Intensification of the Red Terror
Order for Intensified Red Terror. September 4, 1918
Issued after a series of assassinations and attempts, this order turned Bolshevik talk of “terror” into concrete provincial instructions. It argued that the regime had been dangerously lenient and demanded speed and severity: arrest known Right Socialist Revolutionaries, take hostages from “bourgeois” and officer circles, and carry out summary shootings at the first sign of resistance or suspected White Guard activity. Signed by the People’s Commissar for Internal Affairs, it shows “state security” becoming an administrative routine, with local soviets, militia, and extraordinary commissions told to act first and report upward.
Original Source: Sobranie uzakonenii i rasporiazhenii rabochego i krestian'skogo pravitel'stva, 1918, No. 65, pp. 710, 789.
The murder of Volodarskii, the murder of Uritskii, the attempt to murder and the wounding of the President of the Council of People's Commissars, Vladimir Il'ich Lenin, the mass shooting of tens of thousands of our comrades in Finland, in Ukraine and, finally on the Don, and in Czechoslavia [sic] the constant discovery of plots in the rear of our army, the open implication of Right Socialist Revolutionaries and other counterrevolutionary scoundrels in these plots, and at the same time the extremely negligible number of serious repressions and mass shootings of the White Guards and the bourgeoisie by the Soviets, all this shows that, notwithstanding constant words about mass terror against the Socialist Revolutionaries, the White Guards and the bourgeoisie, this terror really does not exist.
There must emphatically be an end of such a situation. There must be an immediate end of looseness and tenderness. All Right Socialist Revolutionaries who are known to local Soviets must be arrested immediately. Considerable numbers of hostages must be taken from among the bourgeoisie and the officers. At the least attempt at resistance or the least movement among the White Guards mass shooting must be inflicted without hesitation. The local Provincial Executive Committees must display special initiative in this direction.
The departments of administration, through the militia, and the Extraordinary Commissions must take all measures to detect and arrest all persons who are hiding under assumed names and must shoot without fail all who are implicated in White Guard activity.
All the above mentioned measures must be carried out immediately.
The heads of the departments of administration are bound to report immediately to the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs any actions in this connection of organs of the local Soviets which are indecisive.
The rear of our armies must, at last, be finally cleared of all White Guard activity and of all vile plotters against the power of the working class and of the poorest peasantry. Not the least wavering, not the least indecision in the application of mass terror.
Confirm the receipt of this telegram.
Communicate it to the county Soviets.
People's Commissar for Internal Affairs, Petrovskii
Source: William Henry Chamberlin, The Russian Revolution, 1917-1921 (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1935), Vol. II, pp. 475-76.