In general, people seemed to have lost interest in learning more about Stalin, his rule, and his terror. Twenty-five percent of respondents now saw his role in history as positive (there was no benchmark to compare this response with, because five years earlier, at the height of the public conversation about Stalinist terror, the question itself would have been inconceivable). He ranked not far below Gorbachev and Yeltsin, whose “positive” ratings were 33 and 30 percent, respectively.
