The average Russian soldier was like all soldiers the world over. They just wanted to survive and go home to their families.
Governor Dinwiddle,
Just as it took the tacit, active, and passive approval of ordinary Germans for the Holocaust to have been accomplished...
So too the Soviet Union and its genocidal terrors and purges. This is the primary conclusion of so many of Russia’s dissident writers! Especially of the Gulag.
One finds that most individuals were betrayed to the authorities and sent to camps, not by government or law officials — but by their own relatives and friends who sought their own survival.
The heroes were the ones who were imprisoned or killed for staying true to God and conscience.
The System required spiritual submission by the millions under it in order to work as long as it did. Beyond Stalin’s reign.
Today the prison archives are locked. Secrets still kept between generations...for fear of unbearable truths coming to light. (Like finding out your own parent was an “informer” who tattled on your aunt, etc...)