Put on your Russian Glasses (Made of Russian Glass)

Here's a little more on Stalin and how he is viewed. This article from December talks about Stalin's popularity, either sustained or renewed, and I think it's interesting to see how Russians themselves look at him. Perhaps, with decades in between them and the purges of the 1930's, today's Russian see only the positive aspects of Stalin's rule: industrialization, defeating Hitler, making the USSR a world power. Like Putin's popularity in the past few years - people were willing to stand by his curtailing of civil liberties while their country was prosperous - maybe Russians are willing to turn a blind eye to Stalin's atrocities. The Soviet Union was never truly defeated, and there was never de-soviet-ification similar to what happened in Germany after World War Two. That's why many Russians consider him one of their greatest countrymen.