for thinking other than what the Soviet party thought is quite different.
How do you know? Did you saw their probable causes? Did you saw the files of prisoners? Who tell you that?
And one more thing. You can believe it or you can ignore it. I do not care. I live in Russia and no one from my big family (mom's parents have like gazillion kids, brothers and sisters and father's too) no one was sitting in the prison or camp. In fact, my great-grandad was a kulak (people like to tell that Stalin arrested all kulaks), my grandad was religious man and had a bad thoughts about Jospeh Vessarionovich. And they say that they didn't heard anything about Gulags or Camps until the 90s and so-called freedom of speech. I think that is the best example of how "Bad-bad Stalin surpression".
well financed propaganda.
Funny fact, but the largest anti-soviet liar (Alexandr Solzhenitcyn) was sponsored by USA and printed in... YMCA. Great, right? Tell me more about financed propaganda =)
I just choose to base it on facts
You can base on facts when you really saw them. You can base on facts, when you have a right statistics. You can base on facts, when you was in the same situation. I mean that of course there were camps and gulags in USSR. Of course there were a people inside and I can agree that sometimes conditions wasn't royal (like in US correctional facilities lol). But it wasn't as big as you may think. And it wasn't so bloody. Nobody will arrest you just because you think different. People were arrested because of money, power and law-crossing. That's what I believe.
It is a police state since without strong law enforcement agencies ready to open fire without a second thought there would soon be chaos and anarchy in the streets of this state. We see this happening everywhere whenever there is no more "strong hand" controlling general public.
That is what I'm talking about! I agree with you and with your opinion about strong hand. I'm just sick of people who call Russia's strong hand as totalitarian gulag system.