The existing assumption of facts I have going into this is that from a period between 1918 and 1922 an estimated 50,000 to 200,000 people were executed by the Bolsheviks. What isnt clear to me is was this just mopping up what was left of the Whites and couter-revolutionaries, or was any dissent against the Bolsheviks liable to put you in the line of fire? Was the high death count justified or not? Thoughts?
One of the reasons why you shouldn’t commit war crimes is because it usually encourages the other side to say “fuck it. We ball too”. The Russian civil war was rather chaotic because decades were happening before the war even started and decades kept happening after the civil war.
Countries like china and Vietnam and Cuba were embroiled in civil wars too, but I think they were able to study from the USSR’s history as well as have more time to deepen communist ideology to keep them mostly disciplined and restraint compared to the red terror. In fact, Cuban revolutionaries tried to avoid a Cuban red terror after the war, but peasants and other workers were demanding Batista blood and carrying out executions so much that the government had to reign the fervor in by officially executing Batista soldiers.