“Stalin remains a controversial figure today, with many regarding him as a tyrant.”
Most fellow Russians I know still respect and credit Stalin for transforming the USSR into an advanced industrial power. Like an abusive father who whipped his son into greatness
The nickname for him was “horoshaya svoloch”. Or “good bastard/a**hole/SOB”
That said, average Russians stopped believing in the glory of socialism as soon as it impacted them and saw it as a sad joke propagated by the elites (”we’ll all be rich as soon as full communism comes to town!”). It was said in the 60s that you could find more communists believers on an average American block than a Soviet one.
Russians don’t see Stalin as a Communist, but more like a Czar in the vein of “Ivan the Terrible” (whom Stalin modeled himself after).
Communism had its believers. While living in Canada in the seventies, I made friends with some Hungarians who had left communist Hungary for the west. They told me about some of their friends in Canada who had emigrated from Hungary, stayed a short while, and then went right back to living under communism.
They preferred a society where they were guaranteed a job, but if they didn’t have one, could live anyway. The prospect of getting work in Canada, with the risk of losing it, scared them so much they went back. Over the generations, socialism seems to breed socialists.