The custom was to revere authority, rather than to respect the rights of the individual or to assume one's freedoms would be protected by the judicial system. Kangaroo courts under Stalin were the norm. Officially, in word alone, the freedoms of the individual were legally protected in the U.S.S.R. But this was a legal fiction.
Terror was the real ultimate mechanism of enforcing the will of the government, not a commandeered respect through popular charisma. People were afraid of being labeled traitors, anti-communists, or spies, so the did all they could to bow to Stalin's will. This was not true simply of citizens, but member of the ruling elite. Everyone knew that Stalin had no compunction about sending even his friends to death, if it could further solidify his hold upon power.
Stalin chose to do so because, in a large, sprawling land that was an unwieldy alliance of disparate republics, which he was trying to craft into a unified, eventually...
He believed total control was necessary. Popular appeal was not what would get things done, in his view. Also, he was facing tremendous opposition internally and externally -- internally from different party leaders, and externally from Russians who still opposed the communist system he was trying to instate. Stalin's suppression of the farm owners in the process of collectivization, whereby these persons were labeled enemies of the state, was one of his firsts acts of terror.
According historians, Stalin's use of terror seemed practical to him at the time as well as merely self-serving. He saw terror as the only way to realize his goals, quickly, and to bring the Soviet military and agriculture into modernity. However, the consequences of doing so, and the human toll he extracted, is nearly incalculable.
Works Cited
Kuromiya, Hiroaki. Stalin. Profiles in Power Series. New York: Pearson, 2005.
