Editing Vladimir Lenin (section)

===Red Terror===
In response to Fanya Kaplan's failed assassination of Lenin on 30 August 1918, and the successful assassination of the Petrograd Cheka chief [[Moisei Uritsky]], Stalin proposed to Lenin "open and systematic mass terror . . . [against] . . . those responsible"; the Bolsheviks instructed [[Felix Dzerzhinsky]] to commence a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror Red Terror], announced in the 1 September 1918 issue of the ''Krasnaya Gazeta'' (''Red Gazette''). To that effect, among other acts, at Moscow, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_warrant execution lists] signed by Lenin authorised the shooting of 25 Tsarist ministers, civil servants, and 765 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Movement White Guards] in September 1918. In his ''Diaries in Exile, 1935'', Leon Trotsky recollected that Lenin authorised the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_the_Romanov_family execution of the Russian Royal Family]. However, according to [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_King_%28author%29 Greg King] and Penny Wilson's investigation into the fate of the Romanovs, Trotsky's recollections on this matter, seventeen years after the events described, are unsubstantiated, inaccurate, and contradicted by what Trotsky himself said on other occasions.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-138">[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Lenin#cite_note-138 [138]]</sup> Most historians say there is enough evidence to prove Lenin ordered the killings. According to the late Soviet historian [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitri_Volkogonov Dmitri Volkogonov]:<span style="font-size:11px;line-height:0px;"> </span>Indirect evidence shows that the order to execute the royal family was given verbally by Lenin and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yakov_Sverdlov Sverdlov]. The object of 'exterminating the entire Romanov kin' is confirmed by the almost simultaneous murders of Grand Duchess [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Elisabeth_of_Hesse_and_by_Rhine_%281864%E2%80%931918%29 Yelizaveta Feodorovna], Grand Duke [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Duke_Sergei_Mikhailovich_of_Russia Sergei Mikhailovich], Prince [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_John_Constantinovich_of_Russia Ivan Konstantinovich], Prince [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Constantine_Constantinovich_of_Russia Konstantin Konstantinovich], Prince [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Igor_Constantinovich_of_Russia Igor Konstantinovich] and Count [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Pavlovich_Paley Vladimir Paley] (son of Grand Duke [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Duke_Paul_Alexandrovich_of_Russia Paul Alexandrovich]), all of them in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alapaevsk Alapaevsk], a hundred miles from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yekaterinburg Yekaterinburg].
Earlier, in October, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lev_Kamenev Lev Kamenev] and cohort, had warned the Party that terrorist rule was inevitable, given Lenin's assumption of sole command. In late 1918, when he and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Bukharin Nikolai Bukharin] tried curbing Chekist excesses, Lenin overruled them; in 1921, via the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politburo Politburo], he expanded the Cheka's discretionary death-penalty powers.

The foreign-aided [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Movement White Russian] counter-revolution failed for want of popular Russian support, because the Bolshevik [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proletariat proletarian state], protected with "mass terror against enemies of the revolution", was socially organised against the previous capitalist establishment, thus [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_conflict class warfare] terrorism in post–Tsarist Russia originated in working class (peasant and worker) anger against the privileged [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristocracy aristocrat] classes of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deposition_%28politics%29 deposed] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_monarchy absolute monarchy]. During the Russian Civil War, anti-Bolsheviks faced [[torture]] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summary_execution summary execution], and by May 1919, there were some 16,000 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enemy_of_the_people enemies of the people] imprisoned in the Tsarist [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katorga katorga] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_camp labour camps]; by September 1921 the prisoner populace exceeded 70,000.

In pursuing their revolution and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-revolution counter-revolution] the White and the Red Russians committed atrocities, against each other and their supporting populaces, yet contemporary historians disagree about equating the terrorisms—because the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror Red Terror] was Bolshevik Government policy (e.g. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decossackization Decossackization]) against given social classes, while the class-based [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Terror White Terror] was [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism racial] and political, against Jews, anti-monarchists, and Communists, (cf. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Movement White Movement]). Such numbers are recorded in cities occupied by the Bolsheviks:
In [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kharkov Kharkov] there were between 2,000 and 3,000 executions in February–June 1919, and another 1,000–2,000 when the town was taken again in December of that year; in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rostov-on-Don Rostov-on-Don], approximately 1,000 in January 1920; in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odessa Odessa], 2,200 in May–August 1919, then 1,500–3,000 between February 1920 and February 1921; in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiev Kiev], at least 3,000 in February–August 1919; in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ekaterinodar Ekaterinodar], at least 3,000 between August 1920 and February 1921; In [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armavir,_Russia Armavir], a small town in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuban Kuban], between 2,000 and 3,000 in August–October 1920. The list could go on and on.<span style="font-size:11px;line-height:0px;"> </span>Professor Christopher Read states that though terror was employed at the height of the Civil War fighting, "from 1920 onwards the resort to terror was much reduced and disappeared from Lenin's mainstream discourses and practices". However, after a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clergy clerical] insurrection in the town of Shuia, in a 19 March 1922 letter to [[Vyacheslav Molotov]] and the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politburo Politburo], Lenin delineated action against defiers of the decreed Bolshevik removal of Orthodox Church valuables: "We must... put down all resistance with such brutality that they will not forget it for several decades... The greater the number of representatives of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactionary reactionary] clergy and reactionary [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourgeoisie bourgeoisie] we succeed in executing... the better."<span style="font-size:11px;line-height:0px;"> </span>As a result of this letter, historian [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orlando_Figes Orlando Figes] estimates that perhaps 8,000 priests and laymen were executed.<sup> </sup>And the crushing of the revolts in [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kronstadt_rebellion Kronstadt] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tambov_Rebellion Tambov] in 1921 resulted in tens of thousands of executions. Estimates for the total number of people killed in the Red Terror ranger from 50,000 to over a million.