12. This Dangerous Revolutionary Figured Out a Way to Economize on Mass Murder
Rozalia Zemlyachka was determined to stamp out all traces of opposition to Bolshevik rule in the Crimea, once and for all. In 1920, during the course of the Russian Civil War, the Red Army in the Crimea defeated the Bolsheviks’ White Russian opponents, and eventually got about 50,000 of them surrender with the promise of an amnesty. Zemlyachka was not a big fan of honoring promises to opponents of the Bolshevik Revolution, whom she deemed dangerous, detestable, and beyond the pale. So she set out to exterminate them.
Say what you will about her, but Zemlyachka was conscientious about her job, and about the need to economize on mass murder to ensure that it was done as cheaply as possible. At a time when the hard pressed Bolshevik forces faced severe ammunition shortages, she decreed that to waste bullets on captives slated for execution was unreasonable. One of her cost cutting measures to conserve ammunition was to not shoot people, but to tie rocks to the legs of the condemned, then toss them off barges into the sea.
