In previous revolutions, Lenin said, violent suppression of the overthrown powers was insufficient; the Russian revolution would go deeper and continue the process of violence for a longer time.

The misfortune of previous revolutions has been that the revolutionary enthusiasm of the masses, which sustained them in their state of tension and gave them the strength ruthlessly to suppress the elements of disintegration, did not last long."

Lenin emphasized the high esteem in which he held the Cheka when he appeared at a meeting of Cheka personnel on the first anniversary of the November revolution. He praised highly the work of that agency.

The important thing for us is that the Extraordinary Commissions are directly exercising the dictatorship of the proletariat, and in that respect their services are inestimable. There is no way of liberating the masses except by forcibly suppressing the exploiters. That is what the Extraordinary Commissions are doing, and therein lies their service to the proletariat.50

Lenin systematically advised and instructed his comrades, subordinates and even foreign Communists (the Hungarian) to resort to executions on a larger scale. In Petrograd, for example, the Communist leadership hesitated to apply "mass terror" as retaliation for the assassination of M. M. Volodarski. On June 26, 1918 Lenin wrote the following letter to Petrograd:

Also to Lashevich and other members of the TSK [Central Committee]. Comrade Zinoviev! Only today we heard in the Central Committee that the workers of Petrograd wanted to react to the murder of Volodarsky by mass terror and that you (not you personally but the members of the Central Committee living in Petrograd and the members of the Petrograd Committee) restrained them.

I protest categorically!

We are compromising ourselves: even in the resolutions of the Soviets we threaten to apply mass terror, but when a situation really arises, we put brakes on revolutionary mass initiative that is entirely justified.

This is im-poss-ible!

The terrorists will consider us milksops. The situation is warlike. We must encourage the energy and the mass character of terror against the counter-revolutionists, particularly in Petrograd, whose example is decisive. Regards! Lenin.51

"Lenin, "The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government" (March-April 1918), Selected Works, vol. VII, p. 338.

Lenin, "Speech at a Meeting and Concert for the Staff of the All-Russian Extraordinary Commission" (November 7, 1918), Collected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1927-45), vol. XXIII (1945), p. 289.

"Lenin, "To G. Zinoviev" (June 20, 1918), Sochineniya (Works) (4th ed.; Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatelstvo Politicheskoi Literatury (State Publishing

On August 9, 1918, Lenin instructed the Soviet of Nizhni-Novgorod (now Gorki) as follows:

It is obvious that a white-guardist uprising is being prepared in Nizhni. You must make an intense effort, appoint a troika [a team of three] of dictators, immediately proclaim mass terror, shoot and deport hundreds of prostitutes who intoxicate soldiers, former officers, etc.

. .

arms.

You must act fast: mass perquisitions.
Mass deportations of mensheviks and

Shooting for keeping of unreliables. Change the

guard at the warehouses, appoint reliable ones. Yours Lenin.52

In Hungary, a Communist regime under Bela Kun was set up in 1919. In an article entitled "Greetings to the Hungarian Workers" (Pravda, May 29, 1919), Lenin advised the Communist government of Budapest: Be firm. If there is vacillation among the socialists who joined you yesterday in their attitude to the dictatorship of the proletariat, or among the petty bourgeoisie, put down the vacillation mercilessly. Shooting—that is the rightful fate of a coward in war."

...

53

Lenin criticized those of his comrades who invoked the laws abolishing the death penalty to justify their reluctance to indulge in executions; he spoke sarcastically of men who

become hysterical and shout: I will leave the Soviets and invoke the decrees abolishing the death penalty. But he is a bad revolutionary who hesitates before the sanctity of the law in a critical situation. In a time of transition laws have a temporary significance.

A pattern of "revolutionary tactics"—which was the model for Stalin's future Katyn affair-was established by Lenin when he advised E. M. Sklyanski, ranking leader of the Red Army, to organize an assassination of "kulaks [wealthy peasants], priests and landlords," and to place the blame for it on an imaginary peasant guerrilla force. In a "Note to Comrade Sklyanski," written in August 1920, Lenin said:

An excellent idea. Carry it out together with Dzerzhinski. Under the guise of "greens" [peasant guerrillas] (we will later put the blame on them)

House for Political Literature), 1941-58), vol. XXXV (1951), p. 275. This letter was not made public until 1931. Lenin referred, as he usually did, to "workers" allegedly demanding "mass terror"; no "workers' letters" making such demands have been published and it appears more than doubtful that any existed.

"Lenin, "V Nizhegorodskii Sovdep" (To the Nizhni-Novgorod Soviet) (August 9, 1918), Sochineniya, vol. XXXV (1951), p. 286.

Lenin, "Privet Vengerskim Rabochim" (Greetings to the Hungarian Workers) (May 27, 1919), Sochineniya, vol. XXIX (1950), pp. 360, 361.

"Lenin, "Doklad Soveta Narodnykh Komissarov Pyatomu Vserossiiskomu S❞ezdu Sovetov" (Report of the Council of People's Commissars to the Fifth All-Russian Congress of Soviets) (July 5, 1919), Sochineniya, vol. XXVII (1950), p. 478.

we will advance 10-20 versts and summarily hang the kulaks, priests, landlords. The premium: 100,000 rubles for each one hanged.55

Even after the end of the civil war, when anti-Soviet uprisings had almost ceased, Lenin continued to insist on the necessity of terrorism. In a letter to Dmitri Kurski, People's Commissar of Justice, dated May 17, 1922, he said:

I am sending you the draft of an additional paragraph of the Criminal Code. It is a first draft which needs, of course, polishing and rehashing. The main idea, I hope, is clear, in spite of the deficiencies of this first draft: it is openly to proclaim the basis and politically truthful (and not only in a narrow juridical sense) principle which explains the essence and justification of terror, its necessity, its limits.

The court must not eliminate terror; to promise this would be selfdeception or fraud; it must explain and legalize it in principle, clearly, without falsity and without embellishment. It must be formulated most broadly, since only a revolutionary sense of justice and the revolutionary conscience will create conditions for its application on a more or less wide scope.

With Communist greetings.

First version:

Lenin.

Propaganda and agitation or participation in an organization or help to organizations which act (propaganda and agitation) in the direction of assisting that part of the international bourgeoisie which does not recognize the equality of the Communist system of property which will replace capitalism and strives to overthrow it by force, by intervention, blockade, or espionage, by financing of the press, or by similar means is punishable by the supreme penalty, with the alternative, in case of attenuating circumstances, of deprivation of liberty or deportation abroad.56

Lenin's closest collaborators shared his views. Though not always prepared to go to the lengths Lenin was prepared to go, they publicly approved and defended the Cheka. Trotsky, for instance, wrote:

... Terror is helpless and then only "in the long run"—if it is employed by reaction against a historically rising class. But terror can be very efficient against a reactionary class which does not want to leave the scene of operations. Intimidation is a powerful weapon of policy, both internationally and internally.

*

The terror of Tsarism was directed against the proletariat. The gendarmerie of Tsarism throttled the workers who were fighting for the

"In Lenin's handwriting, August 1920, Trotsky's archives at the Houghton Library, Cambridge, Mass., No. 565.

Lenin, "Pismo D. I. Kurskomu" (Letter to D. I. Kursky) (May 17, 1922, first published in 1924), Sochineniya, vol. XXXIII (1951), pp. 321, 322.

Socialist order. Our Extraordinary Commissions shoot landlords, capitalists, and generals who are striving to restore the capitalist order.57

Nikolai Bukharin, one of the most prominent Communist leaders, eulogized the Cheka and its first head, Feliks Dzerzhinski:

Many enemies were destroyed by Dzerzhinski, the iron warrior of our party, 58

And Zinoviev:

Cheka.59

The beauty and the glory of our party are the Red Army and the

We have new ethics. Our humaneness is absolute because at its foundation lie the glorious ideals of abolition of every kind of coercion and oppression. We are permitted to do everything because we are the first in the world to lift the sword not for the sake of enslavement and suppression, but in the name of universal liberty and liberation from slavery.60

Martin Latsis, mentioned above, not only accepted the Leninist philosophy of terrorism but developed it further for the use of his agency:

The Extraordinary Commission is not an investigating commission and

not a court.

And not a tribunal.

It is a fighting organ operating at the internal front of the civil war, acting as an investigation commission, a court, a tribunal and an armed force.

It does not judge the enemy, it strikes. It does not forgive, it rather reduces to ashes everyone who stands with his arms on the other side of the barricade and cannot be of any use to us.

*

...

From the very beginning we must display extreme severity, implacability, straightforwardness; our every word is law; if crime is followed by deserved punishment, there will be far fewer victims on both sides.

The VCheka at present is headed by a chairman and a board of twelve persons. The established tradition is that only a member of the Central Committee of the ruling party (R.K.P.) [Russian Communist Party] can serve as chairman of the VCheka; only old party comrades are appointed as members of the board. . . .61

"Leon Trotsky, Dictatorship vs. Democracy [A Reply to Karl Kautsky's book, Terrorism and Communism] (New York: Workers Party of America, 1922), pp. 58,59.

58

Pravda, December 18, 1927, p. 1.

Che-Ka, Materialy po Deyatelnosti Chrezvychainykh Komissii (Cheka, Materials

on the Activities of the Extraordinary Commissions) (Berlin: Published by the Central Bureau of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, 1922), p. 15.

60

Krasnyi Mech (Red Sword), No. 1, August 1919, as quoted in ibid.

Latsis (Sudrabs), Chreszvychainye Komissii po Borbe s Kontrrevolyutsiei (Extraordinary Commissions to Fight Counter-Revolution) (Moscow: Gosizdat (State Publishing House), 1921), pp. 8, 9, 27.

Do not ask for incriminating evidence, [wrote the same Latsis] to prove that the prisoner opposed the Soviets either by deed or by word. Your first question is to ask him what class he belongs to, what are his origin, education and profession.

These questions must decide the fate of the prisoner.

This is the meaning and essence of the red terror."2

6. Secession and Reannexation of National Areas

During the years of the civil war, so-called separatist movements became quite strong among the non-Russian nationalities of the former empire, and almost all of the significant "national minorities" worked toward independent statehood. The trend toward independence was almost universal among certain national minorities who, in their territories, constituted the great majority.

To the Soviet government these developments, which went to the very roots of bolshevism, presented a grave problem. In contrast to the policy of the tsarist as well as the Kerensky governments, the program of Lenin's party emphasized the "sovereign right" of every minority, large or small, to self-government, and the right to secede from the Russian state. In 1917, when powerful secessionist movements in the Ukraine and Finland had met with stern opposition on the part of the Provisional government, the Bolsheviks, still an opposition party, had vigorously supported the secessionists.

The "right of the nationalities to self-determination" had from the beginning been an important point in the program of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party. Lenin had accepted this point and had defended and interpreted it more than once. In articles written in 1914, Lenin had defined the "right of self-determination":

The formation of national states, under which these requirements of modern capitalism are best satisfied, is therefore the tendency of every national movement. The deepest economic factors urge towards this goal, and for the whole of Western Europe, nay, for the entire civilised world, the typical, normal state for the capitalist period is, therefore, the national state. .. it would be incorrect to understand the right to self-determination to mean anything but the right to separate state existence.63

The "self-determination" of nations, in Lenin's view, was attainable even in the framework of a "capitalist democracy." Lenin accepted it for his party's program, too. In 1916 he wrote:

The right of nations to self-determination means only the right to independence in a political sense, the right to free, political secession from the

02 Krasnyi Terror (Red Terror), October 1, 1918, as quoted in Che-Ka, Materialy po Deyatelnosti Chrezvychainykh Komissii, pp. 15, 16.

Lenin, "On the Right of Nations to Self-Determination" (February 1914), Selected Works, vol. IV, p. 251.