ABSTRACT
Almost half a century after Stalin’s death, Russia still lives in his shadow. Millions were executed or perished in the Gulag prison camps, with no family left untouched. Having exterminated ten million Russian peasants, Stalin enslaved the rest of them as serfs in his kolkhoz (collective farm) system. He left behind a dysfunctional economic system that defeats all attempts at economic and land reform. The great majority of Russians continue to suffer from the abject poverty, misery and deprivation while a few corrupt nouveau riche, the oligarchs, and mafiosi enjoy opulence and privileges in the post-Soviet Russia, as did the party elite during Stalin’s reign. Stalin threw Russia back to the barbarity of the medieval reign of his favorite Tsar, the deranged Ivan Grozny (Ivan the Terrible).
