I'm no historian, but he was one of the most evil bastards of the last century and, arguably, was responsible for more deaths than even Hitler was (how can anyone without a hugely monstrous ego live with themselves for bloodshed on that appalling scale?). He contracted an "alliance" with Hitler and Nazi Germany in 1940 which bought him time, though both he and the Germans knew just how shallow and worthless that entente really was. This is history, not politics, all you Mods.
He ignored all the advice of his Generals about the threat that Germany posed and then, when the Germans invaded, with huge success, in mid-1941, he executed the lot of them!
He was utterly hard and ruthless. He didn't care how many lives his policies might cost - and Russia lost something like 22 million in the course of war. He was a dictator in the truest sense of the word. At the tri-partite conferences which took place during WW2 at Casablanca and Yalta, to agree just how to proceed with the war, he humbugged Roosevelt and fooled him into thinking that there was a "special relationship" between them which could exclude Churchill, the "imperialist".
I have deleted the rest of this post since it might be deemed to be political ...
But somebody asked the question, so here's my small opinion.
Tony.
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