Project Gutenberg 2025-10-21 Public domain in the USA. 691 Melʹgunov, S. P. (Sergeĭ Petrovich) 1879 1956 Mel'gunov, S. P. (Sergei Petrovich) Melgounoff, S. Melgounov, Sergey Petrovich Melʹgunov, Sergeĭ Petrovich Мельгунов, С. П. (Сергей Петрович) Hogarth, C. J. (Charles James) 1869 1942 Hogarth, Charles James Krasnyĭ terror v Rossii. English The red terror in Russia $aLondon :$bJ.M. Dent & sons, $c1925. Peter Becker, Karin Spence and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) The red terror in Russia by S. P. Melʹgunov is a historical account written in the early 20th century. It examines how the Bolshevik state built and justified a machinery of repression—above all the Cheka—through hostages, mass executions, and ideological calls for “Red Terror.” Drawing on decrees, press appeals, eyewitness testimony, and case material from across Russia and Ukraine, the study argues that terror was a deliberate policy rather than a spontaneous outburst of popular rage. The opening of the book presents a translator’s note and a brief portrait of the author as a historian-activist persecuted by the Soviet regime, then moves to an introduction in which the narrator rejects individual terrorism after a café interlocutor asks why no one kills Bolshevik leaders—arguing that such acts would only trigger mass reprisals against hostages. Chapter I details how, following early attacks on Bolshevik officials, the state institutionalized hostage-taking and retaliatory shootings, vividly depicting nights of fear in Moscow’s Butyrka prison and similar reprisals across the provinces, including women and children among the victims; even Peter Kropotkin’s protest against hostage policy is cited. Chapter II challenges the official claim that terror was “forced” by enemies, tracing the swift restoration of the death penalty, summary orders to shoot, and press exhortations to “answer blood with blood,” culminating in Petrovsky’s directive to employ mass terror and the rise of a nationwide Cheka network that eclipsed the soviets. The beginning of Chapter III defines the Cheka as an organ for destroying enemies rather than judging them, quotes Latzis’s class-based test for guilt, and disputes official statistics by pointing to underreported massacres and crackdowns on strikes and revolts from Kiev and Odessa to Astrakhan and Turkestan. (This is an automatically generated summary.) https://archive.org/details/redterrorinrussi0000unse 20230429010142melgounov 1925 gb en Soviet Union -- History -- Revolution, 1917-1921 -- Personal narratives Melʹgunov, S. P. (Sergeĭ Petrovich), 1879-1956 Russian S.F.S.R. Chrezvychaĭnaia komissiia po borʹbe s kontr-revoliutsieĭ i sabotazhem Soviet Union -- History -- Revolution, 1917-1921 -- Atrocities DK Text 673980 2025-11-30T10:39:33.647942 text/html 641813 2025-10-21T10:10:33 text/html 1642401 2025-11-30T10:39:43.813937 application/epub+zip 1646098 2025-11-30T10:39:35.604965 application/epub+zip 351861 2025-11-30T10:39:34.631980 application/epub+zip 1806958 2025-11-30T10:39:49.460926 application/x-mobipocket-ebook 1786860 2025-11-30T10:39:42.851905 application/x-mobipocket-ebook 574350 2025-11-30T10:39:32.230987 text/plain; charset=us-ascii 554423 2025-10-21T10:10:33 text/plain; charset=us-ascii 17919 2025-11-30T10:39:49.620866 application/rdf+xml 9370 2025-11-30T10:39:34.846939 image/jpeg 1768 2025-11-30T10:39:34.741944 image/jpeg 1474153 2025-11-30T10:39:33.760977 application/octet-stream application/zip Archives containing the RDF files for *all* our books can be downloaded at https://book.klll.cc/wiki/Gutenberg:Feeds#The_Complete_Project_Gutenberg_Catalog en.wikipedia en.wikipedia