The Legacy Events Index

Soviet Repression

Beginning with the Russian Revolution of 1917, in which the Bolshevik-led Soviets took control of Russia, the region once known as the USSR has undergone some of the most severe hardships in modern times. Under the leadership of V.I. Lenin, harsh Bolshevik political, economic, and social policies led to civil war and intervention by foreign powers. Suppressing all opposition, they outdid all their adversaries in the use of violence, applied by the VeCheka (political police), the Red Army, and squads of party supporters in the countryside. With control over the region consolidated, the newly-formed USSR instituted a series of economic reforms, with ownership of property in the state's hands. However, economic transformation was accomplished at staggering human cost. Starvation and epidemic disease were rampant from 1932 to 1935. By some estimates, between 5 million and 7 million peasants died in this state-made famine.

The mid- to late 1930s were marked by Stalin's campaign to eliminate all elements alleged to have reservations about his policies. Stalin had any person he or his assistants distrusted removed from posts of authority; many were jailed, sent to the forced-labor camps of Gulag (Main Directorate for Corrective Labor Camps), or executed. In the darkest years of the terror, from 1937 to 1938, the political police rounded up several million people; as many as 1 million people were shot, while another 2 million are estimated to have died in the camps.

Partly because of this purge, the Soviet Union suffered grievous losses during World War II. Official Soviet reports at the time stated that 20 million soldiers and civilians perished in the war, but it was later revealed, during Gorbachev's time in office in the 1980s, that a more realistic figure for Soviet losses was between 27 million and 28 million. In the Post-Stalin years, domestic political repression persisted. Internationally, the Soviet Union was also active, sending a large military force across its border with Afghanistan. The war eventually cost about 15,000 Soviet lives and the lives of between 700,000 and 1.3 million Afghans before the Soviet withdrawal in the late 1980s. Click here for more information from Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia 2001.

Related Visual Art

Steel Steed in the Fields of Ukraine, Viktoriya Belakovskaya,
Logies (Part I), Grisha Bruskin, Russia
The Twentieth Century, Erik Bulatov, Russia
Female Textile Workers, Alexander Deyneka, Russia
Beasts, Pavel Filonov, Russia
Beasts, Pavel Filonov, Russia
Living Head, Pavel Filonov, Russia
The Narva Gates, Pavel Filonov, Russia
Peasant in a Cap, Sergey Gerasimov, Russia
The People's Land, Boris Grigoriev, Russia
I Don't Remember (The Past), Ilya Kabakov, Ukraine / Russia
Taking out the Rubbish, Ilya Kabakov, Ukraine / Russia
View of Feodosia, Ilya Kabakov, Ukraine / Russia
Adam and Eve, Leonid Lamm, Russia / United States
Assembly Hall, Butyrka Prison, Russia, Leonid Lamm, Russia / United States
Self-Portrait (Birth of An Image installation), Leonid Lamm, Russia / United States
The Canteen in the Labor Camp (Birth of An Image installation), Leonid Lamm, Russia / United States
To Freedom with a Clear Conscience, Leonid Lamm, Russia / United States
View from the Window of My Studio (Birth of An Image installation), Leonid Lamm, Russia / United States
Complex Premonition (Torso in a Yellow Shirt), Kazimir Malevich, Russia
Peasant, Kazimir Malevich, Russia
Peasant Woman, Kazimir Malevich, Russia
Peasants, Kazimir Malevich, Russia
Peasants, Kazimir Malevich, Russia
Woman with Pails, Vyacheslav Pakulin, Russia
Backyard in Alsace with a Cow, Oscar Rabine, Russia / France
Barrack in Lianozovo, Oscar Rabine, Russia / France
Barracks with Double Eagle Crest and Swan, Oscar Rabine, Russia / France
House and Cheese in Normandy, Oscar Rabine, Russia / France
Landscape with Helicopter, Oscar Rabine, Russia / France
Landscape with Herrings and Russian Kerchief, Oscar Rabine, Russia / France
Nature Morte, Oscar Rabine, Russia / France
Nostalgia for a Dollar, Oscar Rabine, Russia / France
Painting with Flying Houses, Oscar Rabine, Russia / France
Passport, Oscar Rabine, Russia / France
Petticoat and Salted Cod, Oscar Rabine, Russia / France
Road with Lantern, Oscar Rabine, Russia / France
Russian Landscape with Train Cars, Oscar Rabine, Russia / France
The Skulls, Oscar Rabine, Russia / France
The Queue, Alexei Sundukov, Russia
A Day in November, Boris Sveshnikov, Russia
Camp Drawing, Boris Sveshnikov, Russia
Internment, Boris Sveshnikov, Russia
Meeting, Boris Sveshnikov, Russia
Searching in the Night, Boris Sveshnikov, Russia
Steps to Extinction, Boris Sveshnikov, Russia
The Coffin Maker's Workshop, Boris Sveshnikov, Russia
Untitled, Boris Sveshnikov, Russia
Untitled, Boris Sveshnikov, Russia
Untitled, Boris Sveshnikov, Russia
Untitled, Boris Sveshnikov, Russia
Untitled, Boris Sveshnikov, Russia
Untitled, Boris Sveshnikov, Russia
Untitled, Boris Sveshnikov, Russia
Untitled, Boris Sveshnikov, Russia
Witness, Boris Sveshnikov, Russia

Related Films

Brother
Checkpoint
Graveyard of Dreams
Krustaliov, My Car!
Luna Papa
Prisoner of the Mountain
Swan Lake, the Zone

Related Literature

Requiem, Anna Akhmatova
Tomorrow the Past Comes, Ion Caraion
Remember, Ion Caraion
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Milan Kundera
Osip Mandelstam's poem on Stalin, Osip Mandelstam
Hope Against Hope, Nadezhda Mandelstam
Doctor Zhivago, Boris Pasternak
The World is Only Air, Jan Polkowski
Constellation of Dead Brothers, Victor Serge
Dying, Varlam Shalamov
The Gulag Archipelago, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn