Red Terror in Russia Was the Russian Holocaust

According to the most reliable estimates (those of the Special Investigative Commission for the Investigation of Bolshevik Atrocities that worked “on the ground” right after the atrocities were committed) over 1.7 million were murdered by the Bolsheviks only in 1918-19 – and only where it was able to reach.

The total number of “Red Terror” in Soviet Russia during the Civil War of 1917-22 easily exceeds two million (half of the total number of Holocaust victims). Which makes the “Red Terror” a genuine “Russian Holocaust”.

And – given the fact that the Nazis (incorrectly) considered the Soviet Union as “Judeo-Bolshevist” state (it was the latter, but not the former) a major, major slab in the “stack of slabs” that ultimately triggered the “Holocaust Avalanche”.

A major slab because the sheer scale of this serial mass murder (in some cases, a democide and even a genocide – like in the case of mass murder of Cossacks), in Nazi opinion, justified a pre-emptive strike of a similar nature against Communists (correct) and Jews (wrong).

The Red Terror is considered to have officially begun between 17 and 30 August 1918 although in reality it began no later than on Bloody Sunday in January of 1918 when the Red Guard massacred participants in demonstrations in support of Constitutional Assembly (hundreds were murdered).

Red Terror became legal on 16 June 1918, after a new decree re-established the death penalty and instructed the Revolutionary People’s Courts to use it “as the only punishment for counter-revolutionary offences“.

At the end of 1919, the Special Investigative Commission for the investigation of Bolshevik atrocities determined the number of people killed by the Soviet state policy of terror to be 1,766,188 in the period 1918-1919 alone.

Including 260,000 soldiers and 54,650 officers, about 1,500 priests, 815,000 peasants, 193,000 workers, 59,000 policemen, 13,000 landlords and more than 370,000 members of the intelligentsia and bourgeoisie.

Unfortunately, sounds about right… and the Red Terror did not stop after the end of the Civil War. Around two million died in the Holodomor; one million was shot during Great purge; about 350,000 died during deportations in 1939-45 and over a million died in the Gulag.

Which pits a total number of victims at 4,350,000 – more than perished during the Holocaust. In short, in terms of mass murder, Soviets were no better than Nazis.