7 Dissidents are regularly arrested by the KGB and tortured in mental institutions. The country is held in an iron grip of fear. The use of terror to consolidate power has been adopted by many, if not all, Communist regimes. 10 George Orwell, who ironically was a socialist, had a keen understanding of the ability of totalitarians to maintain their power, despite a lack of popular support. He modeled the workings of his futuristic police state in 1984 after the Bolsheviks, who practiced most of the repressive measures that Orwell's imaginary Oceania used.
Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation.
Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. After a Communist government secures control over a people, it usually sets out to construct the utopia it has promised them. This often satisfies the socialistic intellectuals who may have been spared in the initial purges, as well as the masses, who often believe the party line. Many are convinced that their economic and political hardships are merely temporary, and will fade away as the Communist paradise evolves. In the new atmosphere of fear and lofty promises, dissent tends to abate.