People have come to realize the scope of Stalin’s personality, because “we did have a personality cult but we had a personality first of all," believes Viktor Linnik Editor-in-Chief of the Moscow-based Slovo newspaper.

“We had a very strong leader, albeit his ruthlessness and his crimes, if you will, all the crimes of that era cannot be ascribed to Stalin alone. This is ridiculous when people just pinpoint him as the one who perpetrated everything,” Viktor Linnik says.

“It was a very tough period during the thirty something years of Stalin rule, but it also had its greatest achievements… We are still drawing on what Stalin had as his legacy for us.”

“How is Napoleon remembered in his homeland, how is Oliver Cromwell, for that matter, remembered in Great Britain? I think history will judge Stalin objectively and we will have that very soon,” he concluded.