ABSTRACT
The victory in the Great Patriotic War inspired many Soviet people with hopes for radical changes for the better in their lives, and the belief that the pressure of the totalitarian regime upon the individual would be eased. But those expectations were wiped away by a new and more horrible wave of repressions and arrests. An oppressive atmosphere of fear, of informing, enveloped the country, growing ever denser against a background of the patriotic struggle against subversion, executions, mass exile of those condemned without trial to concentration camps. The beginning of the 'cold' war and the enclosing of 'the first socialist state in history' within an 'iron curtain' required the consolidation of all possible forces which could foresee and suppress any resistance in society to the dictate of the reigning party oligarchy, headed by Stalin.
