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When hearing about mass casualties under Soviet Communism, the 1928-1940 era really seems to stand out for the collectivization and later purges.

I've often heard it said that in the post-war Soviet Union under Stalin repression significantly increased after WWII and some regime internal relaxation (on matters like religion for instance) of the wartime years went away. However, I do not hear of comparable instances of mass death tolls in the USSR for the 1946-1953 era.

Likewise, in the new "people's democracies" of Europe we hear alot about repression but not mass death tolls like those of collectivization and the purges.

Yet in both periods, Stalin was the ultimate authority. Was there less murder by the regime (and its client regimes) after WWII than before? If so, why? Why didn't every newly communizing country have a holodomor? If regime murders in both eras were on a similar scale in both eras, why haven't we heard nearly as much about the latter era?
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