Cast doubt on a Dear Leader's idea and all of the sudden you're shipped to a gulag or to the firing squad. Just like that....enemy of the people, support the US imperialists...trying to sabotage socialism, etc.
Ask an Eastern European or Russian that lived through the communist times.
In my naive young western view, Gagarin (and possibly Komarov) would be one of the most likely people to get away with it. These guys were national heroes. They had statues built of them.
Shifting to a different dictatorship, the case has been made in Burma that the only reason Aung San Suu Kyi was kept alive the whole time was that her father was very well regarded even by the military.
But then I've also read 1984 and remember the memory holes.
True, thy could away with more than others, especially since the leaders and the Party benefited from them (Unless they became a threat to replace the leaders etc..). But never underestimate the power of 24/7 propaganda and how they confessed to being CIA spies, how the risked lives of our comrades...blah blah. The higher you are the harder you fall.
For these guys the top leader would decide, but for the poor peasant complaining about the bread, a local communist bureaucrat would do to ruin his life.
They had statues built of them.
Nothing a bulldozer can't remove :-)
Cast doubt on a Dear Leader's idea and all of the sudden you're shipped to a gulag or to the firing squad. Just like that....enemy of the people, support the US imperialists...trying to sabotage socialism, etc.
Ask an Eastern European or Russian that lived through the communist times.