The Red Terror in Russia 1918-1923

229 Pages·1925·1.735 MB·English

by  Sergey Petrovich Melgounov (Melgunov)

“Red Terror” in Russia
1918 – 1923
nd
2 Edition, Enlarged
S. P. Melgunov
Berlin, 1924
i
Contents
Contents ii
List of Figures iv
Translator’s Preface vii
Translation Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
Holocaust or Not? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . x
Was Nuremberg a Fair Trial? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiv
1 “Ecrasez l’infame!” (Preface to the first and second editions) 3
2 Post scriptum (about the sources) 15
3 Red Terror 19
4 Systemic Hostage-taking 21
5 “Terror Foisted” (Restoration of Death Sentence and Bolshevik
Rhetoric) 35
6 Bloody Statistics 45
6.1 1918 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
6.2 1919 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
6.3 1920 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
6.4 In the North . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
6.5 After Denikin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
6.6 Crimea After Wrangel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
6.7 1921 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
6.8 1922 – 1923 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
6.9 1923 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
6.10 1924 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
7 During the Civil War 87
8 “Class Terror” 97
9 Che Ka Tyranny 109
ii
CONTENTS iii
9.1 Cynicism Of Execution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
9.2 Mutilation and Torture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
9.3 Tyranny of the Executioners . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
9.4 The Condemned . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
9.5 Violence Against Women . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
9.6 “Oppressing Bourgeois” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
10 “Graveyards Of The Living” and “Homes of the Dead” (Prison and
Exile) 157
11 “Pride And Decoration” 171
12 By way of conclusion 185
13 A Few Remarks On Conradi Trial 187
14 Why? (Regarding Martov’s Book On Capital Punishment) 191
A “Vessel Of Death” (Documenting Operation Of the Extreme Com-
missions) 197
List of Figures
1.1 Kharkov. Corpses of the hostages, tortured to death by the Bolsheviks. . 11
4.1 A corpse of hostage Ilya Sidorenko, owner of a leather store in Sumy sity.
Hands and ribs fractured, genitals removed. Tortured to death in Kharkov
by the reds. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
4.2 Kharkov, yardofCheKa. AcorpseofhostageretiredtelegraphoperatorI.
Ponomarenko. Right hand severed. Several deep slashes across the chest.
Two more corpses in the background. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
4.3 Kharkov, the corpses of the executed loaded onto a carriage. . . . . . . . 29
4.4 Corpses of the hostages, executed in Kharkov prison. . . . . . . . . . . . 30
4.5 The corpses of 4 peasant hostages (Bondarenko, Plokhih, Levenets and
Sidorchuk). The faces mutilated by slashing. Genitals mutilated with
undetermined tool. The doctors suggested that kind of mutilation must
have inflicted maximum possible pain. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
4.6 Captain Fedorov with the signs of torture on the arms. Bullet wound on
the left arm received during torture. Escaped the execution in the last
moment. Below: the sketches of the torture tools by Fedorov. . . . . . . 34
6.1 Back yard of Kharkov regional Che Ka (5 Sadovaya St.) with the copses
of the executed. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
6.2 Exhumation of the mass grave of the red terror victims. . . . . . . . . . . 48
6.3 Kharkov. Exhumation of the mass grave of the red terror victims. . . . . 49
6.4 A corpse of a 17–18 year old man, flesh slashed from the side and face
mutilated. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
6.5 Corpses of the hostages, found in the basement of Tyulpanov’s house,
occupied by Kherson Che Ka. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
6.6 Corpses of the victims of red terror at a railroad station in Kherson region.
The heads and limbs mutilated. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
7.1 Station Snegirevka near Kharkov. Corpse of a woman, tortured to death.
No clothes were found. Decapitated and arms severed (not found during
exhumation). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
7.2 Kharkov. Head of Abbot Rodion of Spassovski monastery, scalped alive
by the Bolsheviks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
iv
List of Figures v
8.1 Left: a corpse of hostage S. Mihaylov, a grocery store clerk, apparently
slashed with a sword. Middle: a corpse of teacher Petrenko, flogged to
death with the cleaning rods, lower spine fractured. Right: a corpse of
Captain Agapov with mutilated genitals. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
9.1 Kharkov. The corpses of hostage women, tortured to death. Second on
the left S. Ivanova, a convenience store owner. Third from the left A. I.
Karolskaya, colonel’s wife. Fourth from the left L. Hlopkova, land owner.
Breasts of all cut off antemortem, genitals burned (charcoals found inside
vagina). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
9.2 Kaharkov.Acorpseofthehostagenon-commissionedofficerBobrov.Tongue
cut off, hands severed, skin removed along the left leg. . . . . . . . . . . 127
9.3 The villagers I. Aphanasiuk and S. Prokopovich, scalped alive. I. Aphana-
siuk’s corpse bears hot metal burns. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
9.4 Kharkov. Corpse of a hostage, retired General Putyat. Skin pulled from
the right arm, genitals mutilated. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
9.5 Corpses of three hostage workers from a factory on strike. Middle: A.
Ivanenko, eyeballs burned, lips and nose cut off. Hands of the others severed.138
9.6 Skin, pulled from the hands of the victims of Kharkov Che Ka using a
metal comb and special mandibles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
9.7 Skin, pulled from the limbs of the Rabinovich house victims in Lomonosov
St., Kherson, where Kherson Che Ka operated the torture chambers. . . 139

Translator’s Preface
The works of S. Melgunov are not a popular reading matter, not now, not in Europe
andNorthAmerica. TheyarenotnearlysowellknownastheworksofA.Solzhenitsyn
such as “Gulag Archipelago”, “Red Wheel” or “Cancer Ward”. Published in 1924 last
time, “Red Terror” was translated to English and published by Hyperion Press only
in 1975. It appears to be out of print, never re-printed since.
I came across “Red Terror” when researching material for an article on contem-
porary religious, political and ethnic terrorism in the 21st century and did use many
quotes from S. Melgunov’s writing. But also I realized that it was my civil duty to
the peoples of Europe and North America to translate his book into English for the
very first time.
The motivation for translating originated from realization, that many methods of
the Bolsheviks are being more and more applied in today’s Western hemisphere: cyn-
ical lies in mass media, confiscation of property, disarming of population, alienation
of the young generation, re-defining the language. Even though I was intimately fa-
miliar with the methods of communist regime in Russia, the book was en eye-opener
in many areas. I even recognized some of the facts and could correlate them to the
stories my grand-mother told me, even though she was only 8 years old when “Red
Terror” 2nd edition was published in Berlin. Her stories were from the more recent
late 1920s, but they were frightfully similar: searches by night, arrests, disappearance
of people, executions, tips by the informants, poverty and suppression of rights.
Then there were Soviet era movies, such as “Ours among them, theirs among us”1:
rittmeiser Lehmke telling Che-Ka operative Shilov that “you will return this gold, but
your own will shoot you for that!” Only after reading “Red Terror” I realized what
message the movie was trying to covertly convey: the story of captain Schastny – the
saviour of Baltic navy from capture by German fleet (see p. 37).
One of the sources that S. P. Melgunov extensively quoted from – “Vessel Of
Death” – is worth adding to this book as an appendix. At some point I will probably
translate the entire “Che-Ka” almanac if time and resources permit.
Translation Issues
Let us address some translation issues that arose when I researched mainstream
sources of Russian-English translation of the matter used in “Red Terror”. I did
1English title “At Home Among Strangers...” in my opinion does not convey the idea of the
movie at all.
vii
viii TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE
not agree with some translations.
The civil war of 1917-1922 was fought between the communist regime, with its
military force called the “Red Army” and the forces, loyal to the Intermediate Gov-
ernment called “White Army” or “White Guard”. Generally, everyone supporting the
Bolsheviks was referred to as “reds” and the opposite side as “whites” (except for the
anarchists or – without drawing any parallels! – common banditry). Many differ-
ent categories have been lumped into the “whites”, not necessarily the soldiers and
officers of the “White Army” usually associated with Generals Denikin, Kornilov, Ad-
miral Kolchak and Baron Wrangel, etc. Throughout the book I will be referring to
either side as “reds” and “whites” respectively.
Traditionally, Che-Ka is translated as “Emergency Commission”. There are sev-
eral issues with that. Although Russian word “Chrezvychajnaja” carried a hint of
emergency to a degree, it did not correctly convey the meaning. The root of that
word is “vych”, used in such Russian words as “habitual”, “ordinary”, “custom”. The
prefix “chrez” means “over” or “extra”. Thus, it would be more correct to translate
it as an “Extreme Commission” (not “Extraordinary”, though!). Rightly, “Extreme”
is more often and more naturally used in Russian in combination with, for example,
“Important”, but you could not do the same with “Emergency”.
The acronym “chekist” was widely used to refer to the Che Ka operatives. I will
be referring to them as “excommer” (plural “excommers”) as per above.
Bourgeois as it refers to an individual human being in English cannot convey its
new meaning in itself. It is important to understand, that the word’s new meaning in
Bolshevik practice since 1917 was pejorative, used to incite hatred to the “privileged”
class. Its correct form was not used in Russia since, by the way – it was truncated
and received a different postfix, to make it sound more Russian and more humiliating.
A word “rasstrel” as it describes prisoners being executed is very specific in Rus-
sian. It is used to describe killing with firearms execution style, rather than aiming a
firearm at someone and firing a shot, as in English. Therefore it will be more appro-
priate to refer to them as “executions by firing squad”. Wherever I omitted the last
part, execution always meant that, except where specifically noted different method
of ending life (such as slashing with a sword or other method).
“Proletariat” isanotherwordthatearnedadifferentmeaninginBolshevikpractice.
Proletariat were not workers. The worker class in post-1917 Russia suffered the brunt
of communist repressions just as bourgeoisy did; slaughter of Astrakhan protest rally
being prime example (see p. 52). For the purpose of this translation “proletariat”
are the low-skilled, low-educated workers, often part-time and on hourly pay prior to
the revolution – they are so-called “Lumpenproletarii” defined by Karl Marx as those
unlikely to be useful in building of his ideal classless society. The real worker class
that existed in Russia prior to the communist turnover of 1917 was well-paid, highly
skilled, and well-off category of population. The peasants left their properties for a
chance to be hired at the factories to earn much more and often used the savings
from their wage to buy more land for their families back in the country side. As you
TRANSLATION ISSUES ix
will see very often in “Red Terror”, proletariat waged a Civil War against the workers
(and peasantry!). They were not one and the same.
A term “kulak” is relatively well known in English press. It is used to describe
the better-off, or affluent peasants, who owned more land than the others and were
generally more successful in agriculture and business. Those affluent peasants often
hired the rest of the village population for part-time jobs. “Kulak” is a root of the
term “raskulachivanije” which meant not just confiscation of land, livestock and tools,
but complete destruction of farmer’s economy. I am very well familiar with the term,
as my own grand-grandfather fell a victim of it. What happened to him and his
family was very typical: while an only supporter of a family of 11, he lost everything
but one cow, a couple of goats and one pig. His land (10 acres in total of his own and
rented land) became a part of a collective farm. Confiscation does not adequately
convey the meaning of the process. Confiscation is a one-time removal of property
from someone, while the Bolshevik term meant much more: it was a permanent shift
of the victim from one social category into another, a complete deprivation of wealth.
It should be translated as “dis-endowment” instead of “confiscation”.
The book mentioned and quoted from a number of soviet and immigrant newspa-
pers. Traditionally the press outlet names are not translated, but in this case they
are integral to the story and often carry certain meaning. I will translate them as
appropriate, except for some titles that existed until recently or still exist, such as
“Izvestiya” (Russian for “News”).
It is easy to become lost in the countless, similarly named political parties and
groups of the post-revolution period. Several parties will be mentioned extensively
throughout the book. They are:
– All-Russia Communist Party (of the Bolsheviks) or RKPB. Will be referred to
as Bolsheviks.
– Russian Social Democratic Labor Party or RSDRP. Will be referred to as Men-
sheviks.
– Left and Right Socialist Revolutionary Parties. Will be referred to as Left SR
and Right SR (perhaps mentioned once or twice).
– Constitutional Democratic Party. Will be referred to as Cadet Party or Cadets
(not to be confused with the para-military Army Cadets).
An important point, very seldom addressed and researched, was who were those
hordes of faceless, anonymous Red Army men and sailors, who committed the atroci-
ties of the Civil War and subsequent democide? Where did those monsters in human
body come from, and why was their cruelty so non-human and horrible? Well, this
was a lost generation of youth, conscripted to fight in the World War I, which fell easy
prey to the Bolshevik propagandists. Russian Empire did not bother caring about
those young people. The officers (almost 100% nobility) considered it not worth their
privileged situation to converse with the soldiers and sailors and isolated themselves
x TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE
in the headquarters and quarters. The officers had families and pastime, while the
soldiers and sailors did not. Young people, removed from their families and commu-
nities, and locked in the barracks became angry. They did not have access to women
for making sex, no one talked to them about their issues, they were simply locked out
of life and severely punished for any wrongdoing. Enraging them by playing on their
envy was not too difficult, not after the military defeats in a war with Japan of 1905
and a series of defeats by the Germans in 1914-1917. If we looked at the pictures of
the “revolutionary sailors” we would see the angry young men.
Holocaust or Not?
Reviewing the book “Red Terror in Russia...” by S. P. Melgunov one cannot help but
notice a grave injustice.
While Jewish holocaust was widely recognized, condemned on personal and in-
stitutional level and lead to virtual banning of organizations (Nazi party, neo-Nazi
affiliations, assemblies), press, symbols and even gestures, the more numerous, wide-
spread and just as systemic democide by the communist party did not result in any
kind of prosecution whatsoever. While Mossad was hunting down and even kidnap-
ping the Nazi and their collaborators around the world, the crimes of communism
were shoved under the rug. Soviet Union remained a recognized country for over 70
yearsthatfollowed. ThatcountrywasruledbythePoliticalBureauoftheCommunist
Party Central Committee (and not by the Soviets of the People’s Deputies as they
would want us to belive – the soviets were powerless puppets). In other words that
was a Communist party ruling the country. Thus the world recognized Communist
party as a legitimate government despite multi-million genocide it committed.
One after another the “enlightened” democracies of the world first turned a blind
eyeanddeafeartotheplightofRussianpopulation, thanbasicallyembracedthuggish
psychopathic communist regime by recognizing Bolshevik government. While red
terror was ravaging Russia and millions were executed in cruel and grotesque manner,
tortured, intentionallystarvedtodeath, deprivedofmedicalassistance, raped, robbed
of all property, exiled to remote areas with severe cold climate, the world celebrated
demise of a powerful emerging competing economy that Russian monarchy was. Few
still remember that Russia under monarchy was one of the largest exporters of wheat
and rye grains, oats, hemp fibers, lumber, tar and many other commodities. Today
it is the largest recipient of food aid after the African states still living in stone age...
All while the Russian “oligarchs” backed by FSB sport the largest yachts in the world.
Then, however, the things started getting out of hand. Germany, that played
important role in funding V. Lenin and his Bolshevik coup of October 1917, grew
uncomfortablewiththeeventsthattranspiredafterBrest-Litovskpeacepact. Russian
immigrant press, operating out of the European cities such as Berlin, could not be
overlookedbyGermanestablishmentandthehorrorsofsovietruleapparentlyreached
the top echelons of German power. Whom have they created? A jinn, that escaped
its lamp? Knowing what was published by the Bolshevik official press and Russian