[The following is in regards to the phase of the Russian Revolution known as The Red Terror.]
The following description comes from the Lokalanzeiger by way of The Times of London:
Details of these wholesale nocturnal executions are kept secret. It is said that on [Petrovskii] Square, brilliantly lighted with arc lamps, a squad of Soviet soldiers are kept always in readiness to receive victims from the great prison. No time is wasted and no pity expended. Anyone who does not place himself willingly on the place of execution and range himself according to order in the ranks of those about to be executed is simply dragged there.
[…]
As for the executioners, the correspondent had this to say:
It is related of some sailors who participated in the executions almost every night that they contracted the execution habit, executions having become necessary to them, just as morphia is to morphia maniacs. They volunteer for the service and cannot sleep unless they have shot some one dead.
Families were not notified of pending or completed executions.
Author’s Note:
The Times, September 28, 1918, p. 5a. Petrovskii Park, which served as a major slaughter area, subsequently became the locale of the Dynamo football stadium. It was close to Butyrki Prison, where most of the Moscow Cheka’s prisoners – usually around 2,500 – were incarcerated. Another execution field was located on the opposite, eastern end of Moscow, at Semenovskaia Zastava.
Source:
Pipes, Richard. "The Red Terror." The Russian Revolution. New York: Knopf, 1990. 823. Print.
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