I'm sorry but to other comrades, can we not be satisfied with "it's all a lie" or "Stalin did nothin' wrong." OP is obviously a new guy. If you just say Stalin did nothing wrong, OP may or may not believe it, or if they do believe it, will have insufficient knowledge about the subject matter. On the other hand, it's true that Stalin didn't do many things wrong. He had mistakes, sure, but not many, and usually they were caused by the external conditions i.e. Stalin didn't really have a choice.

Let's talk about dekulakization and why it's not an atrocity. The kulaks were landlords who refused to give their land. Now, Stalin needed to collectivize land to bring up production due to the fact that a famine was beginning to occur. The Kulaks intentionally sabotaged production by burning wheat and whatnot, decreasing, for example, the amount of livestock during the first five year plan. So is it surprising that Stalin would want to get rid of them? Next, bourgeois media likes to spit on the gulags, shame them to death, when even American and most of Europe had forms of labor camps. The Americans kept labor camps in the Philippines and Cuba for example.

But when, under Gorbachev, the archives of the Central Committee of the CPSU were opened up to researchers, it was found that the number of political prisoners in 1939 had been 454,000, not the millions claimed by Conquest. If we add those in prison for non-political offenses, we get a figure of 2.5 million, that is, 2.4% of the adult population. In contrast, there were in the United States in 1996, according to official figures, 5.5 million people in prison, or 2.8% of the adult population.

The final thing is that Stalin did strive for democracy in the Soviet Union. He called for a secret ballot on an equal basis, saying that a peasants' vote would count as much as a workers' vote. It was true that on the ballot, there was only one party - the CPSU. But it isn't true that it was the only thing there. Evidently, other non-party organizations like citizens' groups and workplace organizations had their candidates on the ballot as well.