"There is less and less access to accurate information from the West amid the relentless pounding from increasingly hysterical state propaganda, which admittedly, is having its effect...."

"We have a long way to go before we get to 1937, but for the first time the road is clear. You can see far ahead, like on a cold, crisp winter morning, and there, in the distance, you can just about make out the outlines of the guillotines."

Said Sergey Radchenko, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies Europe, quoted in "With New Limits on Media, Putin Closes a Door on Russia’s ‘Openness’ The Russian leader is undoing the social freedoms introduced at the end of the Soviet Union, risking a return to total control and ideological isolation" by Steven Lee Myers (NYT).

The article says that by "1937," Radchenko meant the year of Stalin’s Great Terror and links to this pieced from September 13, 1937, "Soviet 'Cleansing' Sweeps Through All Strata of Life/Starting With Generals and High Leaders, Stalin's Purge Is Now Hitting Cooks and Nurses-People Getting Inured to Arrests":

Here's the continuation of the article on page 8, replete with the splurge of handmade lingerie: