Russians had agreed to live under a sort of dictatorship in exchange for stability. But they assumed that it was a soft dictatorship, which could negotiate if the need arose. Seryozha imagined that this was the way it worked in China, or at least this was how the papers made it look: the Communist Party had all the power, but if, say, peasants in some village rebelled, then the local bosses would be removed. Pressure and restrictions were a given, but the exact amounts could be adjusted.
