Every regime — from Stalin's USSR to Suharto's Indonesia to Khomeini's Iran — locks power in place with the same ratchet mechanism: each step permits the next, but reversing becomes structurally impossible. Drag the slider to climb the staircase of consolidation.
Stalin's consolidation followed the ratchet precisely: first, he used Lenin's death in 1924 to position himself as the ideological heir. Then came control of party appointments through the General Secretary role, allowing him to place loyalists throughout the apparatus. The Terror of 1936-38 eliminated any remaining opposition through show trials that forced confessions, creating a public spectacle of loyalty enforcement. Gulags absorbed millions, turning dissent into a disappearing act. Propaganda and total censorship meant the only narrative was state narrative. Each step made the previous one irreversible — you cannot hold show trials without control of the security apparatus, cannot run gulags without the Terror's legal precedent, cannot reverse censorship once the independent press is gone. By 1939, descent was structurally impossible.
Consolidation is not a single seizure but a ratchet mechanism: each step — terror, propaganda, purges, legal changes — locks the one before it, making reversal structurally impossible even if the regime wanted to retreat.