I’ve read your post several times now, and it still doesn’t make sense to me. I’ll stop right there before I fall into the “mind-reading trap” that Scott Adams warns us about.
From where I sit, the people who are loudest in condemning Putin here in the US are the same people who are most likely to excuse Stalin’s crimes. Maybe that will give you a clue why I don’t understand your post.
There is a such thing as celebrating Stalin and his power — without adopting Marxist-Leninist economics. But who’s to say the difference? Look what Putin said in an interview in January when asked about Lenin’s body still being in open display in Red Square:
Putin: Communist ideology similar to Christianity, Lenin’s body like saintly relics
https://www.rt.com/news/415883-putin-communist-ideology-christianity/
“the people who are loudest in condemning Putin here in the US are the same people who are most likely to excuse Stalin’s crimes.”
I can’t make any sense of that. Are you seeing anyone who attacks Putin, but somehow likes Stalin? Maybe a few retired NKVD 90 year olds somewhere who think Putin is too soft or something. I haven’t seen anyone defend Stalin at FR in any case. You really don’t even see that in society at large. Even full on communists pretty much try to change the subject.
There is merry debate on Putin, but not Stalin.
For some odd reason, the communists I see apologetics for in US society are the brown ones like Che’, like Fidel, and oriental ones like Mao or Ho Chi Minh. They also still like the spanish republican cause, but not like in the old days on the 30s. Franco was no good, and was also a dirty monarchist. But the republican army organized by the NKVD was worse, just as horrific as being in the Red Army. A lot of Americans went there and became disillusioned when they experienced serving in the red army. They expected comradeship, utopianism, all the crap they heard back in the USA...etc. What they got was secret police, arrests, radical atheism and summary executions. Hemingway was one and was accused of betraying their cause for showing them as the mass murderers they were.
I’ve seen a lot of Mao and Che on DNC walls. Hillary dresses like Mao. But I’ve never seen a Stalin poster or T-shirt.