For all his own crimes, I'll always credit Uncle Joe for freeing the world of Hitler. Russia could not have won against the Third Reich without western support, but the death toll the Red Army paid over years would have been unimaginable and intolerable for any democracy (imagine what 365 Omaha Beaches a year for years on end would have done to US public opinion). A case of lethal medicine eradicating an even more deadly disease.
I also see a difference in how in Russia for all its oppression you could save your life by submitting to the system, how ever degrading that might have been, while in Hitler's world belonging to a certain ethnicity meant the death warrant for you no matter what you did. In Russia, whole classes were murdered, but you could always save your life by converting to the other side, even as an aristocrat or kulak. Try saving your live like that in the Third Reich if you were a jew, gypsy or whoever else was perceived as an "Untermensch". That is so vile, gross and inhumane.
But I'm not defending Stalin's own atrocities here, he was just a case of the right horrible poison being accidentally around to battle a vile disease at the right time.
