Within the context of Political Theory, Communism is a theory and system of social and political organization, which aspired to overthrow capitalism and introduce a system in which property is owned by the community as a whole.
Communism theorizes a society which lacks social class, offers abundance and freedom and all people enjoy equal social and economic status. However, in the Soviet Russia, Communist regimes used violence to accomplish their goal of a classless society. In 1848, The Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels addressed the problem of unequal distribution of wealth to the society asserting that since rich people would not give up their wealth voluntarily, the only way for the working class to get its share was to rebel against the rich minority. In 1908, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin embraced a real, nation-wide terror that would reinvigorate Soviet Russia, while in 1918 Josep Stalin considered terror as the quickest way to new society.
In 1918, Lenin founded Cheka, a secret police organization, to ensure the Bolshevik grip on power. Causing terror on all parts of society opposed to the revolution in the Soviet Russia, Communist atrocities and Bolshevik violence involved political and civilian cruelties, executions, deportations, premeditated destruction of population by starvation and deaths resulting from physical detention, or forced labor.
Believing in equality through force and being determined to purge any resistance, active or passive, to their absolute power, the Bolsheviks committed acts of excessive savagery designed to instill fear. “Days of Terror” were organized by Cheka to execute 300 people per day based on execution lists and to kill people, who were in the hospital. Other references hold that it was a common practice to take a husband hostage and wait for his wife to come and purchase his life with her body.
Bolshevik brutality had a profound impact primarily on groups with opposing political views. However, within the context of “de-Cossackization” strategy, the Bolsheviks attacked the aristocracy, the middle class, the intelligentsia, the clergy, the military services and the police. It is reported that in 1918 alone an estimated 3,000 priests, monks and nuns were crucified, scalped, strangled, given Communion with melted lead and drowned in holes in the ice. Through the extermination of the Cossacks, a firmly established population group, the Bolsheviks shot the men, deported women, children and older people and took over their properties and land.
