Johtuvatko mainitut uhrit suoraan vallankumouksesta, vai maahan hyökänneiden länsivaltojen sotatoimista.
Kyllä terrori ja joukkomurhat olivat kommunistien tietoista taktiikkaa. Uhriluvuista on epäilemättä useita näkemyksiä.
Jonkin aikaa Lenin bolsevikkihallituksessa oikeusasiain kansankomissariaattina toiminut vasemmistososialisti Isaac Steinberg (pakeni 1923 perheineen Saksaan) totesi Steinbergin mukaan Leninille:
”Mitä hyödyttää olla oikeusasioiden kommissaari? Nimen pitäisi olla joukkotuhoamisen komissaari. Lenin oli pitänyt ajatusta loistavana.”
Steinberg kirjoitti:
Valvonta on terrorin työrukkanen. Salainen poliisi valvoo jokaista tekoa ja jokaista tekoa ja toimea ja jokaista provokaatiota. Se käyttää mitä alhaisempia, nöyryyttävämpiä ja kivuliaampia kuulustelukeinoja. Terrori johtaa täpötäysiin vankiloihin, joissa nähdään nälkää. Se johtaa väestön pakkosiirtoihin. Elintarvikkeiden pakkoluovutuksiin ja takavarikointeihin joiden seurauksena on nälkiintyminen ja uupumus.
Tässä muutama Lenin sittaatti, joista käy hyvin ilmi kommunistisen vallankumouksen joukkotuhon metodit:
• We can’t expect to get anywhere unless we resort to terrorism: speculators must be shot on the spot. Moreover, bandits must be dealt with just as resolutely: they must be shot on the spot. As quoted in Meeting of the Presidium of the Petrograd Soviet With Delegates From the Food Supply Organisations, Collected Works, Vol. 26, page 501.
• Surely you do not imagine that we shall be victorious without applying the most cruel revolutionary terror?
As quoted in George Leggett, The Cheka: Lenin’s Political Police (1981), page 57.
• … prepare eveything to burn Baku to the ground, if there is an attack… As quoted in Richard Pipes, The Unknown Lenin: From the Secret Archive (1996), page 46.
• … carry out merciless mass terror against the kulaks, priests and White Guards; unreliable elements to be locked up in a concentration camp outside the town. As quoted in George Leggett, The Cheka: Lenin’s Political Police (1981), page 103.
• The uprising of the five kulak districts should be mercilessly suppressed… Hang (hang without fail, so the people see) no fewer than one hundred kulaks, rich men, bloodsuckers... Do it in such a way that for hundreds of versts [km] around, the people will see, tremble, know, shout: they are strangling and will strangle to death the bloodsucker kulaks. As quoted in Richard Pipes, The Unknown Lenin: From the Secret Archive (1996), page 50.
• About three million must be regarded as middle peasants, while barely two million consist of kulaks, rich peasants, grain profiteers... Ruthless war on the kulaks! Death to them! … [Class struggle entails] ruthless suppression of the kulaks, those bloodsuckers, vampires, plunderers of the people and profiteers, who batten on famine. As quoted in Comrade Workers, Forward To The Last, Decisive Fight! Collected Works, Vol. 28, pages 53-7.
• I am confident that the suppression of the Kazan Czechs and White Guards, and likewise of the bloodsucking kulaks who support them, will be a model of mercilessness. As quoted in George Leggett, The Cheka: Lenin’s Political Police (1981), p. 119.
• Dictatorship is rule based directly upon force and unrestricted by any laws. The revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat is rule won and maintained by the use of violence by the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, rule that is unrestricted by any laws. As quoted in The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky (1972), p. 11
It is obvious that a whiteguard insurrection is being prepared in Nizhni. You must strain every effort, appoint three men will) dictatorial powers (yourself, Markin and one other), organise immediately mass terror, shoot and deport the hundreds of prostitutes who are making drunkards of the soldiers, former officers and the like. Statement (9 August 1918) Collected Works, Vol. 35, p. 349
***
It is necessary — secretly and urgently to prepare the terror. And on Tuesday we will decide whether it will be through SNK or otherwise.
Memorandum to Nikolay Nikolayevich Krestinsky (3 or 4 September 1918) while recovering from an assassination attempt by Socialist-Revolutionary Fanni Kaplan on 30 August 1918; published in The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB in Europe and the West (1999) Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, p. 34.
***
Russians are too kind, they lack the ability to apply determined methods of revolutionary terror. As quoted in Lenin: Life and Legacy (1994) by Dmitri Volkogonov, p. 203.
Sitaatit
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Vladimir_Lenin
Kiinnostava yksityiskohta tässä on myös se, että kun natsit pyrkivät tuhomaan "juutalaisen rodun" niin kommunistit halusivat hävittää yhteiskuntaluokan murhaamalla viattomia väärän luokan edustajia summittaisesti. Sama periaate siis. Ihminen voidaan tappaa riippumatta hänen teoistaan tai edes ajatuksistaan, vain kuuluminen väärään luokkaan tai rotuun riitti teloituksen syyksi.
Do not look in the file of incriminating evidence to see whether or not the accused rose up against the Soviets with arms or words. Ask him instead to which class he belongs, what is his background, his education, his profession. These are the questions that will determine the fate of the accused. That is the meaning and essence of the Red Terror.
— Martin Latsis, Red Terror[ Yevgenia Albats and Catherine A. Fitzpatrick. The State Within a State: The KGB and Its Hold on Russia – Past, Present, and Future, 1994.]