Text taken from a dzen.ru post by A Stepanov
[ColonelCassad] A little about the horrors of the Red Terror in Karelia.
I recently wrote about Soviet Police Day, and then I remembered an old post about our Olonets security officers. So, the minutes of the meeting of the Olonets provincial Cheka from May 1919, when the White Finns stood not far from Petrozavodsk.
HEARD: About comrade Shumilov, who was repeatedly seen drunk.
DECIDED: For the first time, appoint Comrade. Shumilov in appearance. For the future, warn all employees of Gubchek that if any of them are found drunk, they will be shot.
A copy of this document was given to me by one of the local historians. The image is not of very good quality and initially there was no confidence that it was not a fake.
Although the names of security officers Luzgin and Terukov are indeed present in historical documents. However, last year a seminar “The Civil War in Karelia: on the centenary of its end” was held at Petrozavodsk University. In particular, the historian of the special services, Konstantin Belousov, gave a report on the judicial and emergency authorities of Karelia. I asked him about this document, which had been going around for a long time. And he confirmed that Comrade. Shumilov really existed!
Moreover, he remained alive, apparently heeding the warning. Otherwise he could have become the twentieth victim of the “Red Terror”.
Why twentieth? But because, according to reports for 1918 - 1919, throughout the Olonets province, the local Cheka shot 19 enemies of Soviet power. At the same time, in Petrozavodsk itself it was even softer. There is a book by local historian Valery Verkhoglyadov “Northern Trefoil”. The author, as a typical journalist of the organ of the Karelian regional committee of the Komsomol of the perestroika era, naturally could not do without cliched accusations and comparisons of the Bolsheviks with... Basayev. But he described local realities very objectively:
So, in 1918, several dozen people from the “former” were arrested in Petrozavodsk. After two months, everyone was released. The following year, when the White Finns reached almost the outskirts of Petrozavodsk, the same situation repeated itself. Again, several dozen former officials, merchants and other similar people were detained.
They were not shot or drowned on a barge in the cold waters of Onego. Moreover, they were not even flogged, as noble gentlemen often did to Russian peasants! (For which many descendants of these flogged peasants love to talk in the comments about how well they would have lived if the whites had won).
Local historian Verkhoglyadov described how the detainees bombarded the local council with their complaints about injustice. And after the White Finnish detachments were driven away from Petrozavodsk, all those arrested were released. That's all. I repeat, it was not so humane everywhere, but that’s how it was here.
Despite the fact that during the same time, Russian White Guards and especially White Finnish formations killed hundreds of supporters of Soviet power. For example,in a couple of months of 1919, the White Finns and Karelians, who fought on their side, shot 286 communists, members of their families and simply peasants who sympathized with Soviet power in the Olonets district alone.
(c) A. Stepanov