When I heard Joseph Stalin’s atrocities for the first time, I was 16 years old. That was in the summer of 1981, we just celebrated the end of the exams with a trip to the Thuringian Forest. Our history teacher took us aside: “I think you should hear what really happened in the Soviet Union between 1922 and 1953.” Then she told us about the secret police, mass arrests, the Gulags and millions of dead.