Exactly - Stalin was ruthless, but the war situation made him worse than he otherwise would have been. As for the that whole starvation-in-Ukraine episode; it was one of the many things that I came to the light in the 90s, wasn't it? We will never know about the "what if" speculation. I find it hard to believe that somebody would have triggered starvation on purpose. Most people simply wouldn't want to be that cruel, plus there is no realistic motivation.

Almost all European countries have a horrible famine at some point in their history over the last couple of centuries. Ukraine's was quite recent, that's all. Of course, if Ukrainians really believe that they were being starved deliberately, it's not hard to understand that they have an axe to grind.

Also, unless if I'm not mistaken, it was under Stalin that the Soviet Union was so super productive that the USA flipped over and choked on its coffee...

They got worried that communism could be a serious contender to capitalism in terms of productivity and innovation (so far, that doesn't seem to be the case, unless people are high on revolutionary fever, have good leaders and there is some very strong motivation to work hard...)

Not to mention the victory over Nazism which happened while Stalin lead the country. So there WAS a positive side to his leadership.

Stalin almost won "most popular Russian" in that competition a few years ago - despite technically not being Russian. Clearly there are people in Russia who admire some aspects of his leadership.

I totally leave it to the people of the ex USSR countries to judge him, or not. It's got nothing to do with me.