Sometimes, the people who fought against autocracy were simply killed—beaten to death, as Yuri had been. But there were so many other ways to silence them. They were arrested, tortured, stripped of careers, forced to denounce their loved ones, labeled traitors, imprisoned, sent to punishment battalions in one after another colonial war. The state always hit back, and it always hit where it hurt most. If you were personally courageous—if you could not be broken with pain or the destruction of your own life—it went after those you cared about.
