Como é comum em revoluções, o que começara como algo justificado, para acabar com um regime opressivo, acabou virando uma ditadura. A democracia que começara a se firmar foi eliminada e muitos dos revolucionários originais, que se opuseram ao ditador, foram executados. Todos passaram a ser suspeitos, vigiados pela polícia secreta do ditador.
Aconteceu na URSS, aconteceu em Cuba, aconteceu na Nicarágua etc.
O Grande Terror de Stalin - 1936-1937
Meanwhile, under the dictatorship of Joseph Stalin (1878–1953), the Soviet Union had begun the Great Terror.
The Soviet regime had always been ruthless toward those it defined as enemies—for example, peasants who resisted
collective agriculture (see 1930) — but now the unbridled power of the secret police was turned against the
leadership of the Soviet armed forces, and of the ruling party itself.
The process began in 1936, with the arrest, trial, and execution of “Old Bolsheviks” — men who had participated
in the 1917 Revolution. While arrests of Old Bolsheviks continued through 1937, other people also came under
suspicion.
Between 1937 and 1939 almost half the senior army commanders were executed, imprisoned, or fired.
Although the fate of the Soviet elite attracted most attention, Stalin’s reign of terror spread
through the entire population.
At least 680,000 people were killed during the Great Purge, and some historians believe the real
figure could even be closer to 2 million.
Os crimes de Stalin na Segunda Guerra.
Also in March 1940, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin (see 1928) approved the killing of all Polish officers who had fallen into Soviet hands through the occupation of western Poland (see 1939). Most of the region’s educated elite — doctors, lawyers, and teachers — were also murdered.
Some 22,000 victims were buried in mass graves in Katyn Forest and elsewhere. In June, when the Soviet Union occupied the Baltic states — Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia — tens of thousands more people were executed or deported to labor camps.
Stalin’s ruthless reach extended as far as Mexico, where his exiled rival Leon Trotsky had found refuge. In August, Trotsky was killed by Ramon Mercader, an agent of Stalin’s secret police.
Fonte:
"Smithsonian Timelines of History" by Collective