Soviets used terror to control their prisoners.

Look at what Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote about how Soviets used terror to control their prisoners on the Solovetsky Islands: And in 1926 the inveterate habitual-criminal elements of all sorts began to flood in. And how were they all to be kept in check, kept from rebelling? Only by terror! Only with Sekirnaya Hill! With poles! …

Soviets were serial re-branders.

Beware! Communists may be in charge of your government, if they keep re-branding their departments. Consider, for example, this passage from The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: In the People’s Commissariat of Justice there was the Prison Administration (December, 1917), then the Central Penal Department (May, 1918) with a network of Provincial Penal Departments and …