this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2026
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Thanks for some more info. But you say the death sentences were necessary at the time. But is it really ever necessary. If we ever achieve socialism it has to be possible to avoid death sentences, they are proven to go wrong and are generally inhumane.
Purges were necessary, that doesn't mean the executions were. Purges often meant simply expelling someone from the party or a prison sentence, not necessarily execution. What's clear when studying the soviet union, though, is the sheer siege and subterfuge targetting them from right when they first began. We can understand why they did what they did, while also understanding that if they had better resources and political stability then the better option would have been imprisonment and potentially rehabilitation.