I only recently read the “The Gulag Archipelago” by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. You are absolutely correct. I recommend this book to all.
I second your recommendation.
I read it when it was new, and I heard Solzhenitsyn speak.
This is how it begins...the knock on the door in the middle of the night.
The same during Hitler’s holocaust. All totalitarian states operate this way.
Be prepared.