The fact that we can all talk about what we 'want to hear' about a place seems to imply that we have a narrative which we're looking to confirm, rather than bei

The fact that we can all talk about what we 'want to hear' about a place seems to imply that we have a narrative which we're looking to confirm, rather than being objective and rational in our approach to these things. As with most red-washing campaigns, it's going to be hard to figure out how much badness was caused by horrible economic circumstance, how much by bad management, and how much by outright badness for badness's sake. At the end of the day, you'll always have people on both sides - Stalin did nothing wrong and Stalin was literally worse than Hitler 90 million killed with his own hands, that sort of thing - and folks talking about NK operatives astroturfing in HN comments and everything else. I think you're totally right, and this raw data is a great opportunity to actually get some facts and perspective on an otherwise opaque part of the world. Then we all get to have opinions and have those opinions confirmed, which will be nice.