be able to trust anyone totally. The people who you might share your political grievances with may tell the NKVD and then there may be the dreaded knock at the door.The NKVD, because of their need to obtain confessions from suspects, had to use torture to get them. There was not only the pain of the torture but the fear of reprisals against other members of your family if you do not tell the NKVD what they want to hear. This state of perpetual worry on the part of the people was unlike anything which there had been before, during Lenin's time as leader.One reason which Bullock feels is important was Stalin's personal psychological make-up and his paranoia. Bullock talks of the diagnosis of the neuropathologist Professor Bekhterev who,"..told his assistant Mnukin that Stalin was a typical case of severe paranoia and that a dangerous man was now head of the Soviet Union."This diagnosis seems to point to the fact that Stalin had paranoia problems. This is of no real surprise when one considers the way in which Stalin had millions of Soviet citizens sent to the Gulag or to their execution because of his fear of opposition. Bullock then goes on to write about the way in which Stalin was described by those closest to him, words such as,"-chronic suspicion, self-absorption, jealousy, hypersensitivity, megalomania-"This all helps to explain the reasoning behind the terror and the purges, that is, Stalin's psychological make-up. This is one reason that the Stalinist system could not have come from that of Lenin. Stalin's way of dealing with the 'chronic suspicion was to set up the regime of terror which he felt could deal with this and ensure his safety as leader of the Soviet Union.After Lenin's death in 1924 there was no smooth transition of power in the Soviet Union and no set method for selecting a new leader. Stalin was by no means the immediate choice, although through his position as General Secretary of the party he was able to create a ...
