The political paranoia is a characteristic of totalitarian systems and it was of course the same for the Soviet Union from the beginning. Nothing was new. Because everything has to be new. The Revolution had to continue its mission but always as a new thing. Everything which was old had to die, to be replaced for the security. The assassination of Sergei Kirov in 1934 was only the starting point or even the flash point for the purges. And the culmination was the Great Purge. The old Bolsheviks had to die and it was the same for the old military high command. But it wasn’t sufficient for the system, so it targeted ethnic minorities. The point was that everyone had to be controlled through fear. The foundation of the Soviet Union was now the terror. This fact explains also the assassination of Trotsky in 1940 by the NKVD. Even the history of this institution is relevant. Initially the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs i.e NKVD was established in 1917. In 1934, the functions of the Secret Police Organization i.e. OGPU was transferred to the NKVD and in 1946 it became the Ministry of Internal Affairs. This is a classical way to think in a totalitarian system.