[H]atred of Nazism had been drummed into our minds year after year. We had seen our leading Army Generals, including Tukhachevsky, shot for supposed … - Victor Kravchenko

The Soviet hierarchy does not need impressive arguments to line up Party opinion. An instinct for survival does the trick. To avoid trouble one not merely believes, but believes deeply, fervently, whatever absurdity is prescribed from on high. The great Stalin knows what he’s doing—ultimately that was the sum-total of the Party reaction.

I believe profoundly that in the struggle against Communists and their organizations, in the defense of freedom and justice, we cannot and should not resort to the methods and forms employed by the Communists.

Equality of income, which had been a Soviet ideal, was suddenly turned into a crime. Uravnilovka, equalization, was denounced as unworthy of a socialist society. The ‘Party maximum,’ under which Party members had been kept to an income not far above the average, was now removed, releasing torrents of greed and self-seeking in officialdom. Piecework was introduced throughout Soviet economy, even in types of work where such a system of payment was palpably silly if not impossible. With that strange Soviet genius for extremes, the evil of too many bosses was now replaced by the evil of the single and arbitrary boss, in which the last pretense of ‘workers’ control" from below was thrown overboard.