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The term Lenin's Hanging Order refers to the handwritten order dated August 11 1918, written by Vladimir Lenin instructing communists operating in and around Penza to publicly hang at least one hundred kulaks; publicize their names; confiscate their grains and to designate an unspecified number of hostages. Whether anyone was actually hanged according to this order, remains unknown. It is explained in the foonotes of Lenin's "Collected Works"
On August 5, 1918, a kulak revolt broke out in Kuchkino Volost, of Penza Uyezd, and soon spread to neighbouring volosts. By means of deceit and coercion, the kulaks managed to recruit many middle and even poor peasants. It was stamped out in Penza Uyezd on August 8, but the situation in the gubernia remained tense. A Left S.R. revolt started in the uyezd centre of Chembar on the night of August 18. The Penza leaders did not take sufficiently vigorous action to suppress the counter-revolutionary revolts. Lenin sent several telegrams to Penza demanding resolute measures in fighting the kulaks.
On 23 August 1918, the Council of Defense declared martial law in Penza (where the kulak revolt broke out), Tambov, Voronezh, Ryazan, Tula, and Orel districts for defense against attacks by White Guards and counterrevolutionaries.
The order was discussed during a controversy around a 1997 BBC documentary, Lenin's Secret Files, based on Robert Service's findings in recently opened Soviet archives.
The document is as follows, as published in Robert Service's biography of Lenin.
Comrades! The insurrection of five kulak districts should be pitilessly suppressed. The interests of the whole revolution require this because 'the last decisive battle' with the kulaks is now under way everywhere. An example must be demonstrated.
- 1. Hang (and make sure that the hanging takes place in full view of the people) no fewer than one hundred known kulaks, rich men, bloodsuckers.
- 2. Publish their names.
- 3. Seize all their grain from them.
- 4. Designate hostages in accordance with yesterday's telegram.
- Do it in such a fashion that for hundreds of kilometres around the people might see, tremble, know, shout: they are strangling and will strangle to death the bloodsucking kulaks.
Telegraph receipt and implementation.
Yours, Lenin.
Find some truly hard people
Notes
- Library of Congress Translation
- Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1971, Moscow, Volume 36, page 489. "Telegram to Yevgenia Bosch"
- http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/aug/x01.htm
- Translation of 'hanging order' by Robert Service, page 365 of his Lenin a Biography (2000). London: Macmillan