page_title: Red Terror
section_title: Historical significance
hierarchical_section_title: Red Terror / Historical significance
caption_attribution_description: Memorial stone to victims of the red terror in Daugavpils. Памятный камень "Невинным жертвам красного террора" в парке А. Пумпура
context_page_description: The Red Terror was a period of political repression and mass killings carried out by Bolsheviks after the beginning of the Russian Civil War in 1918. The term is usually applied to Bolshevik political repression during the Civil War, as distinguished from the White Terror carried out by the White Army against their political enemies. It was modeled on the Terror of the French Revolution. The Cheka carried out the repressions perpetrated during the Red Terror. Estimates for the total number of people killed during the Red Terror for the initial period of repression are at least 10,000. Estimates for the total number of victims of Bolshevik repression vary widely. One source asserts that the total number of victims of repression and pacification campaigns could be 1.3 million, whereas another gives estimates of 28,000 executions per year from December 1917 to February 1922. The most reliable estimations for the total number of killings put the number at about 100,000, whereas others suggest a figure of 200,000.
context_section_description: The Red Terror was significant as the first of numerous Communist terror campaigns that followed in Russia and many other countries. It also unleashed the Russian Civil War according to historian Richard Pipes. Menshevik Julius Martov wrote about Red Terror:
  The beast has licked hot human blood. The man-killing machine is brought into motion ... But blood breeds blood ... We witness the growth of the bitterness of the civil war, the growing bestiality of men engaged in it.
  The term 'Red Terror' came to refer to other campaigns of violence carried out by communist or communist-affiliated groups.
  Examples of the usage of the term "Red Terrors" include the following:
  The Hungarian Red Terror: The executions of 590 people accused of involvement in the counterrevolutionary coup against the Hungarian Soviet Republic on 24 June 1919.
  The Spanish Red Terror during the Spanish Civil War.
  The Red Terror in Greece during the Greek Resistance and the Greek Civil War.
  The Ethiopian Red Terror during Mengistu Haile Mariam's rule.
  In China, the Red Terror is regarded to start from the Red August of the Cultural Revolution. Mao Zedong wrote: "Red terror ought to be our reply to these counter-revolutionaries. We must, especially in the war zones and in the border areas, deal immediately, swiftly with every kind of counter-revolutionary activity."
  The Nandigram violence in Nandigram, West Bengal in November 2007 was called "Red Terror" by critics of the actions by the local administration alluding at the Communist Party of India ruling in West Bengal. The situation was described as one of "Red Terror" by media.
caption: Memorial stone to victims of the Red Terror in Daugavpils
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