Still crazy after all these years--Russia's continuing love affair with Stalin

By Aussiegirl

An interesting insight in the Russian national character.

Mirror.co.uk - News - EXCLUSIVE: WHY DOES RUSSIA LOVE STALIN NOW?

HIS appalling crimes are on a scale so vast as to defy comprehension. Even today no one knows how many people perished under Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin's regime.

He is blamed for the deaths of anywhere between 11 and 43 million of his own subjects, making him one of history's most terrifying despots alongside Hitler, Pol Pot and Mao Zedong.

Yet today - just 50 years since his successor Nikita Khrushchev denounced him as a bloodthirsty tyrant - many Russians look back at his iron-fisted rule with nostalgia.