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Revolutionary terror, also referred to asrevolutionary terrorism orreign of terror,^[1] refers to the institutionalized application of force tocounter-revolutionaries, particularly during theFrench Revolution from the years 1793 to 1795 (see theReign of Terror).^[2][3] The term "Communist terrorism" has also been used to describe the revolutionary terror, from theRed Terror in Russia andCultural Revolution in China to the reign of theKhmer Rouge^[4] and others. In contrast, "reactionary terror", often calledWhite Terrors, has been used to subdue revolutions.^[5]

German Social DemocratKarl Kautsky traces the origins of revolutionary terror to theReign of Terror of theFrench Revolution.^[6][7]Vladimir Lenin considered theJacobin use of terror as a neededvirtue and accepted the label Jacobin for hisBolsheviks.^[8] However, this distinguished him fromKarl Marx.^[8]

Thedeterministic view of history was used byCommunist states to justify the use of terror.^[9]Terrorism came to be used by communists, both the state and dissident groups, in both revolution and in consolidation of power.^[10] The doctrines ofanarchism,Marxism,Marxism–Leninism andMaoism have all spurred dissidents who have taken to terrorism.^[11] AfterWorld War I communist groups continued to use it in attempts to overthrow governments.^[11] ForMao Zedong, terrorism was an acceptable tool.^[12]

AfterWorld War II, Marxist–Leninist groups seeking independence, like nationalists, concentrated onguerrilla warfare along with terrorism.^[13] By the late 1950s and early 1960s, there was a change fromwars of national liberation tocontemporary terrorism.^[14] For decades, terrorist groups tended to be closely linked tocommunist ideology, being the predominant category of terrorists in the 1970s and 1980s, but today they are in the minority.^[15] Their decline is attributed to the end of theCold War and thefall of the Soviet Union.^[16][17]

French historianSophie Wahnich distinguishes between the revolutionary terror of the French Revolution and modern dayIslamic terrorism and theSeptember 11 attacks:

Revolutionary terror is not terrorism. To make a moral equivalence between the Revolution's year II and September 2001 is historical and philosophical nonsense[.] [...] The violence exercised on 11 September 2001 aimed neither at equality nor liberty. Nor did the preventive war announced by the president of the United States.^[18][19]

In his article "The Victory of the Counter-Revolution in Vienna" in theNeue Rheinische Zeitung (No. 136, 7 November 1848),Karl Marx wrote, describing the violence that had been committed by "the bourgeoise" in theRevolutions of 1848 in the Austrian Empire:

The purposeless massacres perpetrated since the June and October events, the tedious offering of sacrifices since February and March, the very cannibalism of the counterrevolution will convince the nations that there is only one way in which the murderous death agonies of the old society and the bloody birth throes of the new society can be shortened, simplified and concentrated, and that way is revolutionary terror.^[20]

In his biography ofJoseph Stalin,Edvard Radzinsky, a Russian author of popular history books, noted that Stalin wrote anota bene—"Terror is the quickest way to new society"—beside the above passage in a book by Karl Kautsky.^[21][22]

Vladimir Lenin,Leon Trotsky and other leadingBolshevik ideologists viewed mass terror as a necessary weapon during thedictatorship of proletariat and the resultingclass struggle. In hisThe Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade K. Kautsky (1918), Lenin wrote: "One cannot hide the fact that dictatorship presupposes and implies a "condition", one so disagreeable to renegades [such as Kautsky], of revolutionary violence of one class against another ... the "fundamental feature" of the concept of dictatorship of the proletariat is revolutionary violence".

The Bolsheviks engaged in a form ofsocial determinism that was hostile tobourgeoisie andwealthier classes.Martin Latsis, one of the Soviet leaders directing theCheka, stated his intentions for those classes who were considered reactionary and incapable of being reeducated. Latsis wrote:

We are engaged in exterminating the bourgeoisie as a class. You need not prove that this or that man acted against the interests of the Soviet power. The first thing you have to ask an arrested person is: To what class does he belong, where does he come from, what kind of education did he have, what is his occupation? These questions are to decide the fate of the accused. That is the quintessence of the Red Terror.^[23]

On the other hand, they opposedindividual terror, which has been used earlier by thePeople's Will organization. According to Trotsky: "The damaging of machines by workers, for example, is terrorism in this strict sense of the word. The killing of an employer, a threat to set fire to a factory or a death threat to its owner, an assassination attempt, with revolver in hand, against a government minister—all these are terrorist acts in the full and authentic sense. However, anyone who has an idea of the true nature of international Social Democracy ought to know that it has always opposedthis kind of terrorism and does so in the most irreconcilable way".^[24]

The French Revolution began in 1789, but by 1793 the new government began to search for new means to defend itself. TheSans-Culottes had demanded government action against enemies and the remains of theOld Regime, spanning fromthe General Maximum (which guaranteed the price of staple commodities) to the execution of several dozen prisoners.^[25] The murder of the radical republican writerJean-Paul Marat in July 1793 in his own bath intensified the situation.The Jacobin Government adopted policies of Terror in the most dire days of the civil and foreign wars against the Revolution: September, 1793. French HistorianAlbert Soboul writes: "On 5 September the Terror was made official policy."^[26] For the rest of that September more laws were made that targeted counterrevolutionaries, and granted and enforced the demands of the Sans-Culottes. The next year was dominated by the hunt for and execution or imprisonment of enemies the Revolution, the Jacobins, and France.Maximilien Robespierre, the leader of theJacobins, justified the violence by saying: “Subdue by terror the enemies ofliberty, and you will be right, as founders of theRepublic. The government of the revolution is liberty's despotism againsttyranny. Is force made only to protect crime? And is the thunderbolt not destined to strike the heads of the proud?”^[27]

Despite the efforts to subdue the enemies of the Revolution, the situation continued to deteriorate until theLaw of 22 Prairial, Year II (June 10, 1794) was enacted intensifying state-violence at home and beginning what is referred to by historians as the "Great Terror." 1,376 people were killed by July 26, 1794.^[28] However, the French victory at theBattle of Fleurus (June 1794) had all but secured the Revolution's safety from imminent foreign invasion and gave the Revolutionaries room to breathe and reassess the domestic situation. This led to the conservative backlash in late July 1794 (calledThermidor for the month it was according to theRevolutionary Calendar) and the fall of the Jacobin Government with the execution of Robespierre (July 28, 1794).^{[citation needed]}

Lenin, Trotsky and other leading Bolshevik ideologists promulgated mass terror as a necessary weapon during the dictatorship of proletariat and the resulting class struggle. Similarly, in his bookTerrorism and Communism (1920), Trotsky emphasized that "the historical tenacity of the bourgeoisie is colossal [...] We are forced to tear off this class and chop it away. The Red Terror is a weapon used against a class that, despite being doomed to destruction, does not want to perish".^[29] Trotsky also argued that the reign of terror began with theWhite Terror under the White Guard forces and the Bolsheviks responded with the Red Terror.^[30]

Many later Marxists, in particular Karl Kautsky, criticized Bolshevik leaders for terrorism tactics. He stated that "among the phenomena for which Bolshevism has been responsible, Terrorism, which begins with the abolition of every form of freedom of the Press, and ends in a system of wholesale execution, is certainly the most striking and the most repellent of all".^[31] Kautsky argued that thatRed Terror represented a variety of terrorism because it was indiscriminate, intended to frighten the civilian population and included taking and executinghostages.

The Red Terror (1917-1920) opposed the forces of theWhite Armies who wanted to reverse the Russian Revolution. It saw the encouraging of peasant seizure of land, the discovery of foreign agents, and the rooting out of old Czarist officials. Estimates of the death toll vary widely, but academic estimates range from 50,000 to 140,000.^[32]

The anarchistKontrrazvedka, the intelligence section of theRevolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine, resorted to methods of terror as seen with the "Black Terror" campaign.Nestor Makhno, leader of theMakhnovist movement, listed 80 targets to be liquidated inAlexandrovsk, includingMensheviks,Narodniks and RightSocialist-Revolutionaries. The scale of the Black Terror was insignificant compared to the Red orWhite Terror with only 70 victims of the extrajudicial organs inYekaterinoslav.^[33]

TheGreat Purge refers collectively to several related campaigns ofpolitical repression andpersecution in theSoviet Union orchestrated by Joseph Stalin during the 1930s, which removed all of his remaining opposition from power.^[34] It involved thepurge of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the persecution of unaffiliated persons, both occurring within a period characterized by omnipresent police surveillance, widespread suspicion of "saboteurs", imprisonment and killings. In theWestern World, this was referred to as "the Great Terror".^{[citation needed]}

During theChinese Communist Revolution, theChinese Communist Party (CCP) had encouraged and overseen the execution and imprisonment of landlords by their former tenants in the countryside. Upon theKuomintang's retreat to Taiwan, Mao Zedong and the other leaders of the CCP oversaw a terror in line with their Marxist–Leninist principles. According to the official statistics from thePeople's Daily of theCCP Central Committee in 1954, at least 1.3 million people were imprisoned in theCampaign to Suppress Counterrevolutionaries in 1950–1953, and 712 thousand people were executed.^[35] The tactics of the Terror was also used byRed Guards during theCultural Revolution of 1966-1976. Mao encouraged this by telling his followers to "Bombard the Headquarters" to remove bureaucrats from power.^{[citation needed]}

• Communist terrorism
• Direct action
• Left-wing terrorism
• Propaganda of the deed
• Revolutionary Tribunal (disambiguation)

• Revolutionary terror
• Communist terminology
• Communist terrorism
• French Revolution
• Revolution terminology
• Revolutionary tactics
• Soviet phraseology
• Terrorism by form
• State-sponsored terrorism

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