SUVOROV UNDERSTOOD TOTALITARIANISM:

We commonly think of totalitarianism as controlling every aspect of people’s lives because Big Brother takes sadistic, power-hungry pleasure in stomping his boot on your face. While that is certainly true, Suvorov meticulously hashes out another, non-trivial aspect of totalitarianism: It’s an all-or-nothing system. Any pocket of resistance, any oasis of independence is not merely a bruise to the tyrant’s ego, but rather, a real and direct threat to the regime’s survival. As long as a Soviet citizen can dream of escaping to some place on Earth where he’ll be free from the boot, the regime is in existential danger. It is only when there’s nowhere to escape to that it can breathe a sigh of relief.

Leftism is inherently stupid and crazy, so it helps not to have any examples of sanity out there that allow people to draw contrasts.