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, see the list of massacres in that country.
| Name | Date | Location | Deaths | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Execution of the Romanov family | 1918, July 16–17 | Yekaterinburg | 11 | Justified by the Bolsheviks as necessary to prevent the anti-communist White Army from rescuing them. The USSR repeatedly denied that Vladimir Lenin was responsible. |
| Explosion in Leontievsky Lane | 1919, September 25 | Place of mass gathering of people in the premises of the Moscow Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), Leontievsky Lane, Tverskoy District, Moscow | 12 | |
| White Terror | 1918–1922 | Nationwide | 20,000[1] to 300,000[2] | For the purposes of political repression and elimination of opposition to White rule. |
| Red Terror | 1918–1922 | Nationwide | 100,000[3] – 1,300,000[4] | For the purposes of political repression and elimination of opposition to Bolshevik rule. |
| Tambov Rebellion | 19 August 1920 – June 1921 | Tambov Governorate | 15,000+ (figure of deaths due to execution only) | Total of 240,000[5] rebels and civilians killed by communist forces. |
| Free City Incident | 1921, June 28 | Svobodny, Amur Oblast, Far Eastern Republic | 36-272 | The 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 Decossackization | 1919–1920s | Don and Kuban regions | Anywhere from 10,000 executed to 300,000 - 500,000 both deported and killed[6] | The decossackization is sometimes described as a genocide of the Cossacks,[7] [8] [9] [10] [11] 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".[12] [13] |
| 1921–1923 famine in Ukraine | 1921–1923 | Ukraine | 200,000–1,000,000 | No systematic records of fatalities were then made. |
| August Uprising | 1924 | Georgia | 7,000-10,000[14] | After the failed 1924 August uprising in Georgia, Red army detachments exterminated entire families, including women and children, in a series of raids.[15] Mass executions also took place in prisons,[16] where people were shot without trial. Hundreds were shot directly in railway trucks, so that the dead bodies could be removed faster.[17] |
| Kazakh famine of 1930–33 | 1930 - 1933 | Kazakhstan | 1.5 - 2.3 million[18] | Some historians and scholars consider that this famine amounted to genocide of the Kazakhs.[19] 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.[20] [21] 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.[22] |
| Holodomor | 1932c- 1933 | Ukraine | 3.5-3.9 Million[23] in Ukraine; in total: ~5.7 to 8.7 million | Scholars 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."[24] 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.[25] [26] 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.[27] 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,[28] [29] which, according to historian John Archibald Getty, was the overwhelming weight of opinion among scholars who studied the newly opened Soviet archives in 2000.[30] In contrast according to Simon Payaslian, the scholarly consensus classifies the Holodomor as a genocide.[31] |
| Karatal Affair | 1930 | Karatal, Kazakhstan | 18-19[32] | Kazakhs families were shot dead in their attempt to flee to China with some of the victims including women and children even being raped.[33] [34] |
| Blacklisting of villages in Ukraine, Kazakhstan and the North Caucasus | 1932-1933 | Ukraine, Kazakhstan, North Caucasus (Kuban) | Unknown; hundreds of farms and dozens of districts affected. Some blacklisted areas[35] in Kharkiv could have death rates exceeding 40%[36] while in other areas such as Stalino blacklisting had no particular effect on mortality.[37] | '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.[38] The blacklist system was formalized in 1932 by the November 20 decree "The Struggle against Kurkul Influence in Collective Farms".[39] 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[40] along with at least 400 collective farms where put on the "black board" in Ukraine, more than half of the farms in the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast alone.[41] 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 famine | 1932-1933 | Ukraine | 150,000 | Joseph 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."[42] During a single month in 1933, 219,460 people were either intercepted and escorted back or arrested and sentenced.[43] 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.[44] 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.[45] |
| Searches for hidden grain in Ukraine | Early 1933 | Ukraine | Possibly 550,000 people had food confiscated from them and an unknown number of them died[46] | Between 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.[47] 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."[48] |
| Great purge | 1936–1938 | Nationwide | 700,000[49] [50] –1,200,000[51] | Ordered by Joseph Stalin. |
| Finnish Operation of the NKVD | 1937–1938 | Nationwide | 8,000–25,000 | Mass arrest, execution and deportations of persons of Finnish origin by NKVD during the Great Purge.[52] |
| Estonian Operation of the NKVD | 1937–1938 | Nationwide | 4,672 | Mass arrest, execution and deportations of persons of Estonian origin by NKVD during the Great Purge[53] |
| Polish Operation of the NKVD | 1937, August – 1938, November | Nationwide | 111,091[54] | Largest 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. |
| 1937 mass execution of Belarusians | 1937, 29–30 October | Byelorussian SSR | 132[55] | Mass extermination of Belarusian writers, artists and statespeople by the Soviet Union occupying authorities[56] |
| Kurapaty massacres | 1937–1941 | Kurapaty, Minsk, Byelorussian SSR | 7,000–30,000 | NKVD summary executions |
| Sandarmokh | 1937-38 | Sandarmokh, Karelia | 9,000 (Disputed)[57] [58] [59] | Mass executions of prisoners. |
| Vinnytsia massacre | 1937–1938 | Vinnytsia, Ukraine | 9,000[60] –11,000[61] (Disputed) | |
| Massacre at Dem'ianiv Laz | 1939–1941 | Pasieczna (Now Pasichna), Soviet-occupied Poland, modern Ivano-Frankivsk | At least 524 | At least 524 captives (including 150 women with dozens of children) were shot by the NKVD[62] |
| Katyn massacre | 1940, April–May | Katyn Forest, Kalinin and Kharkiv prisons | 21,857[63] | Mass executions of Polish nationals by NKVD. |
| Lunca massacre | 1941, 7 February | Lunka, Ukraine | 600[64] | Hundreds of civilians (mostly ethnic Romanians) were killed when Soviet Border troops opened fire on them while they were attempting to forcefully cross the border from the Soviet Union to Romania, near the village of Lunca, now Lunka in Chernivtsi Oblast.[65] |
| Zhestianaya Gorka massacre | 1941–1943 | Zhestianaya Gorka, Novgorod Oblast | 2,600 | Massacre of partisans and civilians, mostly women and children by Schutzmannschaft and Nazi collaborators.[66] |
| Fântâna Albă massacre | 1941, April 1 | Northern Bukovina | 44–3,000[67] [68] | Between 44 and 3,000 civilians were killed by Soviet Border Troops as they attempted to cross the border from the Soviet Union to Romania near the village of Fântâna Albă, now Staryi Vovchynets in Chernivtsi Oblast, Ukraine |
| NKVD prisoner massacres | 1941, June–July | Occupied Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Baltic states | ~100,000 | The NKVD prisoner massacres were a series of mass executions of political prisoners carried out by the NKVD, the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs of the Soviet Union, across Eastern Europe, primarily Poland, Ukraine, the Baltic states, and Bessarabia. After the start of the German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, the NKVD troops were supposed to evacuate political prisoners into the interior of the Soviet Union, but the hasty retreat of the Red Army, the lack of transportation and other supplies and the general disregard for legal procedures often meant that the prisoners were executed. Approximately two thirds of the 150,000 prisoners[69] were murdered; most of the rest were transported into the interior of the Soviet Union, but some were abandoned in the prisons if there was no time to execute them, and others managed to escape.[70] |
| NKVD prisoner massacre in Lutsk | June 23, 1941 | Lutsk, Eastern Poland/Western Ukraine | around 2,000 | Mass execution of Prisoners, mainly Ukrainians and Poles by the NKVD and NKGB |
| NKVD prisoner massacre in Tartu | July 9, 1941 | Tartu, Estonia | 193 | 193 detainees were shot in Tartu prison and the Gray House courtyard by NKVD |
| Lychkovo massacre | July 18, 1941 | Lychkovo, Demyansky | Around 41 | Mass killing of 41 people, primarily children, by Nazi Germany[71] [72] |
| Kamianets-Podilskyi massacre | 1941, August 27–28 | Kamianets-Podilskyi | 23,600 | 23,600 Hungarian and Ukrainian Jews were murdered by the German Police Battalion 320 along with Friedrich Jeckeln's Einsatzgruppen, Hungarian soldiers, and the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police[73] |
| Medvedev Forest massacre | 1941, September 11 | Medvedev Forest, near Oryol | 157 | Soviet massacre of political prisoners |
| 1941 Odessa massacre | 1941, October 22-24 | Odessa | 34,000–100,000 | Romanian and German troops, supported by local authorities, massacred Jews in Odesa and the surrounding towns in Transnistria |
| Petrushino Massacres | 1941, October 29 - 1943, August 21 | outskirts of Taganrog | 7,000 | Over 7,000 Soviet civilians and POWs, and members of the Taganrog resistance movement were massacred by the German army, with the assistance of non-German divisions, during their occupation of Taganrog |
| Rostov-on-Don massacre | 1942–1943 | Zmievskaya Balka, Rostov-on-Don | 27,000 Jews and other Soviet Civilians | Organized by Nazi forces; part of the Holocaust in Russia[74] |
| Massacre of Feodosia | 1941, December 29, 1942, January 1 | Feodosia, Crimea | 160 | Murder of 160 German POWs by Red Army |
| Dzyatlava massacre | 1942, April 30- August 10 | Zdzięcioł (now, Dzyatlava) | 3,000–5,000 | About 3,000–5,000 Jews were killed near the town of Dzyatlava by a German death squad aided by the Lithuanian and the Belarusian Auxiliary Police battalions[75] |
| Nizhny Chir massacre | 1942, September 2 | Nizhny Chir, Stalingrad Oblast | 47 | Killing of 47 children with intellectual disabilities organized by Nazi forces[76] [77] |
| Massacre of Grischino | February 1943 | Pokrovsk, Ukrainian SSR | 596 | A total of 596 prisoners of war, nurses, construction workers and female communication personnel (Nachrichtenhelferinnen) were killed.[78] |
| Khatyn massacre | 1943, March 22 | Khatyn | Around 149 people, including 75 children under 16 years of age.[79] | Extermination of a whole village in Belarus by Nazi Germany |
| Bolshoye Zarechye massacre | 1943, October 30 | Bolshoye Zarechye, Leningrad Oblast | 66 | Soviet civilians were shot and burned alive by the German Army.[80] [81] |
| Krasukha massacre | 1943, November 27 | Krasukha, Pskov Oblast | 280 | Soviet civilians were burned alive by the German Army[82] |
| Khaibakh massacre | 1944, February 27 | Chechnya, Soviet Union | 230–700[83] [84] | During the deportation of the Chechen and Ingush peoples. Siberian winter was too hard to handle for the Chechens, who lived in a mostly hot climate. |
| Deportation of the Crimean Tatars | 1944, May 18 – 20 | Crimea | Various estimates | |
| Soviet famine of 1946–1947 in Ukraine | 1946–1947 | Ukraine | 300,000–1,000,000 [85] | |
| 1951 anti-Chechen pogrom in Kazakhstan | 1951, April 10 – June 18 | Kazakh SSR | 41 | Anti-Chechen pogrom[86] |
| Vorkuta uprising | 1953, starting July 19 | Vorkuta | 42[87] [88] [89] | |
| Kengir uprising | 1954, May 6 – June 26 | Kengir, Steplag, Kazakh SSR | 500–700[90] [91] | |
| 1956 Georgian demonstrations | 1956, March 4-10 | Tbilisi, Georgian SSR | 22-800[92] [93] | |
| Novocherkassk massacre | 1962, June 1 – 2 | Novocherkassk, Rostov Oblast, Russian SFSR | 26[94] | Massacre of rallying unarmed civilians |
| 1971 Krasnodar bus bombing | 1971, June 14 | Krasnodar | 10 | A homemade suitcase bomb placed near the gas tank by mentally ill Peter Volynsky exploded, killing 10 persons and wounding 20–90 others |
| 1971, October 10 | Near Baranovo, Naro-Fominsky District | 25 | ||
| Aeroflot Flight 109 bombing | 1973, May 18 | Chita-Kadala International Airport, Chita Oblast | 81 | An Aeroflot Tupolev Tu-104B flying from Irkutsk Airport to Chita Airport exploded in flight after a passenger detonated a bomb when refused passage to China. The plane crashed east of Lake Baikal, killing all 82 passengers.[95] |
| Letipea massacre | 1976, August 8 | Letipea, Estonian SSR | 11 (including the perpetrator) | A conflict between workers and drunken Soviet border guards escalated when one of the guards opened fire with a machine gun, killing multiple workers as well as one of his fellow guards |
| 1977 Moscow bombings | 1977, January 8 | Moscow | 7 | A bomb was detonated on a Moscow Metro train as it rolled into Kurskaya station. Seven people died and 37 were seriously injured |
| Korean Air Lines Flight 007 | 1983, September 1 | Sea of Japan, near Moneron Island, west of Sakhalin Island | 269 | Korean Air Lines Flight 007 is shot down by Soviet Union Air Force Su-15 Flagon pilot Major Gennadi Osipovich near Moneron Island when the commercial aircraft enters Soviet airspace. All 269 on board are killed, including U.S. Congressman Larry McDonald. * September 6 – The Soviet Union admits to shooting down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, stating that the pilots did not know it was a civilian aircraft when it violated Soviet airspace. |
| Aeroflot Flight 6833 Hijacking | 1983, November 18 | Tbilisi, Georgian SSR to Leningrad | 8 | 7 Georgians hijack Aeroflot Flight 6833 in hopes of escaping the Soviet Union. The siege ended with Soviet forces storming the plane and resulting in the deaths of 3 passengers, 2 crew members and 3 hijackers. The remaining hijackers were executed. |
| Jeltoqsan massacre | 1986, December 16 – 19 | Alma-Ata, Kazakh SSR | 168-1,000[96] | Mass anti-government protests, break out across the Kazakh SSR, resulting in the massacre of over 168–1,000 protesters |
| Sumgait massacre | 1988, February 26 – March 1 | Sumgait, Azerbaijan SSR | 32 | |
| Aeroflot Flight 3739 Hijacking | 1988, March 8 | Veshchevo | 9 (including 5 of the hijackers) | A Tu-154B-2 (СССР-85413), was hijacked by the Ovechkin family, a family of 11 who were attempting to flee the Soviet Union and demanded to be flown to London. The flight engineer persuaded the hijackers to allow a stop in Finland to refuel, but the pilot tricked the hijackers by landing at Veshchevo instead. Realizing they had been tricked, one of the hijackers killed a flight attendant, Tamara Zharkaya. After landing, the aircraft was stormed and another hijacker blew himself up, starting a small fire in the tail that was quickly put out. Four hijackers committed suicide and three passengers also died during the takeover. Two surviving hijackers were tried and received prison sentences |
| Gugark pogrom | March – December 1988 | Gugark District, Armenian SSR | 11 (per official Soviet data)21 (per Arif Yunusov) | Anti-Azerbaijani pogroms in Response to similar pogroms of Armenians in Azerbaijan |
| Kirovabad pogrom | 1988, November | Kirovabad, Azerbaijan SSR | 7 (per Soviet authorities),[97] 130 (per human rights activists)[98] | |
| Tbilisi Massacre | 1989, April 9 | Tbilisi, Georgia | 21[99] [100] | hundreds of civilians wounded and killed with sapper spades |
| Fergana massacre | 1989, June 3 - 12 | Fergana Valley, Uzbek SSR | 97 | at least 97 Meskhetian Turks had been killed and over 1000 wounded by Uzbek extremists |
| Novouzenskaya massacre | 1989, June 17-28 | Zhanaozen, Kazakh SSR | ~200 | Interethnic clashes on June 17-28, 1989 in the city of Novy Uzen of the Kazakh SSR between groups of Kazakhs and people from the North Caucasus.[101] [102] |
| January Massacre | 1990, January 19 – 20 | Baku, Azerbaijan | 131-170[103] [104] | Known also as the Black January (Qara Yanvar) |
| 1990 Dushanbe riots | 1990, February 12 - 14 | Dushanbe, Tajik SSR | 26 | Anti-Armenian and anti-communist unrest in Dushanbe, 565 injured. |
| 1990 Osh clashes | 1990, June 4 - 6 | Osh, Kyrgyz SSR | 300-600 deaths (official estimate); 1,000-10,000 (unofficial estimate) | Ethnic conflict between Kyrgyz and Uzbeks |
| 1990 Tbilisi–Agdam bus bombing | 1990, August 10 | Khanlar, Azerbaijan | 15–20 | A bus carrying about 60 passengers from Georgia's capital Tbilisi to Aghdam in Azerbaijan is bombed in Khanlar (now Goygol). The bombing was carried out by two ethnic Armenians named Armen Avanesyan and Mikhail Tatevosov, who were members of Vrezh, an underground militant anti-Azerbaijan group operated out of Rostov-on-Don. |
| January Events | 1991, January 11 – 13 | Vilnius, Lithuania | 14[105] | After Lithuania recently declared its independence, the USSR sent in the army to crackdown on the "nationalist government". Immediately, hundreds of thousands of unarmed Lithuanians went to the streets to defend the local parliament, TV tower, the radio station and other key buildings. 14 people died during the violence. In 2019, Lithuania sentenced 67 people for war crimes and crimes against humanity.[106] |
| Patrikeyevo massacree | 1991, July 14 | Patrikeyevo, Bazarnosyzgansky District, Ulyanovsk Oblast | 11 | Privates Vitaly Semenikhin and Muradov killed 8 soldiers, 3 warrant officers and wounded 2 other soldiers.[107] [108] [109] [110] [111] |