The very last leader of the Soviet Union died exactly 104 years to the day after someone tried to assassinate its first. Fanny Kaplan failed in her attempt at killing Vladmir Lenin (though his gunshot wounds may have contributed to the paralyzing strokes that eventually brought him down) but the first Red czar wasn’t going take any chances afterward. The result was the “Red Terror,” an orgy of torture and murder that set the tone for the next seven decades.1
Well, maybe not all of that time. The USSR after Stalin was a much less oppressive place to live, but Khrushchev only lengthened the leash a little instead of unhooking it completely. By the time Brezhnev died (three or four years before he left office) everyone in the country was just going through the motions, but few dared to publicly say what everyone was thinking.
Mikhail Gorbachev tried to …
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