Communists from Russia"s second city of...

Communist Party members and veteran organizations insist that it was Stalin"s leadership that pulled the Soviet Union through its darkest hour and freed Europe from the tyranny of Nazism.

However, rights organizations and analysts, among others, say that Stalin"s mass purges of the Army in the years before the war left the country exposed to an attack by Germany.

During Stalin"s reign, millions of people across the U.S.S.R. were executed on false charges of espionage, sabotage and anti-Soviet propaganda or died of starvation, disease or exposure in labor camps.

ST. PETERSBURG, March 31 (RIA Novosti)