(p. A17) Armed Bolsheviks seized the Winter Palace in Petrograd–now St. Petersburg–100 years ago this week and arrested ministers of Russia’s provisional government. They set in motion a chain of events that would kill millions and inflict a near-fatal wound on Western civilization.
. . .
The victims include 200,000 killed during the Red Terror (1918-22); 11 million dead from famine and dekulakization; 700,000 executed during the Great Terror (1937-38); 400,000 more executed between 1929 and 1953; 1.6 million dead during forced population transfers; and a minimum 2.7 million dead in the Gulag, labor colonies and special settlements.
To this list should be added nearly a million Gulag prisoners released during World War II into Red Army penal battalions, where they faced almost certain death; the partisans and civilians killed in the postwar revolts against Soviet rule in Ukraine and the Baltics; and dying Gulag inmates freed so that their deaths would not count in official statistics.
If we add to this list the deaths caused by communist regimes that the Soviet Union created and supported–including those in Eastern Europe, China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam and Cambodia–the total number of victims is closer to 100 million. That makes communism the greatest catastrophe in human history.
For the full commentary, see:
David Satter. “100 Years of Communism–and 100 Million Dead; The Bolshevik plague that began in Russia was the greatest catastrophe in human history.” The Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2017): A17.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Nov. 6, 2017.)