[Russians LIKE dictatorship. Many still revered Stalin even after the USSR collapsed. Go figure.]
Why wouldn’t some Russians like Stalin? Many of these are those who lost out after the Soviet Union collapsed. You know how Russian aristocrats mostly hated the Bolsheviks? Many who approved of the Communists had a role in killing the property owners and members of the prior regime purged after Red October. Of course they liked Stalin. They got a leg up, became part of the new ruling house after the Bolsheviks won. Losing their aristocratic privileges with the Soviet collapse stung, just as Tsarist blue bloods were aghast that theIr power and privileges had vanished with the ascent of the Bolsheviks.