The Red Terror: Lenin's War on His Enemies and the Birth of Soviet Repression (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798188593230)

THE RED TERROR is a gripping account of the birth of Soviet state violence: the moment Lenin's revolution began to rule through fear, coercion, imprisonment, executions, and political terror.

The Bolsheviks came to power promising peace, bread, land, workers' power, and an end to the old world of Tsarist authority. But Russia did not become peaceful after October 1917. It collapsed deeper into civil war, hunger, political fragmentation, foreign intervention, armed resistance, and the brutal struggle over who would command the future.

In that crisis, Lenin's regime built the institutions and habits of revolutionary terror. The Cheka became the sword and shield of the new state. Hostages were taken. Class enemies were named. Opposition newspapers were closed. Rival socialist parties were crushed. Peasants were forced under requisition. Kronstadt was destroyed. Violence became not merely an emergency measure, but a method of government.

This book follows the road from the collapse of imperial Russia to the Bolshevik seizure of power, the rise of the Cheka, the violence of civil war, the war against opposition, the punishment of peasants, the crushing of Kronstadt, and the legacy Lenin left behind for Stalin.

Part of the Blood and Power Series, this book examines how a revolution that promised liberation gave birth to one of the foundational systems of modern political terror.