Revolutionary terror
136, 7 November 1848), Karl Marx wrote, describing the violence that had been committed by "the bourgeoise" in the Revolutions of 1848 in the Austrian Empire: The purposeless massacres perpetrated since the June and October events, the tedious offering of sacrifices since February and March, the very cannibalism of the counterrevolution will convince the nations that there is only one way in which the murderous death agonies of the old society and the bloody birth throes of the new society can be shortened, simplified and concentrated, and that way is revolutionary terror.
[21][22] Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky and other leading Bolshevik ideologists viewed mass terror as a necessary weapon during the dictatorship of proletariat and the resulting class struggle.
Martin Latsis, one of the Soviet leaders directing the Cheka, stated his intentions for those classes who were considered reactionary and incapable of being reeducated.
The Sans-Culottes had demanded government action against enemies and the remains of the Old Regime, spanning from the General Maximum (which guaranteed the price of staple commodities) to the execution of several dozen prisoners.
[25] The murder of the radical republican writer Jean-Paul Marat in July 1793 in his own bath intensified the situation.The Jacobin Government adopted policies of Terror in the most dire days of the civil and foreign wars against the Revolution: September, 1793.
Maximilien Robespierre, the leader of the Jacobins, justified the violence by saying: “Subdue by terror the enemies of liberty, and you will be right, as founders of the Republic.
And is the thunderbolt not destined to strike the heads of the proud?”[27] Despite the efforts to subdue the enemies of the Revolution, the situation continued to deteriorate until the Law of 22 Prairial, Year II (June 10, 1794) was enacted intensifying state-violence at home and beginning what is refereed to by historians as the "Great Terror."
[28] However, the French victory at the Battle of Fleurus (June 1794) had all but secured the Revolution's safety from imminent foreign invasion and gave the Revolutionaries room to breathe and reassess the domestic situation.
[citation needed] Lenin, Trotsky and other leading Bolshevik ideologists promulgated mass terror as a necessary weapon during the dictatorship of proletariat and the resulting class struggle.
Similarly, in his book Terrorism and Communism (1920), Trotsky emphasized that "the historical tenacity of the bourgeoisie is colossal [...] We are forced to tear off this class and chop it away.
He stated that "among the phenomena for which Bolshevism has been responsible, Terrorism, which begins with the abolition of every form of freedom of the Press, and ends in a system of wholesale execution, is certainly the most striking and the most repellent of all".
Nestor Makhno, leader of the Makhnovist movement, listed 80 targets to be liquidated in Alexandrovsk, including Mensheviks, Narodniks and Right Socialist-Revolutionaries.
[33] The Great Purge refers collectively to several related campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin during the 1930s, which removed all of his remaining opposition from power.
[34] It involved the purge of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the persecution of unaffiliated persons, both occurring within a period characterized by omnipresent police surveillance, widespread suspicion of "saboteurs", imprisonment and killings.
