PERSPECTIVES: Terrorism - past and present (10/21/01)

PERSPECTIVES

by Andrew Fedynsky

Terrorism - past and present

As soon as the Verkhovna Rada voted to approve President Leonid Kuchma's decree to open Ukraine's airspace to U.S. military transports for the war against terrorism, the leader of the Communist faction, Petro Symonenko, denounced the decision. "The Communists are worried about Ukraine's actual participation in the U.S. military campaign because the Communists believe that the U.S. is a country of terrorists itself," he explained. And with that, Ukraine's Communists declined to participate in the struggle against terrorism and instead, effectively aligned themselves with those who practice it.

Is anyone surprised? Or for that matter, does anyone care?

Well, no one should be surprised, but unfortunately, it matters a great deal. The Communists control a significant minority in the Ukrainian Parliament and, therefore, have to be taken seriously. Because of that - not to mention his characterization of the United States as "a country of terrorists" - Mr. Symonenko invites a closer look at his own party's record on terrorism. Again, no surprise: not only have they been for it, they practically invented it.

As the founder and tireless leader of the Bolshevik faction of the Communist Party, Vladimir Lenin was the genius of the October Revolution. His image was ubiquitous in the old Soviet Union. A monument to Lenin still stands near the Basarabsky Rynok in Kyiv, a tribute to him as the most successful terrorist in history.

When revolution broke out in the Russian Empire in February 1917, the Bolsheviks were a relatively minor factor, enjoying no more support than the Communist Party does today. Indeed, what history records as the "October Revolution" was actually a Bolshevik coup in the Russian capital, Petrograd. From that base, the Bolsheviks went on to destroy all opposition and ultimately seize total power.

During the revolution, Lenin knew the Bolsheviks did not enjoy popular support. However, like the terrorists of today, he didn't care. He would use force to get his way. Six weeks after the November 7 putsch, he sent this message to his followers: "Until we apply terror to speculators - shooting on the spot - we won't get anywhere." The following June, Lenin ordered his party to "encourage the energy and mass-character of terror against counter-revolutionaries." In August, he sent a telegram to Communists in Novgorod: " ... organize a strengthened guard of reliable persons to carry out merciless mass terror against the kulaks, priests and White Guards." And on it goes, ad nauseam, for nearly five years. In March 1922, just two months before the stroke that finally debilitated him, Lenin declared "merciless war" against the Church. "The more members of the reactionary bourgeoisie and clergy we manage to shoot the better," he advised.

His close aide, Felix Dzerzhinsky, gave structure to Lenin's policies with the Cheka, "an organ for the revolutionary settlement of accounts." It dealt in "organized terror," morphing into the GPU, OGPU, NKVD and eventually, the KGB. Their story, of course, is familiar: the Terror-Famine, the Great Terror, the gulag - the horrors organized by Soviet secret police organizations are synonymous with Communism itself.

A few months ago, The Ukrainian Weekly's editor-in-chief, Roma Hadzewycz, sent me a book, "Mass Terror as the Means of Government Administration in the USSR (1917-1941)" by Serhiy Bilokin and asked me to consider including it in a column. I'm grateful to her for sending it, for this magnificent study is nothing less than a systematic description and analysis of how the Soviet government used terror on a daily basis, penetrating into the lives of every citizen. A lot, of course, has already been written about that topic, but Mr. Bilokin's book takes a quantum leap forward.

The Communists, no less than the Nazis, kept meticulous records of their crimes. Mr. Bilokin makes extensive use of secret police archives that have only become available since the demise of the Soviet Union. He even taps into the reflections of individual Chekists (terrorists). Afansii Korzhnytskyi, for example, admits that he knew the people he tortured were innocent of any "counter-revolutionary plot," but his superiors ordered him to use "physical pressure" to get confessions, so that's what he did.

With more than 400 pages of small type, the book has an encyclopedic heft to it, containing mountains of hair-raising testimony on the Soviet terror machine. The index alone lists nearly 3,000 names of victims and perpetrators, but as Mr. Bilokin points out, with tens of millions of victims what seems formidable at first glance is a mere sample.

The author is quite conscious of the groundbreaking work he's doing and describes his methodology with care. His effort to view the documents is part of the story. Many people have an interest in blocking access to critical files. Many archives were moved decades ago from Kyiv to Moscow. Others were destroyed outright, including those dealing with Nikita Khrushchev's role as boss of Ukraine in the 1930s and 1940s. Having denounced Stalin in 1956 in his "Secret Speech," Khrushchev did not want any evidence of his personal role in mass murders that took place during his tenure.

Although the book is in Ukrainian, it will be tough going without a good knowledge of Russian. Many lengthy quotations in that language - some an entire page or more - illuminate Mr. Bilokin's narrative and illustrate his main point: that terror works.

As Mr. Bilokin demonstrates and history confirms, a relatively small group of fanatics who are willing to combine terror with propaganda can control huge masses of people. That's why stopping them is so critical and that's why "Mass Terror as the Means of Government Administration in the USSR (1917-1941)" is such an important book. It certainly deserves wider distribution, (the first edition is a mere 500 copies) and not only in the original Ukrainian/Russian. It ought to be translated into other languages as well.

As for Mr. Symonenko, he more than anyone should read this book. If he does, he will certainly gain a new appreciation of the United States for the role it played in the global effort to defeat communism. He might even want to start a Committee to Remove the Lenin Monument from Kyiv. You wouldn't want to destroy it, of course. That's something you'd expect the Taliban or Communists to do. Instead, the statue should be placed in a museum to instruct future generations about the dire consequences of fanatical terrorism and what happens when civilized nations do nothing to stop it.

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