Red Terror (Nazi Cold War)

The Red Terror was a campaign of mass killings, torture, and systematic oppression conducted by the Bolsheviks after they seized power in Petrograd and Moscow in 1917.

Purpose
The Red Terror was practical implementation of dictatorship of the proletariat as explained by Lenin in The State and Revolution (1917) as well as an effort by the Bolsheviks to eliminate real and imaginary counter-revolutionaries who belonged to the former "ruling classes".