Preference Falsification in Eastern Europe

There were periods in the soviet union of massive violence. A under an there were millions of people who were either executed or sent to the gulag archipelago in siberia. But when we look at eastern europe as a whole, and if we look at soviet history, we see periods when there was actually very little violence. The violence committed earlier was enough to keep people line. You just needed to punish people occasionally. What kept the system going is that people were expected to turn on dissidents and to avoid befriending them even if they agreed with them....