I ' m not sure he was actually killed . For all we know an omnic getting an electric shock is pleasant , not deadly . <| sep |> The Gulag Archipelago . Read the full version , not the abridged . It provides a thorough account of the Soviet government ' s systematic destruction of all other political entities , lobotomization of the Russian legal system in favor of show trials , torture , and extralegal executions , the rapid dismantling of progressive reforms laid out during the revolution , and willful complicity in the killings of large numbers of citizens all going back to 1917 . These things did not begin under Stalin . They were a cornerstone of Lenin ' s regime , and while Stalin ' s paranoia and ruthlessness scaled up the deaths into the tens of millions , every level of Lenin ' s regime was comfortable carrying out the same acts on a smaller scale and with somewhat less random targets .