Josif Stalin IS one of the three worst criminals in the history of mankind, the other two being Hitler and Mao. Mao killed 38 million human beings, Stalin at least 25 million and Hitler at least 20 million. The figures are there on the CIA website. It is unacceptable to show Stalin and Mao as politicians on Wikipedia website when Hitler is depicted as a monster. All of them were equally monsters and the personal cult communism was no differenct from nazism in essence.

You need to be aware that most former eastern bloc countries banned the use and display of the five-pointed red star and the hammer and sickle symbols of communism alongside the swastika and some local fascist sysmbols, because they know from personal experience that the horrors of stalinism were no less than that of nazism. The hungarian law banning all these is the XLV. (45th) law of 1993, titled "Az önkényuralmi jelképek használatát tiltó törvény" and it has been upheld in constitutional court.

If you fail to mention the very criminality of Stalin and Mao in the very header of their wiki articles, then you are looking for an edit war, period. We, the people of ex-soviet bloc countries are personally insulted when anglo-saxons pet "Uncle Joe" as the kind old leader. Be glad he did not rule you (you may not have been born then with 10% probability because your father would get executed or die in the Gulags beforehand, no kidding). Acknowledge our sufferings by stating the truth: Stalin was one of the three worst criminals in the history of mankind, period.

Regards: Tamas Feher from Hungary (etomcat@freemail.hu)