And also shot a bunch of people who were not socialists, and another bunch that agreed with him but had potential to replace him, or agreed with him but not strongly enough, or agreed with him but had the wrong ethnicity, or agreed with him but lived in an area where everybody agreed with him and there was a quota of being shot that wouldn’t fulfil itself.

The quota thing was quite real. Central state dictated how many traitors should be shot in each area. Occasionally quotas would increase just because.