“Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas.”
– Joseph Stalin
The prospect of a coup remained one of the few things capable of keeping Stalin up at night. Any deviation from the party orthodoxy – real or imagined – was enough to guarantee you a spot in line for the firing squad or a one-way ticket to the gulag. Millions died from bullets, prolonged tortured, and exposure.
The 1937 purge of the Red Army’s best and brightest officers nearly ensured the Soviet Union’s collapse when Hitler launched a surprise attack four years later.