As horrific and scary as terrorist acts are to civil societies (and impactful to our politics), Stalin&#x27;s rule was far more devastating. &quot;In February 1989, two years before the fall of the Soviet Union, a research paper by Georgian historian Roy Aleksandrovich Medvedev published in the weekly tabloid Argumenti i Fakti estimated that the death toll directly attributable to Stalin’s rule amounted to some 20 million lives (on top of the estimated 20 million Soviet troops and civilians who perished in the Second World War), for a total tally of 40 million.&quot; <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ibtimes.com&#x2F;how-many-people-did-joseph-stalin-kill-1111789" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ibtimes.com&#x2F;how-many-people-did-joseph-stalin-kil...</a>