Russia and the Jews

BRUTAL FORCED RELOCATIONS
Farmers resisting the robbery of their food and seed for the following
year by the requisition commandos of the GPU and the Red Army
fled from them into the forests. The Bolsheviks had no scruples about
burning both their villages and their forests. Here several photos are
shown of refugees from Bolshevik terror and victims of mass deportation.
The woman at upper right is from Ukraine.
“Do not search in your investigations for documents
and evidence that the accused in word or deed has acted
against Soviet power. The first question you must pose is:
to which class does he belong, what is his origin, what education
and training has he enjoyed, and what is his occupation
Those are the questions that must determine the
fate of the accused. 47
This terror was a system of rule by approved mass murder.
It took on dimensions never before seen. Referring to
various Jewish and Russian authors, Solzhenitsyn states
with respect to September 1918:
Among the national minorities, it is completely clear
that in an organization containing many Latvians, and a
considerable number of Poles, the Jews stand out very distinctly,
particularly among the responsible persons and active
collaborators in the Cheka, among the commissars and
the investigators.
For example, of the lead investigators in the commissariat
for fighting counter-revolution, the most important
structure in the whole Cheka, half were Jews. 48
Solzhenitsyn describes some details:
A bloody track of vengeful terror—exclusively vengeful!—went
through the land. It was no longer about civil
war, but instead about the destruction of the beaten opponent.
In waves the country was hit by raids, searches, new
raids and arrests. Prison inmates were taken out, cell by
cell, and shot from the first to the last man with machinegun
salvos, since there were too many victims to execute
with single rifle shots. . . . Fifteen- or 16-year-olds were executed,
just as were 60-year-old men. 49
With the infamous decree “On the Red Terror” of September
5, 1918, the Bolshevik regime demanded the reinforcement
of the Cheka and legalized the Terror officially
—for example, the arbitrary banishing into concentration
camps, or shooting, of all “class enemies.” In that month
of September alone, hundreds of executions occurred in
each of Petrograd, Kronstadt and Moscow. In the autumn
of 1918 the newspapers of the country reported thousands
of arrests and between 10,000 and 15,000 executions. 50
Even in the CC [Central Committee] of the Bolsheviks,
protests were heard against the self-willed actions of the
over-zealous Cheka, as Solzhenitsyn puts it, “an organization
full of criminals, sadists and the degenerate scum of
society.” 51
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