[Enchante]

"Stalin was more subtle than Putin"

Well there was that small episode of the ice pick to Trotsky's brain..... I wouldn't call Stalin subtle, but Putin isn't exactly a Tolstoyan pacifist, either.....

[popdonnelly]

"Stalin was more subtle than Putin"

With regard to assassinations, maybe. Starving the Ukraine, the purges, the Gulag, and pillaging Eastern Europe weren't exactly subtle.