[thriftwy]

> killing political dissidents

That's a funny perspective. USSR just before that time mostly killed communist apparatus members¥ and with them innocent people. In such an environment, there naturally won't be too many dissidents, so I don't think they registered.

They did kill a lot of supposed sympathiers of pre-Soviet Russia, though.

¥ As they say, internal competition is the most fierce one.

[keiferski]

Are you forgetting that the USSR took control of about a dozen other countries during and after the war? That led to events like Katyn, which had nothing to do with communist dissidents.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre