On 24 January 1919 the Orgburo of the Bolshevik Central Committee issued a secret circular directing merciless mass terror against wealthy Cossacks and against all Cossacks who had taken any part in the struggle against Soviet power, together with the confiscation of grain and the resettlement of outsiders on Cossack land. Executions of hostages and of former officers followed in the Don stanitsy, provoking a major Cossack rising in March 1919. Werth records about 8,000 Cossacks executed in February and March 1919 and some 17,000 people deported from five stanitsy to forced labour in the mines in the autumn of 1920, and describes the campaign as an early instance of the Soviet state acting against a whole social category. The policy was suspended, resumed and formally moderated at different points, and the deportations of families continued into 1921. The Russian Federation's 1991 law on the rehabilitation of repressed peoples and a 1992 decree addressed the repression of the Cossacks.
The Bolshevik Party's Orgburo and Red Army and Cheka units on the Don carried out executions, hostage-taking and deportations against the Don and Kuban Cossacks and confiscated their land
The Don Host oblast held roughly 3.5 million people in 1917, of whom about 1.5 million were registered Cossacks, the estate targeted by the Orgburo directive of January 1919; the Kuban Host added a further 1.3 million or so Cossacks. Estimates of those killed or deported in the campaign vary from tens of thousands to several hundred thousand, and the archival basis remains contested.
Werth documents about 8,000 executions in February-March 1919 from Soviet records; totals for the whole campaign including deaths in deportation, in the mines and during the suppression of the 1919 rising are estimated by different historians between roughly 10,000 and 45,000, and some Cossack organisations claim far higher figures. The archival base is partial and no comprehensive count has been made.
The Orgburo circular of 24 January 1919, execution lists and deportation orders were published from Soviet party and Cheka archives after 1991 and are summarised by Werth.
Russia, Ukraine