Sam-Nary you so much underestimate communism and its crimes that it literary hurts. For communists Nikolas II was a rotten liberal, Ohranka for NKVD a crippled bourgeoisie
police. Ivan the Terrible
was weak because of his religious prejudice.
They wanted to be much more horrible than that!
My point is on the nature of autocracy.
People wish to argue that regime X is "Socialist" because it does A,B, and C.
The problem is that nearly every autocratic regime in history does A, B, and C in order to preserve power. And many monarchies have been open about it. On his coronation, Nicholas II said something along the lines of, "I stand fervently behind the principles of autocracy as did my dead father." And Nicholas did back that up with his own secret police and his own spies. Part of what drove a lot of Lenin's own drives against the Romanovs and the monarchy was that Nicholas had had his brother executed for revolutionary activity. In this the number of victims is irrelevant to the reason for the action. Nicholas's use of autocratic tactics only drove the Bolsheviks on, and when they found that they weren't getting 51% of Russia's support... they rapidly assumed the same autocratic measures that Nicholas took before them. They took it further, yes, but they're still the exact same tactics.
Thus the use of the tactics to maintain and preserve power should not be used as proof of a particular ideology. For if those tactics are the sole indicator of ideology... than ANY authoritarian regime would then fit that ideology, for every authoritarian regime, be it a Republic or Monarchy has used those tactics to varying degrees.
