Could it be false that he was a mass murderer and a bank robber? (That's tangental to the original question of famicide, but it's interesting to think that his atrocities were fabricated.) Is there any evidence of this? It seems extremely unlikely, but I'm wondering what you're basing your comments on.
There are thousands of declassified soviet documents including death lists personally signed by Stalin himself.
I think the question is not weather they actually happened but if we can judge those events by modern moral code of 21st century. We are presented history as string of events and bullet points without much consideration for tradeoffs, alternatives and broader historical context.
In this particular example of Ukrainian famine, Stalin is potrayed as a maniac who starved millions without mentioning the global socio political climate of the time. Could russia have defeated Hitler had they not industrialized in that short span? Could they have done it without killing millions? Those are interesting questions to me.
