@N: And I respect everything in Russia but Stalin. Don't get me wrong.
I did understand what you were talking about. I'm not dumb and I do know something about the subject. Насчёт 'our' knowledge being utterly one-sided, I'd say the majority of Russians' is as well.

So maybe it's not proven that he himself, in person, killed anyone. As someone in this thread said, he did give some of the direct orders (40,000+ was it?). Why so few? You try and sign millions of deathwarrants. That doesn't mean he didn't have anything to do with it or even had no knowledge of it.

I did understand what Bad Manners was saying. It still is a kind of medieval attitude, isn't it? "Ooo, they know something we don't, they must be witches/devils/enemies of the state." Is it proven that they ever did anything illegal/wrong? Or are they just bastards because they criticize Russia? Which of course is an American attitude.

And the quote is most definitely associated with Stalin. Maybe not an authoritative source, but look: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quote ... 01380.html
Or did Chrushchev invent this quote and attribute it to Stalin?