>>512450204 (OP)
It was a custom in the Soviet Union intended to destroy a subjected people's willingness to resist by compelling them under threat of cruel and unusual punishment to perform daily indignities, or participate in the cruel and unusual punishment of their neighbours.
Gradually, through repetition, the act of submission to violence becomes routine, the shame becomes internalized, and the victim will continue to observe their own ritualized humiliation without direct policing because now it is all they know. This is how the Soviet's limited police resources managed to sustain such a large empire with so many subjected people who hated them.
When the Soviet Union fell, defectors detailed the process to the West and the doctrine and theory behind it in great detail.