The following is a list of massacres that took place in the Soviet Union. For massacres that took place in countries that were once part of the Soviet Union, list of massacres in that country.
NameDateLocationDeathsNotesPerpetratorExecution of the Romanov family1918, July 16–17Yekaterinburg11Justified by the Bolsheviks as necessary to prevent the anti–communist White Army from rescuing them. The USSR repeatedly denied that Vladimir Lenin was responsible.Bolshevik revolutionariesExplosion in Leontievsky Lane1919, September 25Place of mass gathering of people in the premises of the Moscow Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), Leontievsky Lane, Tverskoy District, Moscow12Russian anarchistsWhite Terror1918–1922Nationwide20,000 to 300,000For the purposes of political repression and elimination of opposition to White rule.White movement and the Russian StateRed Terror1918–1922Nationwide100,000 – 1,300,000Rinke, Stefan; Wildt, Michael (2017). Revolutions and Counter-Revolutions: 1917 and Its Aftermath from a Global Perspective. Campus Verlag. pp. 57–58. .For the purposes of political repression and elimination of opposition to Bolshevik rule. (Cheka)Sinhanch'on Incident1920, April 5Sinhanch'on, Vladivostok, Far Eastern RepublicSeveral hundredMassacre of Korean civilians by Japanese soldiers (Imperial Japanese Army)Tambov Rebellion19 August 1920 – June 1921Tambov Governorate15,000+ (figure of deaths due to execution only)Total of 240,000Sennikov, B.V. (2004). Tambov rebellion and liquidation of peasants in Russia. Moscow: Posev. In Russian. rebels and civilians killed by communist forces. (Red Army, Cheka)Free City incident1921, June 28Svobodny, Amur Oblast, Far Eastern Republic36–272The extent of casualties varies depending on the data. Data shows 36 deaths, 864 prisoners, and 59 missing, while other data records 272 deaths, 31 drownings, 250 missing, and 917 prisoners.First Decossackization1919–1920sDon and Kuban regionsAnywhere from 10,000 executed to 300,000 – 500,000 both deported and killedRobert Gellately. Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe Knopf, 2007 pp. 70–71. The decossackization is sometimes described as a genocide of the Cossacks,Orlando Figes. A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891–1924. Penguin Books, 1998. Donald Rayfield. Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant and Those Who Killed for Him Random House, 2004. Mikhail Heller & Aleksandr Nekrich. Utopia in Power: The History of the Soviet Union from 1917 to the Present.Soviet order to exterminate Cossacks is unearthed University of York Communications Office, 21 January 2003 although this view is disputed, with some historians asserting that this label is an exaggeration. The process has been described by scholar Peter Holquist as part of a "ruthless" and "radical attempt to eliminate undesirable social groups" that showed the Soviet regime's "dedication to social engineering". (Red Army, Cheka)1921–1923 famine in Ukraine1921–1923Ukraine200,000–1,000,000No systematic records of fatalities were then made.August Uprising1924Georgia7,000–10,000After the failed 1924 August uprising in Georgia, Red army detachments exterminated entire families, including women and children, in a series of raids. Mass executions also took place in prisons, where people were shot without trial. Hundreds were shot directly in railway trucks, so that the dead bodies could be removed faster. (Red Army)Shonguy massacre1930, May 3Shonguy, Kildinstroy, Kolsky District, Murmansk Oblast15Mass murder of 15 railway workers and their families by bandits at Shonguy station.BanditsKazakh famine of 1930–331930–1933Kazakhstan1.5 – 2.3 millionSome historians and scholars consider that this famine amounted to genocide of the Kazakhs. The Soviet authorities undertook a campaign of persecution against the nomads in the Kazakhs, believing that the destruction of the class was a worthy sacrifice for the collectivization of Kazakhstan.Pianciola, Niccolò (2004). "Famine in the steppe. The collectivization of agriculture and the Kazak herdsmen, 1928–1934". Cahiers du monde russe. 45 (1–2): 137–192.Pianciola, Niccolò, 2009, Stalinismo di frontiera. Colonizzazione agricola, sterminio dei nomadi and costruzione statale in Asia centrale (1905-1936), Rome: Viella. Europeans in Kazakhstan had disproportionate power in the party which has been argued as a cause of why indigenous nomads suffered the worst part of the collectivization process rather than the European sections of the country.Payne, Matthew J. (2011). "Seeing like a soviet state: settlement of nomadic Kazakhs, 1928–1934". In Alexopoulos, Golgo; Hessler, Julie, eds. Writing the Stalin Era. pp.59–86.Holodomor1932–1933Ukraine3.5–3.9 Million in Ukraine; in total: ~5.7 to 8.7 millionScholars continue to debate "whether the man–made Soviet famine was a central act in a campaign of genocide, or whether it was designed to simply cow Ukrainian peasants into submission, drive them into the collectives and ensure a steady supply of grain for Soviet industrialization." Whether the Holodomor is a genocide is a significant issue in modern politics and there is no international consensus on whether Soviet policies would fall under the legal definition of genocide. A number of governments, such as the United States and Canada, have recognized the Holodomor as an act of genocide. However, David R. Marples states such decisions are mostly based on emotions, or on pressure by local groups rather than hard evidence. Robert Davies, Stephen Kotkin, and Stephen Wheatcroft reject the notion that Stalin intentionally wanted to kill the Ukrainians, but exacerbated the situation by enacting bad policies and ignorance of the problem,Robert William Davies, Stephen G. Wheatcroft, Challenging Traditional Views of Russian History Palgrave Macmillan (2002) , chapter The Soviet Famine of 1932–33 and the Crisis in Agriculture p. 69 et seq. which, according to historian John Archibald Getty, was the overwhelming weight of opinion among scholars who studied the newly opened Soviet archives in 2000. In contrast according to Simon Payaslian, the scholarly consensus classifies the Holodomor as a genocide.Karatal Affair1930Karatal, Kazakhstan18–19Cameron, Sarah (2018). The Hungry Steppe: Famine, Violence, and the Making of Soviet Kazakhstan. Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-1-5017-3044-3. p.123 Kazakhs families were shot dead in their attempt to flee to China with some of the victims including women and children even being raped.Cameron, Sarah (2018). The Hungry Steppe: Famine, Violence, and the Making of Soviet Kazakhstan. Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-1-5017-3044-3. p.123 TsGARK f. 44, op. 12, d. 492, ll. 54, 58 (Soviet Border Troops)Blacklisting of villages in Ukraine, Kazakhstan and the North Caucasus1932–1933Ukraine, Kazakhstan, North Caucasus (Kuban)Unknown; hundreds of farms and dozens of districts affected. Some blacklisted areas in Kharkiv could have death rates exceeding 40% while in other areas such as Stalino blacklisting had no particular effect on mortality.'Blacklisting, synonymous with a "board of infamy", was one of the elements of agitation–propaganda in the Soviet Union, and especially Ukraine and the ethnically Ukrainian Kuban region in the 1930s, coinciding with the Holodomor. Blacklisting was also used in Soviet Kazakhstan.Environment, Empire, and the Great Famine in Stalin's Kazakhstan Niccolò Pianciola The blacklist system was formalized in 1932 by the November 20 decree "The Struggle against Kurkul Influence in Collective Farms". A blacklisted collective farm, village, or raion (district) had its monetary loans and grain advances called in, stores closed, grain supplies, livestock and food confiscated as a "penalty" and was cut off from trade. Its Communist Party and collective farm committees were purged and subject to arrest, and their territory was forcibly cordoned off by the OGPU secret police. In the end 37 out of 392 districts along with at least 400 collective farms were put on the "black board" in Ukraine, more than half of the farms in the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast alone. In 1932, 32 (out of less than 200) districts in Kazakhstan that did not meet grain production quotas were blacklisted.Sealing of the Ukrainian borders during the Soviet famine1932–1933Ukraine150,000Joseph Stalin signed the January 1933 secret decree named "Preventing the Mass Exodus of Peasants who are Starving", restricting travel by peasants after requests for bread began in the Kuban and Ukraine; Soviet authorities blamed the exodus of peasants during the famine on anti–Soviet elements, saying that "like the outflow from Ukraine last year, was organized by the enemies of Soviet power." During a single month in 1933, 219,460 people were either intercepted and escorted back or arrested and sentenced. It has been estimated that there were some 150,000 excess deaths as a result of this policy, and one historian asserts that these deaths constitute a crime against humanity. In contrast, historian Stephen Kotkin argues that the sealing of the Ukrainian borders caused by the internal passport system was in order to prevent the spread of famine–related diseases.Searches for hidden grain in UkraineEarly 1933UkrainePossibly 550,000 people had food confiscated from them and an unknown number of them diedBetween January and mid–April 1933, a factor contributing to a surge of deaths within certain regions of Ukraine during the period was the relentless search for alleged hidden grain by the confiscation of all foodstuffs from certain households, which Stalin implicitly approved of through a telegram he sent on the 1 January 1933 to the Ukrainian government reminding Ukrainian farmers of the severe penalties for not surrendering grain they may be hiding. In his review of Anne Applebaum's book Mark Tauger gives a rough estimate of those affected by the search for hidden pra reserves: "In chapter 10 Applebaum describes the harsh searches that local personnel, often Ukrainian, imposed on villages, based on a Ukrainian memoir collection (222), and she presents many vivid anecdotes. Still she never explains how many people these actions affected. She cites a Ukrainian decree from November 1932 calling for 1100 brigades to be formed (229). If each of these 1100 brigades searched 100 households, and a peasant household had five people, then they took food from 550,000 people, out of 20 million, or about 2–3 percent."Great purge1936–1938Nationwide700,000–1,200,000Ordered by Joseph Stalin. (NKVD)Serpantinka1937–1938Magadan OblastUnknownNumber of victims unknown.Finnish Operation of the NKVD1937–1938Nationwide8,000–25,000Mass arrest, execution and deportations of persons of Finnish origin by NKVD during the Great Purge.Estonian Operation of the NKVD1937–1938Nationwide4,672Mass arrest, execution and deportations of persons of Estonian origin by NKVD during the Great Purge.Polish Operation of the NKVD1937, August – 1938, NovemberNationwide111,091Largest ethnic shooting during the Great Purge. Polish Nationalism was a very big movement in The USSR at the time, resulting in the deaths of many Polish Nationalists dubbed as "Fascists" by The Soviet Union.Latvian Operation of the NKVD1937–1938Nationwide16,573+1937 mass execution of Belarusians1937, 29–30 OctoberByelorussian SSR132Mass extermination of Belarusian writers, artists and statespeople by the Soviet Union occupying authorities.Kurapaty massacres1937–1941Kurapaty, Minsk, Byelorussian SSR7,000–30,000NKVD summary executions.Bykivnia graves1937–1941Kyiv, Ukrainian SSR30,000–100,000Sandarmokh1937–1938Sandarmokh, Karelia9,000 (Disputed)Mass executions of prisoners. 1,111 of the executed were transferred from Solovki prison camp.Stalinist repressions in Mongolia1937–1939Mongolian People's Republic20,000–35,000Vinnytsia massacre1937–1938Vinnytsia, Ukraine9,000–11,000 (Disputed)Tatarka common graves1938–1940Tatarka [uk], Odesa, Ukrainian SSR3,500–5,000Massacre at Dem'iani