List of massacres in the Soviet Union

The following is a list of massacres that took place in the Soviet Union. For massacres that took place in countries that were once part of the Soviet Union, see the list of massacres in that country.

Name Date Location Deaths Notes
Execution of the Romanov family 1918, July 16–17 Yekaterinburg 11 Justified by the Bolsheviks as necessary to prevent the anti-communist White Army from rescuing them. The USSR repeatedly denied that Vladimir Lenin was responsible.
Red Terror 1918–1922 Nationwide 50,000–200,000[1][2][3] For the purpose of political repression and suppression of armed resistance.
First Decossackization 1919–1920s Don and Kuban regions Anywhere from 10,000[4] executed to 300,000 - 500,000 both deported and killed[5] The decossackization is sometimes described as a genocide of the Cossacks,[6][7][8][9][10] although this view is disputed,[11] with some historians asserting that this label is an exaggeration.[4] The process has been described by scholar Peter Holquist as part of a "ruthless" and "radical attempt to eliminate undesirable social groups" that showed the Soviet regime's "dedication to social engineering".[12][4]
Kiev pogroms (1919) 23 June–20 October 1919 Kiev Governorate 30,000–70,000 Tens of thousands of Jews were killed by the White Volunteer Army across three districts. Thousands of rapes also occurred, as did the destruction of dozens of settlements and towns.
August Uprising 1924 Georgia 7,000-10,000[13] After the failed 1924 August uprising in Georgia, Red army detachments exterminated entire families, including women and children in a series of raids.[14] Mass executions also took place in prisons,[15] where people were shot without trial. Hundreds were shot directly in railway trucks, so that the dead bodies could be removed faster.[16]
Kazakh famine of 1930–33 1930 - 1933 Kazakhstan 1.5 - 2.3 million[17] Some historians and scholars consider that this famine amounted to genocide of the Kazakhs.[18] The Soviet authorities undertook a campaign of persecution against the nomads in the Kazakhs, believing that the destruction of the class was a worthy sacrifice for the collectivization of Kazakhstan.[19][20] Europeans in Kazakhstan had disproportionate power in the party which has been argued as a cause of why indigenous nomads suffered the worst part of the collectivization process rather than the European sections of the country.[21]
Case Spring 1930–1931 Russia 3,000+ Over a thousand killed in St. Petersburg alone. First purge conducted by Stalin.
Holodomor 1932c- 1933 Ukraine 3.5-3.9 Million [22] Scholars continue to debate "whether the man-made Soviet famine was a central act in a campaign of genocide, or whether it was designed to simply cow Ukrainian peasants into submission, drive them into the collectives and ensure a steady supply of grain for Soviet industrialization."[23] Whether the Holodomor is a genocide is a significant issue in modern politics and there is no international consensus on whether Soviet policies would fall under the legal definition of genocide.[24][25] A number of governments, such as the United States and Canada, have recognized the Holodomor as an act of genocide. However, David R. Marples states such decisions are mostly based on emotions, or on pressure by local groups rather than hard evidence.[26] Robert Davies, Stephen Kotkin, and Stephen Wheatcroft reject the notion that Stalin intentionally wanted to kill the Ukrainians, but exacerbated the situation by enacting bad policies and ignorance of the problem,[27][28] which, according to historian John Archibald Getty, was the overwhelming weight of opinion among scholars who studied the newly opened Soviet archives in 2000.[11] In contrast according to Simon Payaslian, the scholarly consensus classifies the Holodomor as a genocide.[29]
Blacklisting of villages in Ukraine, Kazakhstan and the North Caucasus 1932-1933 Ukraine, Kazakhstan, North Caucasus (Kuban) unknown, hundreds of farms and dozens of districts affected... Some blacklisted areas[30] in Kharkiv could have death rates exceeding 40%[31] while in other areas such as Stalino blacklisting had no particular effect on mortality.[31] 'Blacklisting, synonymous with a "board of infamy", was one of the elements of agitation-propaganda in the Soviet Union, and especially Ukraine and the ethnically Ukrainian Kuban region in the 1930s, coinciding with the Holodomor. Blacklisting was also used in Soviet Kazakhstan.[32] The blacklist system was formalized in 1932 by the November 20 decree "The Struggle against Kurkul Influence in Collective Farms",[33] a blacklisted collective farm, village, or raion (district) had its monetary loans and grain advances called in, stores closed, grain supplies, livestock, and food confiscated as a "penalty", and was cut off from trade. Its Communist Party and collective farm committees were purged and subject to arrest, and their territory was forcibly cordoned off by the OGPU secret police.[33] In the end at least 400 collective farms where put on the "black board" in Ukraine, more than half of them in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast alone.[34] In 1932, 32 (out of less than 200) districts in Kazakhstan that did not meet grain production quotas were blacklisted.[32]
Sealing of the Ukrainian borders during the Soviet famine 1932-1933 Ukraine 150,000 Joseph Stalin signed the January 1933 secret decree named "Preventing the Mass Exodus of Peasants who are Starving", restricting travel by peasants after requests for bread began in the Kuban and Ukraine; Soviet authorities blamed the exodus of peasants during the famine on anti-Soviet elements, saying that "like the outflow from Ukraine last year, was organized by the enemies of Soviet power."[35] During a single month in 1933, 219,460 people were either intercepted and escorted back or arrested and sentenced.[36] It has been estimated that there were some 150,000 excess deaths as a result of this policy, and one historian asserts that these deaths constitute a crime against humanity.[37] In contrast, historian Stephen Kotkin argues that the sealing of the Ukrainian borders caused by the internal passport system was in order to prevent the spread of famine related diseases.[38]
Searches for hidden grain in Ukraine Early 1933 Ukraine Possibly 550,000 people had food confiscated from them and an unknown number of them died[39] Between January and mid-April 1933, a factor contributing to a surge of deaths within certain region of Ukraine during the period was the relentless search for alleged hidden grain by the confiscation of all food stuffs from certain households, which Stalin implicitly approved of through a telegram he sent on the 1 January 1933 to the Ukrainian government reminding Ukrainian farmers of the severe penalties for not surrendering grain they may be hiding.[40] In his review of Anne Applebaum's book Mark Tauger gives a rough estimate of those affected by the search for hidden grain reserves: "In chapter 10 Applebaum describes the harsh searches that local personnel, often Ukrainian, imposed on villages, based on a Ukrainian memoir collection (222), and she presents many vivid anecdotes. Still she never explains how many people these actions affected. She cites a Ukrainian decree from November 1932 calling for 1100 brigades to be formed (229). If each of these 1100 brigades searched 100 households, and a peasant household had five people, then they took food from 550,000 people, out of 20 million, or about 2-3 percent."[39]
Great purge 1936–1938 Nationwide 681,692–1,200,000 Ordered by Joseph Stalin.
Polish Operation of the NKVD 1937, August– 1938, November Nationwide 111,091 Largest ethnic shooting during the Great purge. Polish Nationalism was a very big movement in The USSR at the time, resulting in the deaths of many Polish Nationalists dubbed as "Fascists" by The Soviet Union.
Sandarmokh 1937-38 Sandarmokh, Karelia 9,000 (Disputed) Mass executions of prisoners
Vinnytsia massacre 1937–1938 Vinnytsia, Ukraine 11,000 (Disputed)
Katyn massacre 1940, April–May Katyn Forest, Kalinin and Kharkiv prisons 22,000 Mass executions of Polish nationals by NKVD.
Lunca massacre 1941, 7 February Lunka, Ukraine 600[41]
Fântâna Albă massacre 1941, April 1 Northern Bukovina 44–3,000[42][43]
NKVD prisoner massacres 1941, June–July Occupied Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Baltic states ~100,000 The NKVD prisoner massacres were a series of mass executions of political prisoners carried out by the NKVD, the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs of the Soviet Union, across Eastern Europe, primarily Poland, Ukraine, the Baltic states, and Bessarabia. After the start of the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, the NKVD troops were supposed to evacuate political prisoners into the interior of the Soviet Union, but the hasty retreat of the Red Army, the lack of transportation and other supplies and the general disregard for legal procedures often meant that the prisoners were executed. Approximately two thirds of the 150,000 prisoners[44] were murdered; most of the rest were transported into the interior of the Soviet Union, but some were abandoned in the prisons if there was no time to execute them, and others managed to escape.[45]
Lychkovo massacre (ru) July 18, 1941 Lychkovo, Demyansky Around 41 Mass killing of 41 people, primarily children, by Nazi Germany
Khatyn massacre 1943, March 22 Khatyn 149 Propagandized in the USSR to cover phonetically similar Katyn massacre
Khaibakh massacre 1944, February 27 Chechnya, Soviet Union 230–700 During the deportation of the Chechen and Ingush peoples. Siberian winter was to hard to handle for the Chechens who lived in a mostly hot climate
Kengir uprising 1954, May 6 – June 26 Kengir 500–700
Novocherkassk massacre 1962, June 1 – 2 Novocherkassk, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union. 26
Jeltoqsan massacre 1986, December 16–19 Alma-Ata, Kazakh SSR 168-200
Sumgait massacre 1988, February 26 – March 1 Sumgait, Azerbaijan SSR 32
Kirovabad pogrom 1988, November Kirovabad, Azerbaijan SSR 20-30
January Massacre 1990, January 19–20 Baku, Azerbaijan 133-140 Known also as the Black January (Qara Yanvar)
Tbilisi Massacre 1989, April 9 Tbilisi, Georgia 21[46][47] hundreds of civilians wounded and killed with sapper spades[46]
Vorkuta uprising 1953, starting July 19 Vorkuta 42
January Events 1991, January 11–13 Vilnius, Lithuania 14[48] After Lithuania recently declared its independence, the USSR sent in the army to crackdown on the "nationalist government". Immediately, hundreds of thousands of unarmed Lithuanians went to the streets to defend the local parliament, TV tower, the radio station and other key buildings. 14 people died during the violence. In 2019, Lithuania sentenced 67 people for war crimes and crimes against humanity.[49]

Mass repression
in the Soviet Union
Economic repression
Political repression
Ideological repression
Ethnic repression

See also

References
  1. Stone, Bailey (2013). The Anatomy of Revolution Revisited: A Comparative Analysis of England, France, and Russia. Cambridge University Press. p. 335.
  2. "How the 'Red Terror' Exposed the True Turmoil of Soviet Russia 100 Years Ago". Time. Retrieved 2020-12-03.
  3. "How Lenin's Red terror set a macabre course soviet union". National Geographic Society. 2 September 2020.
  4. Holquist, Peter (1997). ""Conduct merciless mass terror": decossackization on the Don, 1919". Cahiers du Monde Russe. 38 (1): 127–162. doi:10.3406/cmr.1997.2486.
  5. Robert Gellately. Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe Archived May 5, 2016, at the Wayback Machine Knopf, 2007 ISBN 1-4000-4005-1 pp. 70–71.
  6. Orlando Figes. A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891–1924. Penguin Books, 1998. ISBN 0-14-024364-X
  7. Donald Rayfield. Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him Random House, 2004. ISBN 0-375-50632-2
  8. Mikhail Heller & Aleksandr Nekrich. Utopia in Power: The History of the Soviet Union from 1917 to the Present.
  9. R. J. Rummel (1990). Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1917. Transaction Publishers. ISBN 1-56000-887-3. Retrieved 2014-03-01.
  10. Soviet order to exterminate Cossacks is unearthed Archived December 10, 2009, at the Wayback Machine University of York Communications Office, 21 January 2003
  11. Getty, J. Arch (2000). "The Future Did Not Work". The Atlantic. Retrieved 18 July 2020. Similarly, the overwhelming weight of opinion among scholars working in the new archives (including Courtois's co-editor Werth) is that the terrible famine of the 1930s was the result of Stalinist bungling and rigidity rather than some genocidal plan.
  12. Holquist, Peter (1917-03-08). Making War, Forging Revolution: Russia's Continuum of Crisis, 1914-1921 - Peter Holquist - Google Boeken. ISBN 9780674009073. Retrieved 2014-03-01.
  13. Pethybridge, Roger William (1990). One Step Backwards, Two Steps Forward: Soviet Society and Politics in the New Economic Policy. Oxford University. p. 255. ISBN 978-0-19-821927-9.
  14. Lang, David-Marshall (1962). A Modern History of Soviet Georgia. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. p. 243. ISBN 9780700715626.
  15. Rummel, Rudolph J. Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1917. Transaction Publishers.
  16. Surguladze, Akaki. The History of Georgia. Tbilisi, Georgia.
  17. "The Kazakh Famine of 1930-33 and the Politics of History in the Post-Soviet Space | Wilson Center". www.wilsoncenter.org. Retrieved 2020-12-07.
  18. Sabol, Steven (2017). 'The Touch of Civilization': Comparing American and Russian Internal Colonization. University Press of Colorado. p. 47. ISBN 9781607325505.
  19. Pianciola, Niccolò (2004). "Famine in the steppe. The collectivization of agriculture and the Kazak herdsmen, 1928–1934". Cahiers du monde russe. 45 (1–2): 137–192.
  20. Pianciola, Niccolò, 2009, Stalinismo di frontiera. Colonizzazione agricola, sterminio dei nomadi and costruzione statale in Asia centrale (1905-1936), Rome: Viella.
  21. Payne, Matthew J. (2011). "Seeing like a soviet state: settlement of nomadic Kazakhs, 1928–1934". In Alexopoulos, Golgo; Hessler, Julie, eds. Writing the Stalin Era. pp.59–86.
  22. "Holodomor | Facts, Definition, & Death Toll". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 2020-12-07.
  23. Yaroslav Bilinsky (June 1999). "Was the Ukrainian famine of 1932–1933 genocide?". Journal of Genocide Research. 1 (2): 147–156. doi:10.1080/14623529908413948. ISSN 1462-3528. Wikidata Q54006926. Archived from the original on 2019-10-22.
  24. Marples, David (30 November 2005). "The great famine debate goes on..." ExpressNews (University of Alberta), originally published in the Edmonton Journal. Archived from the original on 15 June 2008.
  25. Kuchytskyi, Stanislav (17 February 2007). Голодомор 1932 — 1933 рр. як геноцид: прогалини у доказовій базі [Holodomor 1932–1933 as genocide: gaps in the evidence]. Den (in Ukrainian). Retrieved 20 January 2021.
  26. Marples, David R. (2009). "Ethnic Issues in the Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine". Europe-Asia Studies. 61 (3): 505–518. doi:10.1080/09668130902753325. ISSN 0966-8136. JSTOR 27752256. S2CID 67783643.
  27. Robert William Davies, Stephen G. Wheatcroft, Challenging Traditional Views of Russian History Palgrave Macmillan (2002) ISBN 978-0-333-75461-0, chapter The Soviet Famine of 1932–33 and the Crisis in Agriculture p. 69 et seq.
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  29. Payaslian, Simon. "20th Century Genocides". Oxford bibliographies.
  30. "Blacklisted Entities in Ukraine, 1932-1933".
  31. "Total Direct Famine Losses of Population per 1,000 by Raion in Ukraine for 1933".
  32. Environment, Empire, and the Great Famine in Stalin's Kazakhstan Niccolò Pianciola
  33. Andriewsky, Olga (2015-01-23). "Towards a Decentred History: The Study of the Holodomor and Ukrainian Historiography". East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies. 2 (1): 18–52. doi:10.21226/T2301N.
  34. Papakin, Heorhii (2010-11-27). ""Chorni doshky" Holodomoru – ekonomichnyi metod znyshchennia hromadian URSR (SPYSOK)" ["Black boards" of the Holodomor: An economic method for the destruction of community members of the Ukrainian SSR (list)]. Istorychna Pravda (in Ukrainian). Archived from the original on 2019-01-03. Retrieved 2021-01-25.
  35. Martin, Terry (2001). The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923–1939 (paperback ed.). Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. pp. 306–307. ISBN 9780801486777. Retrieved 2 December 2021 – via Google Books. 'TsK VKP/b/ and Sovnarkom have received information that in the Kuban and Ukraine a massive outflow of peasants 'for bread' has begun into Belorussia and the Central-Black Earth, Volga, Western, and Moscow regions. / TsK VKP/b/ and Sovnarkom do not doubt that the outflow of peasants, like the outflow from Ukraine last year, was organized by the enemies of Soviet power, the SRs and the agents of Poland, with the goal of agitation 'through the peasantry' ... TsK VKP/b/ and Sovnarkom order the OGPU of Belorussia and the Central-Black Earth, Middle Volga, Western and Moscow regions to immediately arrest all 'peasants' of Ukraine and the North Caucasus who have broken through into the north and, after separating out the counterrevolutionariy elements, to return the rest to their place of residence.' ... Molotov, Stalin
  36. Werth, Nicholas (1999). "A State against Its People: Violence, Repression, and Terror in the Soviet Union". In Courtois, Stéphane (ed.). The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression. Translated by Mark Kraemer; Jonathan Murphy (illustrated hardcover ed.). Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. p. 164. ISBN 9780674076082. Retrieved 2 December 2021 – via Google Books.
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  38. Kotkin, Stephen (8 November 2017). "Terrible Talent: Studying Stalin". The American Interest (Interview). Interviewed by Richard Aldous. Retrieved 26 November 2021.
  39. Tauger, Mark (1 July 2018). "Review of Anne Applebaum's 'Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine'". History News Network. George Washington University. Retrieved 22 October 2019.
  40. Wolowyna, Oleh (October 2020). "A Demographic Framework for the 1932–1934 Famine in the Soviet Union". Journal of Genocide Research. 23 (4): 501–526. doi:10.1080/14623528.2020.1834741. S2CID 226316468.
  41. "Pagina de istorie: Masacrul de la Lunca, pedeapsa pentru cei care au dorit să evadeze din "paradisul sovietic"". 7 February 2018.
  42. "Un supraviețuitor al Masacrului de la Fântâna Albă vorbește după 71 de ani". 3 April 2012.
  43. Oprea, Mircea (2016). "Expoziție cutremurătoare la Bruxelles: 75 de ani de la Masacrul de la Fântâna Albă" [Terrible exhibition in Brussels: 75 years since the Fântâna Albă Massacre]. rfi.ro (in Romanian). Radio France Internationale. Retrieved 11 May 2020.
  44. Piotrowski, Tadeusz (1998). Poland's Holocaust (Google Books preview). Jefferson: McFarland. ISBN 0-7864-0371-3. McFarland, 2007 reprint, (Google Books search inside). ISBN 0786429135. {{cite book}}: External link in |quote= (help)
  45. Nagorski, Andrew (18 September 2007). The Greatest Battle. p. 84. ISBN 9781416545736. Retrieved 2013-12-30.
  46. Gegeshidze, Archil. "The 9 April tragedy — a milestone in the history of modern Georgia". ORF. Retrieved 2020-12-03.
  47. Unlimited, Communications (2019-04-09). "Tbilisi Massacre". Communications Unlimited. Retrieved 2021-03-06.
  48. "Lithuania remembers January 13, 1991". 13 January 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  49. "January 13, 1991. The night when Lithuania faced Soviet troops – through the eyes of ordinary people". 12 January 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
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