The most effed up thing about Stalin was that he didn't need to murder or send to the Gulags millions of people.

Look at Mao, Hitler, Honecker, Pol Pot, the list goes on. They had to repress their people with totalitarian ordeals to stay in power. But Stalin was in a cold war, the people were already nationalistic, was a lot easier to be a dictator and not commit mass murder. It's not a risk or a hard thing to do, you just have to see the writing on the wall and let things develop without interfering (not that it's easy to see the writing on the wall at least for most people). If you know what you are doing you can have a prosperous nation, keep power and not commit atrocities. And still the man didn't resist the totalitarian ordeals that were put on him and was light-years ahead from someone like for example: hide. I'm not saying that he was an angel or hide is an angel. What I'm saying is that when you see the effed up thing about Stalin you start to believe that some atrocities (a lot of them) are justified, effed up.