Wikipedia is notoriously untrustworthy and gets brigades heavily by the CIA, especially on topics like this.
For better sources, use this. Look for gulags and the purges you mention and see what is written.
“babe wake up! The Dictator of a capitalist, imperialist country said that insert socialist has killed lots of people”
I find this one fascinating. I’m trying to follow this thought process.
“Stalin is an evil Russian Dictator! and these evil tankies worship him! Putin is also an evil Russian Dictator therefore these evil tankies will agree with anything he says because they like Russian Dictators!”
This person honestly seems to think solely in terms of “sports team politics” and doesn’t seem to understand that people can believe or not believe something based on evidence, not on what “their team” says is true.
Gee, what would capitalist system, existing only because the previous one was brutally and unlawfully destroyed against the will of the peopl, gain on smearing that previous system.
For a culture and civilisation supposedly build on Roman roots westerners awfully rarily seem to ask fundamental question of “qui bono?”.
There’s just as much the CIA can patch, Wikipedia still provide a good account of famous historical events and plenty cross links, you can search for yourself and read the individual history of many who died on gulags or that got send there. Not even the CIA can spin history 360 degrees
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKUltra
If you have even better sources to wikipedia that’s good but your link redirect to reddit and vague articles and even to wikipedia itself
For starters you could read actual socialist theory but I know you won’t. If you’re truly acting in good faith, give youtuber Hakim a listen. Or The Deprogram podcast. Or Second Thought. They have various videos covering a multitude of starter* topics and they provide sources with their claims.
Edit: if you’re looking for insights on how the CIA does spin history 180 degrees (360 is a circle, btw, you’d end up at the same point) then give The Jakarta Method a read.