The Council of People's Commissars adopted its decree "On the Red Terror"
September 5, 1918
The Council of People's Commissars adopted a decree "On the Red Terror." It legalized repressive measures against the "class enemies" of Soviet power.
…It is necessary to secure the Soviet Republic from class enemies by isolating them in concentration camps; …All persons connected with White Guard organizations, conspiracies and rebellions are subject to execution.
The Red Terror had existed before. It was especially evident after the Bolsheviks seized power: War Communism, the food tax, Lenin's "Rob the stolen"... Not everyone greeted the October Revolution with enthusiasm, so in December 1917, the Council of People's Commissars, fearing a nationwide anti-Bolshevik strike, decided to create the Cheka (All-Russian Extraordinary Commission) to combat the threat. Trotsky then declared the possibility of mass terror:
Our enemies will face the guillotine, not just prison.
Some researchers believe the start of the Red Terror was the assassination of Cadet Party leaders Kokoshkin and Shingarev in January 1918. Then came the execution of dozens and hundreds of participants in the Tambov mutiny, the uprisings in Yaroslavl and Oryol provinces, and the assassination of Uritsky, the chairman of the Petrograd Cheka, and the assassination attempt on Lenin on August 30, 1918. Dzerzhinsky declared in early September:
Finally, we have been given the legal right to do what some party comrades have objected to until now: to put an end to the counter-revolutionary scum immediately, without asking anyone’s permission.
That same month, 512 members of the elite—ministers, dignitaries, and professors—were executed in St. Petersburg. In November, 59 individuals deemed "members of counterrevolutionary organizations"—the princes Urusov, Shakhovsky, and others—were executed in Pyatigorsk. Chekist Latsis, himself executed in 1938, defined the principle of the Red Terror as follows:
We are no longer fighting against individuals, we are destroying the bourgeoisie as a class.
The Red Terror was formally abolished on November 6, 1918. In fact, it lasted until the end of the Civil War. According to various estimates, between 140 and 2 million people died as a result of the repressions during that period.
