> he didn't reveal anything most of the population wasn't already aware of - but the people themselves didn't mind that much

The scope of purges was such that it was impossible not to know. When the book went out, Soviet union was much safer place to live in, simply because main purge already ended. After communism fell, he was also not only one to write about these things or talk about them, bookstores were full of memoirs.

Current support for those things has a lot to do with both contemporary politics and propaganda and with the way young democracy was mishandled.