Child 44 discussion

After reading Child 44 I have started thinking that many times the approach many writers take when dealing with "difficult" historical events (specially the ones related with dictatorships) might be a bit tricky. It seems that most authors explain those periods from today´s perspective.
The book Child 44 is set at the end of Stalin´s government and if one believes without any doubt what the book explains one might think that at that time EVERYONE lived in complete terror because the government seemed to rule the country in a very fanatical way.
However, can we assume that this was so? I live in a country, Spain, where for more than 40 years people lived a dictatorship. Franco was the one in control and he did as he pleased and destroyed any possible opposition. However it would be too daring to imply that everyone during Franco´s dictatorship lived in fear. People knew they could not oppose him and there were certain things they could not talk about (at lest not in public) but people did not seem to care. They just adjusted to the situation and lived their lives following the rules and this is a quite far away from living in fear.
I think that many times when we face a historical period that we consider "bad" we tend to try to make it sound even worse than it really was. We judge those periods from our own perspective and we are not faithful to the how it really was.
Regarding the book Child 44 I doubt that things were so illogical as the books tells. I doubt any government no matter how fanatical it might be can survive with completely random executions for no reason whatsoever.