Zeknyte 1 Renata Zeknyte Political Science 1100 Prof.

Avila 7 October 2009 Communism in the Soviet Union: Seventy Years of Terror and Repression Throughout the course of Soviet control in Russia and Eastern Europe millions of lives had been destroyed. Executions, famine, and deportations were the primary methods of death for these unfortunate masses. These men, women, and children were killed due to the brutality and repression of the Soviet regime. In order to understand the oppression brought down by the government, one must first comprehend the roots of Communistic ideology in Russia. This violence started when Lenin came to power through the use of his secret police and persecution of the peasant class. The most horrific atrocities occurred under Joseph Stalins regime as he liquidated millions of innocent people. Violent suppression of anti-Soviet demonstrations, demolition of numerous churches, and execution of thousands of the clergy were the crimes committed by Nikita Khrushchev. Even his successors Leonid Brezhnev and Mikhail Gorbachev demonstrated signs of aggression during military interventions in the Soviet block countries. By examining numerous sources, one can see that Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, and Gorbachev used terror and repression to maintain political stability and control in the Soviet Union. Communism was based on the theories of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, which were first introduced in The Communist Manifesto in 1848. Lenin, the first leader of the Soviet Union, further developed the Communist ideology. As first described in The Manifesto, Communism presents the idea of common ownership and control of the means of production and property, which results in creating a classless, stateless, self-governing society. K. Marx believed that the bourgeoisie, a class of modern capitalists, and its government, controlled all the property and

Zeknyte 2 capital through exploitation of the world market (Manifesto 6). By eliminating the bourgeoisie, one would create a proletariat, a class of wage laborers, society where all the people are equal. The principles of an ideal society were based on K. Marxs phrase: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. (Critique 9) Basically, this means that everybody had to put as much effort in their work as they could, and in return they would get the amount of goods in proportion to their needs, no matter how much they contributed to the society. If everybody worked hard, the society would become rich and abundant in goods. In theory this idea sounds very appealing, but in reality it is impossible because of the human nature itself. Not everybody is able to put in an equal amount of labor nor everybody has the desire to do that. The only way to achieve the wanted result, the government would have to use dictatorship and countenance violence in the pursuit of its goals (Brown 26). This is exactly what happened in the Soviet Union and other Communist countries. The first period of repression started after Lenins seizure of power in 1917. During his time in office, Lenin used repression against the peasants, members of the Communist Party, and enemies of the people, such as counter-revolutionaries, political opponents, spies or saboteurs. Lenin oppressed the kulaks, or the peasant class, because at the time they were private landowners. Lenin viewed the peasants as representatives of the lower bourgeoisie and considered them as enemies of the working class; therefore, he started a war against them (Pipes 46). During the Russian Civil War the government ordered the peasants to sell the grain for an extremely low price and other produce to supply the military and workers in the cities (Carlisle 87). This action forced many peasants into near starvation and put the economy at the verge of collapse. To protest food shortages, they started massive strikes and riots in various parts of the country (Pipes 48). Lenin suppressed these rebellions through brutal measures. During his

Zeknyte 3 campaign of terror, the first premier of the USSR imprisoned and deported around 100,000 and executed 15,000 peasants (Gellately 75). The methods of incarceration and liquidation were, respectively, mostly forced labor camps and public hangings. Lenin also made an official announcement of the start of mass terror against the peasant class, including a public hanging of at least one hundred kulaks, in a major Communist newspaper (Pipes 47). This way the premier wanted to show the people an example of what could happen if one went against the government and to scare them to death. Lenin was also extremely suspicious about the faithfulness of many members of the Communist Party. He used certain measures to verify their loyalty, such as checking their background and constantly performing cleansing and purges in the Party (Levytsky 19). As the result, the numbers of Party members decreased from 250,000 to 150,000 (Read 42). In 1918 Lenin started a campaign of mass arrests and executions, also known as the Red Terror, in order to eliminate counter-revolutionaries, political opponents, and other socially dangerous elements. For that purpose he established Russian secret police, CHEKA, and the victims included not only oppositionists but whole groups whom Lenin personally killed as a symbolic expression of class hatred (Evtuhov 610). Many people were executed without any trial, hundreds of thousands of others were sent to forced labor or concentration camps. Throughout his rule, Lenin never ceased to believe in terror as a powerful tool requiring frequent application (McClellan 46). The second, and the most horrifying, period of terror began in 1927, when Joseph Stalin, the first General Secretary of the Communist Party, achieved strong political influence in the government. During three decades of his brutal dictatorship, millions of people were sent to concentration and labor camps, sentenced to death or executed with no trial. Stalin eliminated various classes of people: members of the Communist Party, the peasantry, the intelligentsia, and

Zeknyte 4 different ethnic nationalities or minorities. During the Soviet regime, the majority of executions were performed when Stalin was in charge. According to Courtoise, Stalin and other Soviet authorities committed a number of crimes against the civilians, which included different types of execution, such as firing squads, hanging, drowning, battering, and, in certain cases, gassing, poisoning, or car accidents; destruction of population by starvation, through man-made famine, the withholding the food, or both; deportation, through which death can occur in transit, at ones place of residence, or through forced labor (4). Stalin was also always paranoid about his opponents overtaking the power and Party members organizing conspiracies against him or posing threats to him. He became the leader of the Soviet Union by murdering his rivals and maintained his control by keeping Party members in line through periodic purges, thus weeding out all those who might oppose them (Carlisle 98). The Great Purge was the biggest campaign of mass arrests, deportations, and executions that Stalin initiated. It mostly affected members of the Communist Party and other officials, for instance, soldiers of the Red Army, or simply anyone who were blamed of espionage and sabotage against the government. In 1937-1938 Stalin incarcerated about fifty-five percent of the military officers during the Terror, thousands were executed (McClellan 94). The Great Purge also affected the peasants, especially those who resisted collectivizationa policy that combined private land and individual labor into collective farms. When agricultural production standards that Stalin expected were not met, for this failure he blamed the wealthy or better-off peasants, kulaks, who were the most resistant. Therefore, in 1929 Stalin started the process of the extermination of kulaks as a social class and the destruction of peasant communes as well as of any independence of the peasantry (Pipes 60). His method of demolition was dekulakizationmassive deportations, arrests, and executions of the peasants. According to Courtoise, during the period of 1930 to 1932, around two million of

Zeknyte 5 kulaks were deported to labor camps (10). Many others were exiled to northern and easternmost uninhabited areas of the country, such as Siberia, along with their families. During Stalins rule the total number of eliminated kulaks estimates between ten and fourteen million (Carey 15). Collectivization was supposed to be a voluntary decision, but in fact the government resorted to extreme violence. (Pipes 61) Trying to suppress kulaks resistance in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Northern Caucasus, and other areas, Stalin caused artificial famine in 1932-1933. In Ukraine alone about four million people starved to death; the total number of the affected population in the Soviet Union estimates about forty million (Courtoise et al 10). Two other major groups of people that Stalin constantly and brutally persecuted were the intellectuals and ethnic minorities of the Soviet Union. The works of scholars, artists, writers, poets, and filmmakers were placed under strict censorship. If the intellectuals were accused of anti-Soviet acts, did not follow Communist guidelines, or if their work did not meet the requirements of the approved style, they were violently silenced. Numerous intellectuals were forced to sign documents stating their confessions of espionage crimes; they were tortured, stabbed or beaten to death (Eaton 240). Thousands were exiled, liquidated, imprisoned, and sent to concentration camps. Even those who did not experience direct repression lived in constant fear of arrest and for the safety of their loved ones (Eaton 239). In Stalins empire people of non-Russian nations or various ethnic minorities were continuously persecuted. Ukrainians, Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Tatars, Ingush, Romany, Jews were just a few of countless nations subject to Stalins viciousness and terror acts. The dictator started the genocide of these people because he viewed them as trouble-making groupsnationalists and separatists, therefore, a threat to the Communist regime in the USSR. Most non-Russian nations fiercely resisted Sovietization, Russification, and collectivization, but unfortunately, they were violently

Zeknyte 6 suppressed (OConnor 125). The rebels were imprisoned, killed or deported to Siberia. Hundreds of thousands died on cattle trains en route due to horrible sanitary conditions and poor ventilation, diseases, lack of food, water and rest. The ones who arrived at their final destination, died as a result of malnutrition or starvation, unbearable freezing temperatures, or caused by exhaustion from work. In the Baltic States alone an estimate of those deported is around 200,000, mostly women and children (Wheatcroft 1322). This is only a minuscule fraction of millions of victims of the Stalinist regime; the exact number remains debatable to this day. The third period of repression took place in Khrushchevs era, especially during his last years in office. It was mainly targeted at the clergy of various religions in the Soviet Union and at nationalists of any kind. He believed that atheism was one of key elements in building true Communism, thus, he started a campaign against religion. He destroyed numerous churches, mosques, synagogues, and other religious sites, banned most religious services. About 4,000 Orthodox churches were closed or demolished during Khrushchevs leadership, most of them never reopened (Goble). He also imprisoned many prominent religious leaders, removed them from their positions, and by the end of Khrushchev's rule, liquidations of clergy reached an estimated 50,000 (Ostling). Khrushchev also performed military interventions in some Sovietbloc countries, such as East Germany or Hungary. According to K. OConnor, Khrushchev had [extremely] little tolerance for nationalism of any kind; therefore, he suppressed these disturbances in the Soviet satellite states (138). He had Soviet troops violently suppressed workers uprising in East Berlin in 1953. About fifty strikers were killed during the riot or sentenced to death subsequently; thousands were arrested (Courtois et al 439). The same outcome happened in 1956 Hungary, when Hungarians organized a countrywide revolution against the Communist regime. The Soviet government crushed the revolt and reinforced its

Zeknyte 7 control in this country. 35,000 of Hungarians were prosecuted, 25,000 were imprisoned, several thousand were deported to the Soviet Union, and 229 rebels were sentenced to death and executed (Courtois et al 439). By the end of Khrushchevs administration, the dominant religions were reduced to near-invisibility and thousands of people suffered due to his intolerance towards different nations. The last incidents of repression appeared sporadically when Leonid Brezhnev and Mikhail Gorbachev were in charge. They carried out military intervention in many Soviet-bloc countries. Brezhnev was the initiator of Soviet military interference in Czechoslovakia in 1968, where massive riots had started to protest against the Soviet government. About ninety people were killed, approximately three hundred were seriously wounded, and another five hundred were slightly injured (Courtois et al 442). Hundreds of thousands Czechs and Slovaks emigrated abroad immediately after the Soviets regained political control in Czechoslovakia. Brezhnev, back in the days when he was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Moldova, was also responsible for deportations of thousands of Moldavians to the Soviet Union and the suppression of Moldovan nationalist movements. Courtois states that approximately 120,000 people were deported from Moldavia because of their resistance to collectivization (237). The Soviet government with Gorbachev being the leader of the state was also accountable for acts of terror in Latvia and Lithuania. The Communist regime began to shake in 1990, when Lithuania was the first country to declare its independence from the Soviet Union. The collapse of USSR did not happen without even more casualties. Less than a year later, in January 1991, Soviet troops invaded both Baltic countries after their governments refused to reinstate the regime and Constitution of USSR. In Latvia and Lithuania combined, twenty peaceful and unarmed civilians were killed by the military while trying to defend the government headquarters (1991:

Zeknyte 8 Bloodshed). Some of them were crushed under Soviet tanks and others shot to death, hundreds were injured. Other incidents of violence appeared in several of the newly established Lithuanian and Latvian customs offices in 1991. During one of these attacks, Soviet forces beat and shot to death seven unarmed officers, execution style (Lithuanian Customs). Government officials of Lithuania and Latvia tried to reach Gorbachev many times during the January events; however, did not succeed. Even though Gorbachev knew about these attacks, he did nothing to stop them and never took responsibility (OConnor 163). Even though during Brezhnevs and Gorbachevs rule widespread terror did not occur, many people still endured the iron fist of the regime. During Communist regime, terror and repression were the main forces that kept the Soviet Union in power for so many years. Communism, as a form of government, never had a chance to last a longer time because of its flawed ideology itself. Terror was the only effective way to control all the nations and keep them together in the Soviet Union. This fear strategy, used by many Soviet leaders, resulted in countless millions of arrests, deportations, and deaths of innocent people. It never ceased to end; it was continuous throughout the history of the Soviet Union, from the very beginning to the end. Communism has committed a multitude of crimes not only against individual human beings but also against world civilization and national cultures. (Courtois et al. 3)

Zeknyte 9 Works Cited 1991: Bloodshed at Lithuanian TV station. BBC News. On This Day: 1950-2005. 8 Oct. 2009. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/january/13/newsid_4059000/40 59959.stm> Brown, Archie. The Rise and Fall of Communism. Ecco, 2009. Carey, Charles W. Life Under Soviet Communism. History firsthand. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2003. Carlisle, Rodney P., and James H. Lide. The Complete Idiot's Guide to Communism. Indianapolis, IN: Alpha, 2002. Courtois, Stephane et al. The Black Book Of Communism. Harvard University Press, 1999. Eaton, Katherine Bliss. Daily Life in the Soviet Union. The Greenwood Press Daily Life Trough History series. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 2004. Evtuhov, Catherine et al. A History of Russia: Peoples, Legends, Events, Forces. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2004. Gellately, Robert. Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe. New York: Knopf, 2007. Goble, Paul. Khrushchevs Campaign against Religion Still Casts a Shadow on Russia. 23 Oct. 2008. 19 Oct. 2009. <http://georgiandaily.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7822 &Itemid=72> Kenez, Peter. A History of the Soviet Union from the Beginning to the End. New York:

Zeknyte 10 Cambridge University Press, 1999. Levytsky, Boris. The Uses of Terror: The Soviet Secret Police 1971-1970. New York: Coward, McCann, and Geoghegan, 1972. Lithuanian Customs. History: Since the Oldest Times to 1919. 1 Sept. 2004. 8 Oct. 2009. < http://www.cust.lt/en/rubric?rubricID=242> Marx, Karl. Critique of the Gotha Programme. Mea; marxists.org, 1999. 15 Oct. 2009. <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm> Marx, Karl, Engels, Friedrich. Manifesto of the Communist Party. Marx/Engels Internet Archive (marxists.org), 2000. 15 Oct. 2009. <http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/manifest.pdf> McClellan, Woodford. Russia: The Soviet Period and After. New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1998. O'Connor, Kevin. The History of the Baltic States. The Greenwood Histories of the Modern Nations. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 2003. Ostling, Richard N. Cross Meets Kremlin. Time. 24 June 2001. 7 Oct. 2009. <http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,150718,00.html> Pipes, Richard. Communism: A History. Modern Library chronicles, 7. New York: Modern Library, 2001. Read, Christopher. The Making and Breaking of the Soviet System: An Interpretation. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave, 2001. Wheatcroft, Stephen. The Scale and Nature of German and Soviet Repression and Mass Killings,1930-45. Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 48, No. 8, 1996, 1319-1353. 7 Oct. 2009.

Zeknyte 11 <http://sovietinfo.tripod.com/WCR-German_Soviet.pdf>