The movie “The Death of Stalin” ought to be required viewing for anyone who wants to know the fearful terror every day Russians faced at the hands of Stalin and his henchmen.
There is a passage in The Gulag Archipelago about some dinner or gathering where a toast is made to Stalin and subsequent applause and of course the NKVD or KGB are there and no one dares to be the first to stop clapping. So the applause go on and on and on. Finally some poor guy stops and instantly everyone else does after. Poor guy is later arrested and sent to the Gulag. That is the level of insanity that totalitarian regimes have that very few of us in the west can comprehend.