Aditya’s Reviews > Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire > Status Update

“More than anything else, [Viktor] Alksnis wanted to be feared. This was his role, to give a face to intimidation. He wanted the democrats and the independence movements to fear the possibility of violence…Fear, which had been so undercut by five years of reforms, was still the only weapon left to hard-liners. Everything else-ideology, the promise of a shining future-was lost, forgotten.”