The Russian Civil War was a savage conflict; it was a multi-faceted conflict that can be
narrowed down to Reds versus Whites. The Reds committed terror which was known as
the Red Terror in which countless enemies or alleged enemies were tortured and murdered,
but did you know that the Whites were no strangers to terror as well. They carried
out brutal acts of violence including mass executions, torture and widespread destruction
of property... an overlooked chapter of the Russian Civil War: the White Terror!
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find information below the video. When in October 1917 the Bolsheviks seized power in Petrograd they
overthrew the Provisional Government that had come into place after the February Revolution.
As the bolsheviks claimed the western center of Russia, its opponents gathered the peripheries: west
of Petrograd, in southern Russia and the Caucasus. Central Asia and into the vast Siberian expense. Near
Rostov-on-Don former tsarist officer Mikhail Alekseyev set-up the anti-Bolshevik Volunteer Army
that later was headed by Anton Denikin. This army attracted many officers and around 170 000
of them would join the White cause. Reason for this was that many were hunted down by angry
mobs in the wake of the October Revolution. Besides the Volunteer Army there were other White armies
such as the Siberian Army, the North Western Army, the Bermontians and the Don Army. The Whites were
initially successful taking large parts of Russia establishing several anti-Soviet governments but
they were unable to overcome the bolsheviks who were better organized, better equipped and
better let and more I'd logically committed. The Whites were plagued by infighting, the
of cohesion, with different groups pursuing their own agendas and eventually they were not able to
work effectively together against the Reds. When did the White Terror actually start? Well it's
kind of hard to say because the bolsheviks their terror (the Red Terror) was official policy but
for the Whites it never was official policy. In the first half of that year troops of the Volunteer
Army had made a hastily retreat from Rostov-on-Don towards the Kuban which is known as the Ice
March; not to be confused with the Great Siberian Ice March which is used to describe the retreat
of Admiral Kolchak's Siberian Army. Now during this desperate escape they crossed the steppe in freezing
temperatures amidst a hostile population and left a trail of blood. The Whites were in need of food
and the peasants were not willing to hand their food over to them. “But there was also an element
of sheer class war and revenge in their violence, as in so many acts of the White Terror, which was
a mirror image of the class resentment and hatred that drove the Red Terror. Terror lay at the heart
of both regimes. The Whites were the avengers of those who had suffered at the hands of
the revolution. As [White commander] Wrangel later wrote, 'we had not brought pardon and peace with
us, but only the cruel sword of vengeance'.” One of the worst atrocities during the Ice March
occurred at a Russian town called Lezhanka. White officers brutally slaughtered 60 peasants, most of
them old men and women. One officer named Roman Gul watched in horror: “This was a rude disillusionment
for Gul', who had joined the White movement under the illusion that it was fighting for democratic
ideals betrayed by the Bolsheviks. He began to wonder if 'the Whites were in fact any better than the Reds'.”
The White armed forces of General Dmitry Horvat tormented almost every village
they entered; here is what happened in a village called Zinkovka: “One man had his ear burned with
a hot iron. Another man beat so bad that he has been unable to work since…several ribs broken.
His offense was that he did not halt soon enough while driving through the village street. Two other
men were hung up, clear of the floor, with a rope tied around their wrists until they fainted, let down
and then pulled up again… One man’s wrists had the skin torn off all the way around. Two 15-year-old boys
were given 40 lashes along with their fathers because they thought their parents had
concealed clothes. One of the boys fainted during the flogging.” White Admiral Kolchak established
a provisional government in Siberia in 1918 with the support of the Allied powers but his
regime was short-lived. He faced opposition of the local population who were forced to
provide labor and resources for his army and from other anti-bolshevik groups who disagreed
with his leadership. As a result Kolchak's regime became increasingly repressive and his forces
carried out terror in Siberia: this was a campaign of violence and intimidation against perceived
enemies of his regime including bolsheviks, socialists and other people they deemed a threat.
It was characterized by widespread executions, terror and other acts of violence and it was
also marked by the use of military tribunals which handed out summary justice to those they
perceived a threat. The campaign was intended to intimidate the local population and crush
any resistance to Kolchak's rule, however this only served to undermine Kolchak's support, both
at home and abroad. It was widely criticized by the Allies that initially supported their regime.
Eventually Kolchak was overthrown by a group, he was captured in 1920 and subsequently executed by
the bolsheviks. Anti-Semitism was nothing new in Russia. In 1903 during Easter the Kishinev
Pogrom took place in Bessarabia (current Moldova) and have claimed the lives of 50 Jews and there was
widespread destruction of property. Tsar Nicholas II supported the pogroms and saw the
Jews as responsible for the political turmoil in his empire. In the two weeks after the tsar
announced his reforms in October 1905 a number of 690 pogroms took place in which Jews residents
and neighborhoods were attacked by angry mobs of the Black Hundred which left 3 000 dead. The worst
pogrom took place in Odessa where 800 Jews were killed, five thousand wounded and hundred thousand
lost their homes. Investigations showed that the local police at a time did nothing to prevent it,
actually they handed out weapons to the gangs that carried out the pogrom and also supplied them with
vodka. But these attacks were quote unquote "child's play" compared to the attacks and the atrocities
that occurred during the Russian Civil War. Many Jews fell victim to the White Terror because
it was believed that they were responsible for the terror of the Reds: this is a myth of Judea
bolshevism. Historian Orlando Figes wrote this about it: “Not many Jews were Bolsheviks, but many
of the leading Bolsheviks were Jews. To large numbers of ordinary Russians, whose world had been turned
upside-down, it thus appeared that their country's ruin was somehow connected with the sudden
appearance of the Jews in places and positions of authority formerly reserved for the non-Jews.
It was a short step from this to conclude that the Jews were plotting to bring about Russia's ruin.
The result was mass Judeophobia.” Not only the Whites attacked Jews during this time: also
Ukrainian and Polish nationalists, as well as Makhno's partisans and it even happened by the
Reds. Now initially anti-Semitism played a minor role in the Russian Volunteer Army... there were even
Jews among its ranks, but when the Whites advanced into Ukraine - which was more densely populated
with Jews - anti-Semitism rose. On the initiative of the Cossacks the ranks of the Whites were purged
after Jews. After this White propaganda portrayed the bolshevik regime as a Jewish conspiracy. Pogroms
followed: red stars were painted on synagogues, Jews were taken hostage and killed and its corpses were
displayed on the street with a sign marked 'traitor'. When the Whites captured a town or city from the
Reds, White commanders often allowed their men to rob and kill Jews for a number of days and
there are no cases of White officers trying to stop the pogroms. One of the worst pogroms
occurred in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, of October 1919. Cossack troops carried out gruesome acts of
torture. That same month commander-in-chief of the Volunteer Army Denikin he issued an order
to stop the attacks on Jews but this was largely symbolic and had no effect, because the Whites by
this time were in full retreat and they knew their defeat was imminent and they cared less about
what the world thought of them. Terek Cossacks tortured and mutilated hundreds of Jews, most
of them women and children. “The pogroms of this period amounted to a veritable war against the
Jews, in which whole communities were wiped out—despoiled, dismantled, and incinerated. Estimates of
the total death toll range widely, from a minimum of 20,000–35,000, perhaps
60,000, to a maximum of 150,000.” Also in Russian Far East terror was perpetrated by a man
which was nicknamed the "Mad Baron" and I'm talking about Roman von Ungern Sternberg. He unleashed a reign
of terror across the Amur and Ussuri regions. Also known as the "Bloody Baron," Ungern-Sternberg
was a ruthless military commander who led the White Army in Mongolia during the Russian Civil
War. He was known for his extreme brutality and willingness to use violence to achieve his goals.
Now under his rule anyone who opposed him ran the risk of being tortured to death, interesting
enough Ungern-Sternberg was an ardent Buddhist and he claimed that he was on a mission to restore
Buddhist faith in Mongolia. He established a strict code of conduct for his soldiers and followers
which included abstaining from alcohol, drugs and tobacco as well as following Buddhist teachings.
During his rule in Mongolia Ungern-Sternberg carried out countless atrocities: mass execution, mass torture...
he had death squads that roamed the countryside to find alleged enemies and torture them to death. His
rule came to an end in 1921 when he was captured by the bolsheviks and eventually executed. There
was also ataman Grigory Semyonov. During the Russian Civil War Semyonov gained a reputation
for his brutal tactics including the execution of suspected bolshevik sympathizers and the torture
of prisoners. He boasted off personally supervising the torture of 6 500 people. After the defeat of the
White Army Semyonov fled to China and he became involved in the Chinese Civil War as a military
adviser to several warlords. Now the White Terror is lesser known than the Red Terror and why that
is that is best explained by historian Stephen Anthony Smith. He explains: “Because it was never
official policy, White terror has received less attention than its Red counterpart; yet violence
unconstrained by law was practised by all sides, including the SR-dominated governments of
summer 1918. Whereas in theory Red terror was ‘bureaucratic’, carried out by professionals usually
after the formalities of a trial, much White terror was the consequence of officers allowing their men
to go on the rampage.”