The Red Terror (1918) was an important element of the Russian Revolution that showed the violent character of the Bolshevik regime led by Vladimir Lenin. The terror was carried out by the Soviet secret police: the Cheka (All-Russian Extraordinary Commission to Combat Counterrevolution and Sabotage) and was led by Felix Dzerzhinsky. Underlaying causes were the Left-SR uprising and the assassination attempt on Lenin by Fanny Kaplan. Hundreds of thousands of people would die at the hands of the Cheka.

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (22 April [O.S. 10 April] 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known by his alias Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1924 and of the Soviet Union from 1922 to 1924. Under his administration, Russia, and later the Soviet Union, became a one-partysocialist state governed…
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