<<Everyone that does not love Stalin thinks him a stupid cruel thug.>>
I'm sure that's not true. There must be plenty of people whose attitude to Uncle Joe falls short of love and yet nevertheless are capable of seeing all the good he's accomplished, of looking at his alleged crimes and separating the wheat from the chaff (i.e. separating some of the things he may actually have done from the huge crimes attributed to him by Cold War propaganda and by fugitive Nazi collaborators eager to "prove" that they were not fighting for Hitler (as in fact they actually were) but against Stalin, who, in order to make their pathetic little lies barely plausible, had to be made into a much worse monster than Hitler. Whatever Stalin may ultimately be accused of doing must further be evaluated in the context of the times - - the looming war with Hitler, which could not be forever postponed by placating him, the need to "clear the decks" inside the USSR by eliminating enemies and potential collaborators with Hitler from Stalin's left (the Trotskyites) and right (the remnants of the Czarist and Social Democratic parties.)
<<Then what love him love him enough to overlook little foibles like forbidding real science . . . >>
Come on plane, we both know that the only "real science" that Stalin interfered with was genetics, that there's no record anywhere of Stalin ever interfering in any other branch of science. In 1958, three Russian scientists won the Nobel Prize in Physics for work and discoveries that were made in 1934. The same three scientists won State Prizes in 1946 and 1951 for this work, while Stalin was still alive and in charge. Science in Russia was alive and well all through Stalin's reign. Unfortunately he entered the field of genetics to support Lysenko against other geneticists because the Lysenko theory agreed with Communist doctrine. A foolish and incredibly stupid move, but all great men make them - - look at Churchill and Gallipoli.
<<engendering famines . . . >>
plane that is total bullshit. It's a lie invented by fugitive Nazi collaborators from the Ukraine trying to justify their treasonous pro-Nazi activities in WWII and it's just one huge lie, which unfortunately the West and its MSM picked up on during the Cold War for purely political reasons.
<< . . . invading neighboring countrys for aggrandisement>>
You are kidding me, right? YOU, an AMERICAN, have the balls to criticize Stalin for that? I could say he was only trying to be like you, but there are better answers than that.
<<Locking away engineers and decimateing his armys officer corps.>>
Again, necessary precautions for a regime beset by internal enemies on its right and left flanks and getting ready for the inevitable war with Nazi Germany.
<<And then of course there is making common cause with the Natzis . . . >>
Oh yeah, right - - after three failed years of attempting to negotiate a mutual defence pact with Britain and France only to find out that they had never been serious about it anyway.
<< seeming stupid and vunerable enough to attract invasion>>
Well I guess in that case he must have been no worse than the leaders of France, Belgium, HOlland, Luxemburg, Norway, Denmark, Greece, Poland and all the rest of occupied Europe except for those satellite countries like Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Croatia etc. which willingly joined the Axis Powers. That statement of yours is one of the most outrageously ridiculous examples of "Blame the Victim" that it is possible to find.
<ordering his soldiers to fight unarmed and unfed . . . >>
If you don't understand the crisis that they were facing, I guess you don't understand how utterly stupid that last accusation is. "Comrades, to the front! The Socialist Motherland is in deadly peril! But first, comrades, a good hot meal, three courses, with wine!" Sure plane, they shoulda done it YOUR way.
<< forbidding retreat as their regiments were encircled and destroyed over and over.>>
The "Die but do not retreat!" order was issued when the Nazis were at the suburbs of Moscow. They blocked the Nazi thrust on the city and bought time for new armies to be raised, armies which would eventually raise the Red Flag over the Reichstag and kill two-thirds of all the German soldiers killed in the war.
<< Stalin just was not perfect and some of us are a bit picky.>>
A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, plane. You mix Nazi collaborator propaganda, anti-Soviet propaganda and MSM bullshit into a miasmic mix of fact, half-truth, lies and slanted perceptions, and think you have the goods on the USSR and Joe Stalin. You know little and understand less. But to everything you think you believe to the detriment of Uncle Joe and the USSR, there is an answer. You just need to read a little bit more, and from less polluted sources.