The Terror Justified Redux

Putting ourselves in the shoes (or boots) of the Bolsheviks and the leaders of the communist party of the USSR on Monday, almost everyone put the survival of the state and the communist ideology as a top priority and the guarantee and protection of civil liberties as unimportant or even dangerous to the Soviet cause. This was the mindset of those in charge of the Soviet Union in the late 1920s, and they were willing to go to any means to achieve their goals, even if this meant killing (take a deep breath) millions of their own countrymen. Was this justifed? Hell no! I think a better question to ask is whether the people who participated in such terrible state actions, such as carrying out the purges of the 1930s, believed these actions were justified, or whether they did these things only as way to increase their own power and eliminate enemies (real and imagined). The latter case is most certainly true for Stalin, that personification of revolutionary betrayal. But what about the party members in positions of less power who were obeying orders from the top? Did they think they were doing the right thing or were they acting out of self-interest? Yes, there are always people blinded by ideology enough to do anything or people willing to undertake grotesquely Machiavellian tactics for their own gain. But most people, like those in the Nazi regimes and other totalitarian governments, were probably just doing as they were told.