The image of Stalin who inherited a rural Russia, industrialized it, defeated Hitler and brought Russia to space is over-the-top rosy and far from accurate. He actually weakened USSR’s defense against Hitler with his purges. Industrialization was well on its way in the Russian Empire, which is why Prussia felt threatened and this in fact was one of the causes of the first world war. Tsiolkovsky did his work on rocketry in the Russian Empire. Sikorsky did his aeronautics work in the Russian Empire, and later emigrated into America. What Stalin did was kill/imprison the best and the brightest people in the USSR, his experiments at agriculture killed about ten million Ukrainians, essentially he killed as many Russians as did Hitler, and btw the biggest reason the Russians didn’t go to the Moon first was that Korolev, the chief designer, died because his heart was weakened due to years spent in Stalin’s gulag. So don’t get me started about Stalin. Stalin was absolutely nothing like Putin. Stalin was stupid, violent, authoritarian and paranoid. Putin is wickedly smart, competent, calm, peaceful, he convinces people instead of ordering them around, and he pulled the country out of the deep dark place and restored it to the position where it all but exceeds the brightest parts of its imperial and soviet history. Stalin is among the darkest demons of mankind, and Putin is among the brightest stars of politics of all time. There were no purges and gulags under Putin. He does kick ass, but with pinpoint accuracy: just a few worst villains, never the entire classes of people. He is to be admired and his glorious achievements should be studied at universities worldwide as an example of how to run a state optimally.