Since so many people here think the US should have taken a harder line on Stalin during World War II--some even supporting a preventive war with it in 1945--I suggest they examine US public opinion toward the USSR during World War II to determine if that would really be feasible. IMO LIFE magazine's special issue on the USSR (March 29, 1943) gives some indication. Remember, we are not dealing here with a fellow traveling left-wing magazine, not even with a New Deal magazine, but with a publication by Henry Luce, a fairly conservative Republican.
We begin with the front cover--appropriately devoted to Joseph Stalin.
https://books.google.com/books?id=A1AEAAAAMBAJ&printsec=frontcover
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As Lars T. Lih notes, . "This photograph has a gritty realism that was conspicuously absent from visual images of the leader circulating in the Soviet Union. In particular, his pockmarked face was not hidden. For a foreign audience, these pockmarks added to the impressiveness. As [LIFE photographer Margaret ] Bourke-White herself wrote in a book published in 1942, “his rough pitted face was so strong that it looked as if it had been carved out of stone.”
http://crisiscritique.org/ccmarch/lih.pdf
Lih notes that "There is no need to ask ourselves why an American mass-market magazine owned by conservative Republicans would published an entire issue favorable to the USSR in 1943. The Soviet Union had emerged triumphant from the battle of Stalingrad, and was a valiant, indeed necessary, ally for the USA in the war against Hitler." Some of the details are remamrkable, however.
Lack of freedom of the press in the USSR? "[The Russians] live under a system of tight state-controlled information. But probably the attitude to take toward this is not to get too excited about it. When we take account of what the USSR has accomplished in the 20 years of its existence we can make allowances for certain shortcomings, however deplorable. For that matter, even 15 years ago the Russian economy had scarcely yet changed from the days of the Czars, and the kulaks of the steppes were still treating modern industrial machines like new toys. In 1929 the Soviet Union did not have a single automobile or tractor plant and did not produce high-grade steel of ball bearings. Today the USSR ranks among the top three or four nations in industrial power. She has improved her health, built libraries, raised her literacy to about 80%--and trained one of the most formidable armies on earth. It is safe to say that no nation in history has ever done so much so fast. If the Soviet leaders tell us that the control of information was necessary to get this job done, we can afford to take their word for it for the time being. We who know the power of free speech, and the necessity for it, may assume that if those leaders are sincere in their work of emancipating the Russsian people they will swing around toward free speech—and soon."
"In an extensive photo-essay devoted to Lenin’s life, he is presented as “perhaps the greatest man of modern times.” “Lenin was the rarest of men, an absolutely unselfconscious and unselfish man who had a passionate respect for ideas, but even more respect for deeds … He was a normal, well-balanced man.” A normal, well-balanced man! How shocking such an assertion sounds today! In contrast, Trotsky was “a thinker and a dreamer … He went into exile, leaving behind a secret network of opposition which strove for years to undermine the government.” His rival, Joseph Stalin, was a “strong, tough silent proletarian man of action” who proceeded to “ruthlessly eliminate the so-called Trotskyist fifth column."
http://crisiscritique.org/ccmarch/lih.pdf The use of"so-called" is one of the very few things the Soviet government objected to in the article... Anyway, the treatment of Lenin seems unbelievable today:
"Perhaps the greatest man of modern times was Vladimir Ilyich Ulianov. He took the name of Lenin, spent most of his fifty-four years in exile from his country, and gave the world the biggest new political fact of our era, the federal Union of Soviet Socialist Republics under a form of Communism.
"The impression of integrated force he gave in life may be sensed in the portrait above, taken not long before his great step to power. Lenin was that rarest of men, an absolutely unselfconscious and unselfish man who had passionate respect for ideas, but even more respect for deeds. He had mastered the trick of complete concen¬
tration. He had a fantastic capacity for work and was scrupulous and thorough about the smallest, as well as the biggest, duties of his life. He spoke English, German and French, as well as Russian, and could read Italian, Swedish and Polish. He was a normal well-balanced man who was dedicated to rescuing 140,000,000 people
from a brutal and incompetent tyranny. He did what he set out to do.
"Lenin did not make the Revolution in Russia, nor did any one group of men. But he made the Revolution make sense and saved it from much of the folly of the French Revolution. It is impossible to imagine what the history of Russia and the world would have been had he not lived..." (On that last point at least, I can agree..)
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Collectivization? "The photo essay on agriculture is entitled “Collective Farms Feed the Nation.” The reader is informed that during collectivization, “the wealthier farmers, called kulaks, were brutally liquidated by death, exile or coercion.” Nevertheless, the bottom line is that “whatever the cost of farm collectivization, in terms of human life and individual liberty, the historic fact is that it worked … Russia could not have built the industry which turned out the munitions which stopped the German army.”
http://crisiscritique.org/ccmarch/lih.pdf
Stalin's associates? "In a four-page spread, Stalin’s top leadership team is presented as “tough, loyal, capable administrators.” Lavrentia Beria, for example, heads the NKVD, identified as “a national police similar to the FBI [!]” His assignment at the present time is “enforcement of Stalin’s scorched-earth policy and tracking down of traitors.”
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Lih concludes "This issue of Life is a somewhat unsettling journey to a forgotten past. Perhaps the issue is even somewhat embarrassing, but why, and to whom? Is it embarrassing to the USA business elite that showed it could whitewash Stalin’s crimes as well as any wooly-headed leftist fellow-traveler? Or is it a disturbing reminder of the present-day cultural amnesia about the time when the Soviet Union was a valued ally, when Soviet achievements were seen positively—and thus a reminder of the fact that we in the Western democracies directly benefitted from the huge sacrifices of a society and a system that today excites little beyond condemnation and mockery."
http://crisiscritique.org/ccmarch/lih.pdf
Now to be sure this was published just after Stalingrad, when admiration for the USSR was at its height in the US. Neverthrless, it cannot IMO be dismissed as merely an echo of US government wartime propoaganda--Henry Luce could be quite critical of FDR when he wanted to be! Articles like this helped form public opinion but also reflected the natural wish of Americans to beleive the best about a warime ally (that also applies to Chiang Kai-shek's China by the way.) That is one of many reasons why a more anti-Soviet policy by the US would habe been so difficult to sustain as long as Hitler was undefeated (and even just after, which is why Operation Unthinkable was so aptly named--favorable images like these simply cannot--in a democracy--be erased overnight).