My Russian wife just passed her citizenship exam this month. She stated that in her 49 years she never saw anything this evil in Russia.
Yeah, the gulags, the secret police, etc. were not any worse than allowing one person to be allowed to die.
Before we get too sentimental about Stalin's goons, remember that the Soviet Communists operated hundreds of slave labor camps where opponents of the regime or those who merely angered some official were slowly starved to death while required to perform hard labor, often in subzero weather. Additionally, millions of peasants were deliberately starved to death in Ukraine and Russia during the collectivization program of the 1930s.
However, I could easily see men like Judge Greer as a prototype of American commissars of secret police agencies and concentration camps.