[meowmeow]

Although the gulags were full of poor souls whom he had no problems with working to death, perhaps he thought that the apes would be faster, cheaper to house and feed or more efficient?

And they wouldn't write books if they escaped to the West.

[Wilhelm Tell]

Stalin probably created his ape-men but then had them all executed for suspicion of disloyalty or whatever. I can picture the paranoid Stalin, "I just know those apes are conspiring to overthrow me!"