Stalin's apologists in Russia and abroad

RIA Novosti report:

MONUMENT TO STALIN TO BE ERECTED IN YAKUTIA

YAKUTSK, March 30 (RIA Novosti, Pyotr Vasilyev) - Yakutia's deputies decided to erect a bust of Joseph Stalin in the city of Mirny's Victory Square on May 9.

The municipal administration said they made the decision after the mayor's office received numerous requests from local veterans and youth organization representatives.

"We could not leave a request made by participants in the Great Patriotic War, especially during the anniversary year, unattended to or satisfied. It is no secret that our front-line soldiers fought under the slogan 'For the Homeland! For Stalin!' I believe that the deputies were right in displaying their civic position," Anatoly Popov, Mirny mayor and chairman of the District Assembly, told the local media.

It's a somewhat old news and it's been discussed on the Russian Live Journal here and here but only now I've come up with something to say about the matter.

The ironic genius of modern Russian literature, belated Sergey Dovlatov, once wrote upon emigrating from the USSR to the U.S., that in America he's realized that "under the sun of freedom, both marijuana and tulips blossom equally well.." (he wrote about 20 years ago when even in America pot was still considered 'bad').

the late Soviet Union was a bad, bad country in many respects but I have no doubt that such a thing would've had happened for the Brezhenev regime would deal very quickly with any attempt to rehabilitate Stalin.
I am a moderate libertarian (show me any young conservative who isn't :-)) so I don't think Putin should intervene and stall the project. Even though what those people in far away Yakutia are doing would be fully tantamount to an attempt to have a Hitler statue somewhere in Bavaria.
But I'm not angry at those people. God forgive those little ones for they don't know what they're doing...

But again, Western apologists for Stalin evoke nothing but disgust and loathing in me. I remember talking to a Canadian commie who told me that the collectivization was good for the USSSR because it prepared th country to fight the Nazis. He also said that those who perished in the process would've died anyway if Hitler had been successful.
Now I know what to tell him. How about sacrificing your own life for a higher (and distant) goal. You're afraid that Canada is gonna be taken over by the U.S.? Well, we shall kill you now it might as well help to save Canadian independence....