the street may have had a different perception then than we do now about what it was, why it was being done, and whether it was justified. afaik the actual details, especially the amount of executions, was not public knowledge.

i imagine people who had been serfs or worked in horrible conditions, then fought in the civil war, then immediately seen Russia invaded by armies from every western power while communists outside Russia were hunted down, slaughtered, executed, forced in to exile, imprisoned, and so forth may have viewed the Red Terror very differently from us.

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