Rip, I remember the "free press", the Voice of America in spring, 1986. Every day they declared the number of people killed by Chernobil explosion. They started from modest 5000, and in less then a week ended up with 120000. Don't know if they went further - I stopped listening to that roadkill.
There is no statistics about Stalin's repressions. Official numbers are that the biggest population of GULAG was 1.2 million in 1940, it is probably a fake, but "uncounted millions" of victims is a roadkill too. Rip, 50 million is 1/3 of the whole USSR population that time.
Stalin was the most successful Russian politician since Alexander III. Let's not talk about paranoia and insanity. He was a bastard, but a clever bastard.
Funked, Russia will never switch to NATO weapon standars for obvious reasons. And frankly speaking that Russian military will ever agree to act according to orders from the US, that they'll have to do according to NATO regulations... So it looks like Stalin's request in 1949. And after our new allience with China it's especially funny.