Red Terror and Civil War: Comparing Revolutionary Violence

After October, Russia descended into civil war between the Bolsheviks' Red Army and a range of opponents known as the Whites, along with nationalist and peasant movements, while foreign troops intervened. The Bolsheviks created a secret police, the Cheka, in December 1917, and in September 1918, after an attempt on Lenin's life, declared a Red Terror against 'class enemies'. The Whites also committed mass killings, including pogroms against Jews. The war, famine and disease caused millions of deaths between 1918 and 1921.

Comparing this with France's Terror shows both similarities and differences. Both were justified as defending a revolution under attack. But the Russian terror was larger, longer and more institutionalized, and the Cheka became a permanent state organ rather than a temporary emergency body. Historians debate whether ideology or circumstance mattered more, the same debate as for 1793–94.