# You Are An Underling of Stalin: How Do You Avoid Being Murdered? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [June 25, 2010, 11:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-are-an-underling-of-stalin-how-do-you-avoid-being-murdered/544545 "2010-06-25T23:06:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2010, 2:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-are-an-underling-of-stalin-how-do-you-avoid-being-murdered/544545/21 "2010-06-26T14:47:40Z")
Interestingly, the Societs also sometimes trusted people they knew to sometimes buck the Party line openly, for example, with Lysenko’s enemies. Lysenko never could control the Party, even during his height. While his opponents were sometimes forced to be quiet, the obvious ones were trusted, while the people who tried to continue their genetics work but talk loudly about how great Lysenkoism was were more often purged. The apparent concept here is that the guy who sometimes disagrees with you (if he can keep it within the Party’s boundaries) is more likely to be loyal than the guy who disagrees with you but tries to pretend he agrees. At any rate, it was a good idea to never, ever, criticize political authorities. Also, most people who were purged weren’t murdered. Many were sent to the gulag… well, that was pretty close to being murdered. But a lot of poeple survived prison or a purge. ---
**Author:** ![MOIDALIZE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e274bd/32.png) [@MOIDALIZE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MOIDALIZE)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2010, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-are-an-underling-of-stalin-how-do-you-avoid-being-murdered/544545/22 "2010-06-26T15:10:00Z")
> [@Olentzero](#): > > Stalin was nothing close to a ‘lieutenant’ of Lenin, or even someone who enjoyed his trust all that much. Lenin had Stalin appointed General Secretary of the Communist Party. If that didn’t make him a lieutenant, then I don’t know what did. He may have come to distrust Stalin, but he did consider him an ally at one point. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2010, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-are-an-underling-of-stalin-how-do-you-avoid-being-murdered/544545/23 "2010-06-26T16:32:41Z")
> [@](#): > > Interestingly, the Societs also sometimes trusted people they knew to sometimes buck the Party line openly, for example, with Lysenko’s enemies. Lysenko never could control the Party, even during his height. I always figured this was part of Stalin’s principle of never trusting anyone. He allowed some of Lysenko’s opponents to stay around in order to keep Lysenko from being too secure. You play factions off against each other to keep any one of them from becoming too strong. ---
**Author:** ![mo50](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8797f3/32.png) [@mo50](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mo50)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2010, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-are-an-underling-of-stalin-how-do-you-avoid-being-murdered/544545/24 "2010-06-27T00:07:30Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > Possibly the most famous of these was Marshall Roskossovsky, who was one of the commanders responsible for Soviet victory at the Battles of Moscow, Stalingrad, and was the man responsible for Operation Bagration. The man had a complete set of steel teeth, having lost almost all of his teeth to NKVD torturers before the war. Help me out, Capn’ or whever else: Wasn’t Marshal Zhukov, (or Chuikov as the spelling may be), who was of course also deeply involved in the battles of Stalingrad, Moscow, and Berlin (and I’d think arguably one of the great generals of WW2), also subjected to the vagaries of Stalin’s insanity? I seem to recall reading somewhere about how he (Zhukov) always kept a bag packed beside his bed in case he was taken away in the middle of the night. I guess, as has been noted previously, if you served Stalin TOO well, you were a perceived as a threat, and were therefore a target. Thanks for any feedback, a fascinating historical period. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/you-are-an-underling-of-stalin-how-do-you-avoid-being-murdered/544545.md?page=1)