A Brief History
On April 17, 1912, Russian Imperial soldiers fired on a crowd of protesting goldfield workers in Siberia that were upset about the arrest of their strike committee. Perhaps 270 striking workers were killed and a similar number wounded. Such brutal treatment ultimately led to the Russian Revolution and the formation of the USSR, a self-described “workers’ paradise.”
Digging Deeper
Soviet authorities, especially the Cheka secret police, killed protesting and striking workers on a grand scale, both by gunning down workers and by executing arrested workers. Killings of disgruntled workers and soldiers included drowning as well as shooting! Massacre of labor often resulted in over 1,000 deaths per incident, among the many atrocities by Soviet authorities.
In contrast, the US capitalist repression of workers and unions has resulted in an all-time worst massacre of strikers of around 50 workers in 1912-1913 in West Virginia, and again in Colorado a year later.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Lyons, Eugene. Workers’ Paradise Lost; Fifty Years of Soviet Communism: A Balance Sheet. Funk & Wagnalls Co, 1967.
Melancon, Michael. The Lena Goldfields Massacre and the Crisis of the Late Tsarist State. Texas A&M University Press, 2006.
The featured image in this article, a 1912 map of the Russian Empire, is in the public domain in Russia according to article 1281 of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation, articles 5 and 6 of Law No. 231-FZ of the Russian Federation of December 18, 2006 (the Implementation Act for Book IV of the Civil Code of the Russian Federation).
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