Repression Remembrance

In the 74 years the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics existed (1917-1991) tens of millions of men, women and children became victims of political repression within the Soviet Union alone. That does not count the millions upon millions of additional men, women and children politically repressed by the Soviets in: Poland, East Germany, Hungary, Soviet-occupied Austria, Romania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Albania (or the millions of people politically repressed by the local Communists in those countries.)

 Lenin called them “Enemy of the People” (враг народа) in November 1917 and made it legal by Article 58 (RSFSR Penal Code) in February 1927  - all 15 Soviet Republics had a similar Article in their Penal Code. Any person could be called an “Enemy of the People” but whole groups were singled out: Tsar Nicholas II and the Imperial family, aristocrats, the bourgeoisie, clerics, business entrepreneurs, anarchists, kulaks, monarchists, Mensheviks, Esers, Bundists, Trotskyists, Bukharinists, the "old Bolsheviks", the army and police, emigrants, saboteurs, wreckers, "social parasites" , Kavezhedists, those considered bourgeois nationalists (notably Russian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Armenian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian nationalists, Zionists and Basmachi.)  

An "Enemy of the People" could be imprisoned, expelled or executed, and lose their property to confiscation. Close relatives of enemies of the people were labeled as "Traitor of Motherland Family Members" (члены семьи изменника Родины)  and prosecuted. They could be sent to a Gulag, punished by the involuntary settlement in unpopulated areas, or stripped of citizen's rights. Being a friend of an enemy of the people automatically placed the person under suspicion.

While “Enemy of the People” affected the whole 74 years the USSR existed there were numerous campaigns to “wipe-out” this group of people:

-          The Red Terror (Красный террор): December 1917 to February 1922 between 100,000 and 200,000 men, women and children were murdered.

-          Collectivization Program (Коллективизация): 1928-1948 between 6 to 13 million men, women and children were murdered. 

-          The Great Purge or the Great Terror (Большой террор): 1937-1938 between 950,000 to 1,200,000 men, women and children were murdered.

-          Forced Population Transfer of whole groups (Poles (1939–1941 and 1944–1945), Romanians (1941 and 1944–1953), Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians (1939-1941 and 1945–1949), Volga Germans (1941–1945), Ingrian Finns (1929–1931 and 1935–1939), Finnish people in Karelia (1940–1941, 1944), Crimean Tatars, Crimean Greeks (1944) and Caucasus Greeks (1949–50), Kalmyks, Balkars, Karachays, Meskhetian Turks, Karapapaks, Far East Koreans (1937), Chechens and Ingushs (1944) - -  1930s to 1950s between 1 million and 1.5 million men, women and children were murdered. 

From 1927-1953 Joseph Stalin had an estimated 61 million men, women and children (Enemies of the People) murdered. 

It was only after he died that the Soviet Government created a political term called “Rehabilitation” (реабилитация) under which an “Enemy of the People” or a “Traitor to the Motherland Family Member” – those that had been repressed and criminally prosecuted without due basis – were given State Acquittals and allowed to live in exile within the Soviet Union – most were posthumously granted as the person had already been executed or died in a labor camp.