Sergei Melʹgunov was a Russian historian who escaped the Soviet Union and compiled this meticulously sourced account of Bolshevik terror during the civil war years. Drawing on survivor testimony, Soviet decrees, and newspaper records, he documents the mass executions, hostage-taking, and Cheka operations that characterised the early Soviet state’s campaign against perceived enemies.
Published in the 1920s, the book stands as one of the earliest serious historical investigations of Soviet political violence. It remains essential reading for anyone studying the Russian Revolution, the birth of the USSR, or the history of twentieth-century authoritarian rule.