Leader
Grigory Petrovsky
Grigory Ivanovich Petrovsky · 1878–1958
Portrait photograph. Wikimedia Commons.
Petrovsky signed the September 1918 instruction that told local authorities to stop being “tender” and to start mass shooting.
Origin and religion
Ukrainian, from a worker’s family in Kharkiv region. His name was later welded to a city: Yekaterinoslav became Dnipropetrovsk. The rename outlived his actual power by decades.
Ukrainian family. Atheist. Nominal head of the Ukrainian republic during the famine.
Responsibilities
- People’s commissar of internal affairs of Soviet Russia, 1918
- Co-chairman of the USSR Central Executive Committee
- Nominal head of the Ukrainian Soviet republic
As internal-affairs commissar he sent the circular, right after the Kaplan attempt and the Uritsky murder, demanding immediate arrest of Right SRs, mass hostages from the bourgeoisie and officers, and summary shooting. He later held the decorative half of the Soviet head-of-state job.
The record
The circular of early September 1918 is a primary document of the Red Terror’s legalization. During the Great Terror his own son was shot. Petrovsky was dropped from power and survived in obscurity until 1958. Survival, in this generation, often meant living with that.
What they said
There must be an immediate end of looseness and tenderness. All Right Socialist-Revolutionaries who are known to local Soviets must be arrested immediately. Considerable numbers of hostages must be taken from among the bourgeoisie and the officers. At the least attempt at resistance or the least movement among the White Guards, mass shooting must be inflicted without hesitation.
Evidence marks such as Opened archive are explained in How to read.