Stalin was a real sweetheart, and Russia has not divorced themselves from his legacy. They still see him as a hero, despite 30 million Russians dead in WWII, like he held no responsibility for those losses. Stalin used to sit every night and make list of up to 5,000 people he wanted executed. People were taken off the streets to feed the gulags and never seen again.
You want to read a shocker of a book, read the book Gulag by a woman named Applebaum(Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn also had a book by the same name). When I finished the book, I literally broke down and wept. Lenin and Stalin were two of the most evil men ever to live. Between them, they murdered somewhere between 70 - 100 million Russians, not to mention Poles and others. Stalin had his gulag/concentration camps/death camps long before Hitler ever did!!! Survival was about one year, and death occurred for a variety of reasons, exposure, starvation, disease, and outright execution. And for those sentenced to the gulags, their children became enemies of the state and treated horribly.
Putin is a ruthless dictator, and it is time the world recognizes it. Oppose him at your peril. Trump praising this horrible man, ugggh. Where the F are advisors to set him straight? Too many losers and men not to be trusted clearly with all the crap going on with our worthless Congress.
My third trip to Russia, I was down in the southern region of Russia (which I did not know that westerners were warned away from going for safety threats) visiting my inlaws, and we traveled to a place called Kislovosk, a resort town where people would vacation for one month each year during the USSR days. Went for a walk with my wife and her parents and as we passed a building that was easily one block square and multiple stories high, he would say at the start of the building that it was a health sanitorium back in the USSR days, and Stalin named the building after such and such friend. By the time we got to the other end of the building, he said that Stalin had that friend executed. Well, after walking past about six or eight of these buildings, all named after a friend of Stalin, each and every one of them executed by Stalin, I just could not keep a straight face.
They still have Stalin I believe in Red Square with Lenin. Both of them should have their bodies burned and scattered never to be seen again rather than worshipped.
On our way back from Kislovosk, we took a bus back to my wife's family's city. We were stopped in the middle of nowhere, boarded by police, every one of them carrying machine guns, and as soon as they saw my American passport, I was hauled off to their station. My wife accompanied me. They started with the normal routine, declaring my papers were not in order, that I would be imprisoned and deported. I paid a large sum of money to have the right papers for a 2 week visit. After this happening for about the 10th time, and knowing they were trying to put the squeeze on me for my money, I had. I told my wife to tell them that if they continue to F*&^ with me, I will call my friend in Putin's office, and the best job any of them will have in the future is picking potatoes. My wife responded, I can't tell them that, they can take us out in the field and shoot us dead. I told tell them. She did clearly, a F*&^ being every third word as I instructed. There was about six of them standing there, and their eyes went buy eye wide like Schiff, and they looked at each other in a big group Aw sh*t moment, and they waved us to leave.
We had to walk about one two miles back to the bus in the dark. I cannot believe my wife knew the way. We got on the bus, and I swear, the bus driver laid tire driving away as quickly as he could. Couple days later, we went to the airport of my wife's town that requires you to go through security as you enter the terminal, and immediately they snagged me again. For about the 11th time, I had to pay what amounted to $38 at the time, and then the baggage woman put the hit on me for the weight of my bags. I told my wife, this is the last time I come to your f*&^ing country, thieves one and all.
Putin should be scorned by western nations at every turn. He is a mass murderer, for believe me, his opposition become fertilizer. Trump should get better advisors, for he sure does say the dumbest crap regarding Russia.
