The historian states that between 1917 and 1921, between six and ten million people died violently in Russia.
Between 1917 and 1921, between six and ten million people died violently during the Russian Revolution and the Civil War. This is the calculation of Sir Antony Beevor (London, aged 74), author of ‘Russia: Revolution and Civil War, 1917 – 1921’ (Critique) and one of the most prestigious military historians. To this horrifying figure, according to Beevor, who in his essay unravels the keys to Leninist and Bolshevik terror, must be added the victims of the famines and epidemics that punish the gigantic country, but also the crimes of counter-revolutionaries and tsarists.
Beevor, who was prevented by Covid from presenting his book in Spain yesterday, assures Lenin has instituted an irreconcilable regime “of genocidal determination”. Its executive arm was the Cheka, the political police empowered to torture and murder enemies, adversaries or mere suspects “without trial”. “It was quicker and easier for the Chekists to put every prisoner to death than to investigate every open case,” writes Beevor of the police, who called himself “the sword and flame of the revolution” and who used “methods of medieval torture applied”.
In addition to studying the crimes of the Bolshevik political police with his usual scrupulousness, Beevor uses testimonies and direct sources to analyze the criminal violence deployed on battlefields and at the rear of the Civil War. “Europe has not seen such conspicuous brutality used as a weapon of terror since the Wars of Religion,” he said. “Terror spawned terror, which in turn led to even greater brutality against men, women and children,” said Beevor, who handles the most current studies and dives into a sea of files to provide a complete picture of all the versions. from that of the worker on the streets of Petrograd, to that of the cavalry officer on the battlefield, or that of a doctor in a field hospital.
Where did the extremes of sadism come from: hacking up with a saber, cutting with knives, burning and cooking, scalping alive, nailing uniform epaulettes to the shoulders, poking out eyes, wetting victims in winter so they can freeze to death, castrating , lashing out, amputating…? Had the rhetoric of political hatred risen to unprecedented heights, the fury of revenge?” asks the historian, devoting nearly 700 pages to providing answers.
The violence did not stop, but was exacerbated by the Bolshevik victory that ended the tsarist empire. “His most terrible manifestation came at the hour of absolute victory,” says Beevor. As a foretaste of the practices that the SS ‘Einsatzgruppen’ would commit twenty years later during the invasion of the Soviet Union, some victims were forced not only to dig mass graves, but also to undress and enter the execution pit. The next batch they forced her to stretch over the dead to kill them there. Some of them hadn’t died when the well was covered with soil,” he says. “When the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union took place two decades later, it seemed that Himmler’s Gestapo and SS had learned little from the Cheka’s methods,” Beevor denounced.
Like Putin now, Lenin and the Bolsheviks were aware of the grave danger they faced if they lost control of Ukraine and southern Russia. It then took the Red troops two years to recapture Kharkov and Kiev, once again terrorizing the population and preying on the Jews. “It is estimated that more than 1,300 anti-Semitic pogroms have been perpetrated in Ukraine by both sides, killing between 50,000 and 60,000 Jews,” Beevor wrote. He also calculates that in Crimea, the Bolshevik massacres “caused between 15,000 and 100,000 deaths”.
In a recent article on the war in Ukraine, Antony Beevor claimed that Putin is “stuck in a past he cannot understand”, that he is willing to use nuclear weapons “if his own regime is defeated in Ukraine” and that “there are far greater dangers.” for the world than at any time since 1945.”
Source: La Verdad
I’m Wayne Wickman, a professional journalist and author for Today Times Live. My specialty is covering global news and current events, offering readers a unique perspective on the world’s most pressing issues. I’m passionate about storytelling and helping people stay informed on the goings-on of our planet.
