Lenin then suffers a failed assassination attempt in August 1918. A female Socialist Revolutionary called Fanya Kaplan fired several shots at close range at Lenin. Although he was not fatally wounded, two shots penetrated his lung and neck and so he was understandably shaken. This incident was partly a reason for the ‘Red Terror’ that had been launched across Russia. People opposing or suspected of being against the communists were arrested, tortured and executed. In Petrograd alone, over 800 ‘enemies of the state’ were executed. By the end of the Civil War, over 200,000 and 750,000 people had been murdered and over 85,000 imprisoned.
6. Which two groups of people were automatic targets of the Cheka’s Red Terror?