Soviet war crimes
From 1917 to 1991, a multitude of war crimes and crimes against humanity were carried out by the Soviet Union or its constituent Soviet republics, including the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and its armed forces. They include acts which were committed by the Red Army as well as acts which were committed by the country's secret police, NKVD, including its Internal Troops. In many cases, these acts were committed upon the direct orders of Soviet leaders Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin in pursuance of the early Soviet policy of Red Terror as a means to justify executions and political repression. In other instances they were committed without orders by Soviet troops against prisoners of war or civilians of countries that had been in armed conflict with the Soviet Union, or they were committed during partisan warfare.
A significant number of these incidents occurred in Northern, Central, and Eastern Europe before, during, and in the aftermath of World War II, involving summary executions and the mass murder of prisoners of war, such as in the Katyn massacre and mass rape by troops of the Red Army in territories they occupied.
In the 1990s and 2000s, war crimes trials held in the Baltic states led to the prosecution of some Russians, mostly in absentia, for crimes against humanity committed during or shortly after World War II, including killings or deportations of civilians. Today, the Russian government engages in historical negationism. Russian media refers to the Soviet crimes against humanity and war crimes as a "Western myth". In Russian history textbooks, the atrocities are either altered to portray the Soviets positively or omitted entirely. In 2017, Russian president Vladimir Putin while acknowledging the "horrors of Stalinism", criticized the "excessive demonization of Stalin" by "Russia's enemies".
Background
The Soviet Union did not recognize Imperial Russia's signing of the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 as binding, and as a result, it refused to recognize them until 1955. This created a situation in which war crimes by the Soviet armed forces could be justified, and also gave Nazi Germany a legal cover for the atrocities it committed against Soviet prisoners of war.Russian Civil War
Blagoveshchensk massacre
In March 1918, over a thousand Blagoveshchensk residents were massacred by Red Guards who seized the city. Chekist I. P. Pavlunovsky reported that miners stormed the city, systematically killing those suspected of rebellion, including city administration staff and mining specialists. A 1919 press report corroborated the atrocities, stating over 1,000 locals were shot, with many students later joining the army. Far Eastern Socialist-Revolutionary-Maximalist I. I. Zhukovsky-Zhuk noted that ruthless, no-compromise methods, including summary executions, were common. He cited Amur authorities like Matveev and Dimitriev, both Communists, who shot dozens without trial, a practice known and tolerated by most, except for Blagoveshchensk anarchists.Massacre of Kyiv
After the Battle of Kruty, which successfully delayed the Bolshevik advance on Kyiv and gave time for those who wanted to evacuate, the Red Guards approached the outskirts of Kyiv on February 4, 1918, where Mikhail Muravyov gave the order to begin the assault. During the capture of the capital, poison gas was used and massive shelling was carried out, which did not stop for several days, as a result of which, among other things, the house of Mykhailo Hrushevsky was destroyed.On Duma Square, Muravyov was met by a delegation of the city council led by then-mayor Yevhen Ryabtsov. Andriy Polupanov was appointed Soviet commander in Kyiv. Entering the city, Soviet troops killed about 5,000 civilians, declared enemies. Among the dead were only two politicians: Secretary for Territorial Affairs of UPR Oleksandr Zarudny and Central Rada deputy Isak Puhach.
Vladivostok massacre
In early April 1920, former Kolchak government head P. V. Volgodsky met two officers in Shanghai who had fled Red Terror in Vladivostok. They reported that despite the socialist coalition government, Bolsheviks were actively arresting and killing Whites, often after torture. They stated, "In Vladivostok, there are systematic murders of White Guard officers. They are arrested and shot on their way to prison under the pretext of stopping escape attempts, etc."Chita massacre and the elimination of the so-called "Semyonov jam"
's Red Army partisan detachment, known for its brutal attacks on the pro-White Buryat population, participated in capturing Chita and eliminating the "Semyonov jam." For example, in Fall 1920, the Khamnigan-Buryat Khoshun was devastated; three of its somons were completely deserted, and two others retained less than 200 of 6,000 inhabitants. Many who fled to Mongolia were killed, their bodies left unburied in March 1921, with over 70 corpses, including monks, women, and children, found near Byrtsin datsan. Beyond robbery, Kalandarishvili's unit also raped Buryat women and girls in late 1920. Despite the 5th Army command's accusations that Kalandarishvili's unit undermined Soviet power due to its criminal behavior, he faced no military sanctions, largely because his position had been strengthened by Lenin.Amur River massacre
and Nina Lebedeva-Kiyashko's movement of two thousand troops down the Amur River involved the near-total extermination of rural intellectuals for "revolutionary passivity" and anyone resembling an urban "bourgeois." Priests were either drowned in ice-holes or taken prisoner, and even volunteers joining the partisans were shot.One of Tryapitsyn's aides, Ivan Lapta, formed a Red Army detachment that "raided villages and camps, robbed and killed people," targeting those who withheld gold at the Limursk mines and looting Amgun gold mines and surrounding villages. Before occupying the regional center, Lapta's detachments, along with other Tryapitsyn associates, killed hundreds of Lower Amurians.
Tryapitsyn's unit included about 200 Chinese and 200 Koreans from taiga gold mines, led by Ilya Pak. Tryapitsyn provided them generous cash advances, promising gold and many Russian women. Partisan chiefs, appointed for their ruthless determination, maintained control by allowing their units to plunder and kill.
Nikolaevsk-on-Amur massacre
In 1920, Soviet Russia and Japan discussed a Far Eastern buffer state. Japan agreed to allow the Red Army into Vladivostok after Kolchak's government collapsed, forcing Bolsheviks to accept a socialist zemstvo due to the significant foreign troop presence. Meanwhile, Tryapitsyn's forces besieged and captured Nikolaevsk-on-Amur in late February after an artillery bombardment. The city, isolated and with limited defenders, was promised no atrocities by the entering Red Army, who even signed a pact with the Imperial Japanese Army garrison on February 28. However, the Red Army immediately began looting and killing.The Red guerrillas violated their peace agreement with the Japanese garrison upon entering Nikolaevsk, killing residents and executing civilians sympathetic to the White Movement, including wealthy individuals. They then provoked the Japanese garrison, issuing an ultimatum to disarm, which Major Ishikawa, the Japanese commander, refused. On March 13, Ishikawa launched a preemptive strike, wounding Tryapitsyn. Despite this, Tryapitsyn organized resistance, overwhelming the Japanese garrison. The consul and all staff died in the consulate, which the guerrillas set ablaze. Tryapitsyn's unit also carried out brutal purges, exterminating Jewish women and children—children were killed with their mothers, and women were raped before execution. Jewish community members were drowned in the Amur River. These executions were systematically performed by dedicated squads of Russian, Korean, and Chinese partisans loyal to Tryapitsyn, who killed a set number of victims from a list nightly.
Tryapitsyn's unit retreated only after destroying the entire city, burning wooden buildings and blowing up stone structures. In late May and early June 1920, on orders from Tryapitsyn's headquarters, Nikolaevsk-on-Amur was annihilated, surrounding fishing grounds burned, and inhabitants murdered based on "trustworthiness" and social affiliation. Remaining Japanese prisoners and dissenting Red Army partisans were also killed. The forced evacuation of some residents into the taiga resulted in nearly all children under five dying. The remaining population was forcibly taken by the Red Army through the taiga to a "red island" in the middle Amur, leaving Nikolaevsk as desolate ashes. Thousands of Russians were massacred by the Red Army.
The terror of 1920–1921 in the occupied Crimea
In late 1920 and early 1921, the Red Army carried out a mass extermination of Wrangel's army officers and soldiers, and civilians in Crimea. After seizing Crimea on November 21, 1920, Chekists formed the Crimean Strike Group under E. G. Evdokimov. These Chekists often bypassed investigations, relying on arrests and questionnaires to "judge" victims via troikas, leading to mass executions and incarcerations in concentration camps. Many arrestees, including women and teenagers, were immediately shot.It's believed Yefim Yevdokimov's "expedition" of special agents killed at least 12,000 people. This figure, recorded in his commendation for the Order of the Red Banner, noted executions included "up to 30 governors, more than 150 generals, more than 300 colonels, several hundred counter-intelligence spies." Territorial Chekists also actively participated in the killings. M.M. Vikhman, a former head of the Crimean Cheka, later boasted of personally killing "an ennite number of thousands of White Guards." Additionally, Red partisans exterminated at least 3,000 Crimeans.
However, this terror sparked armed resistance and widespread indignation among local communists, who complained to central authorities. Consequently, in June 1921, a Plenipotentiary Commission began work in Crimea. M.H. Sultan-Galiev, a commission member, reported that Crimean workers estimated 20,000 to 25,000 Wrangel officers were shot across Crimea, with up to 12,000 in Simferopol alone.