As with any human being I don't think you can label Stalin as just one thing against another. He may have been a genius or a monster or at times both, but he was never one thing. To truly understand Stalin as a man, a dictator, a leader we need to assess the country he ruled, its economy, its politics and its social status before and during the time he ruled; not just his actions.
Stalin spoke these words in a speech to Party at a meeting in Leningrad, April 1926. "Now there stands before us a new task - the industrialization of our country. The most serious difficulties have been left behind. Is it possible to doubt that we shall be equal to this new task, the industrialization or our country? Of course not!" .
Some people called it paranoia, Stalin's obvious fear of being "left behind" or defeated because of Russia's backwardness, other's called it prophecy, that Stalin could predict Russia's fate. He saw that industrially and agriculturally Russia was at least a hundred years behind the rest of the Western world. He believed this would lead to Russia being beaten and enslaved by surrounding Capitalist countries.
"We make good the difference in ten years, or they crush us," were Stalin's words before he came up with his series of three five year plans. He believed Germany would invade soon and Russia would be ill equipped to defend itself. To defend itself, Russia needed a large and strong army and to feed this army, it needed grain in large quantities. Stalin's solution to the problem of industrial and agricultural backwardness was his five year plans of collectivization and breakneck industrialization. Russia needed to "overtake and outstrip capitalist countries" and the only way to do it was "socialism in one country to ensure global domination, "Stalin said.
At the completion of two of the five year plans the USSR was turned into a modern state, able to resist Hitler's invasion. There was genuine communist enthusiasm among the young "pioneers" or soviets.
From people like Hitler, Stalin, and even more recently, Milosevic, we can see that these madmen come in all shapes and forms. ... These were done for no other reason than they had not credited his genius, or were not entertained at one of his shows. ... Nero was not quite the monster that television and movies nowadays make him out to be. ...