[robowombat]

Since the Soviet Union was both attacked by Germany and was finally completely victorious Russians have a lot of resistance to coming to grips with the crimes of the Stalin era. Putin is of course playing on this as part of a campaign of boosting national pride. Russia has a dark history, it simply does, and Russians are very thin skinned about this. Stalin was just the greatest of mass murdering leaders and like Peter the Great is seen as a progressive force that lifted the USSR into the ranks of the super powers. The human costs of this are part of the nation's guilty conscience.

[Krosan]

Putin measures them primarily by the amount of land they brought under Moscow’s control. He doesn’t have fundamental problem with communism, but he criticizes Lenin for losing land and praises Stalin for bringing the Moscow’s Empire to the greatest size ever.