My brainworms on Stalin are constantly being purged. Like the more I learn about the man behind the name the more I genuinely respect him as a human being. From learning about how much of a fucking book nerd he was to how much of a party boy drinking champ that would send diplomats back home fucking smashed (his send off of the Japanese diplomat who helped secure a NAP between Japan and the SU before the nazi invasion) to being a family man with his love for his wife, and kids (both adopted or sanguine) to even his sense of duty to the people in the war effort from him saying the red army will hold Moscow at all costs with he himself staying there right on the front lines as the nazi tank battalions and artillery were pushing through the city to even refusing to trade his son, a low artillery officer, for the German Field Marshall that was in charge of the siege of Stalingrad (the same field Marshall became sympathetic to the Soviets and became a cornerstone figure in the founding of the GDR, so Yakov Dzhugashvili's death at the hands of an SS concentration camp monster was not in vain).

Honestly out of the big three world leaders of world War 2, he was genuinely the most fascinating and admirable from the objective scholarly perspective, much less from my subjective personal opinions.