You're right, Jovan; there IS nothing to apologize for. I hang out with very non-metroploitan crowds so they definitely DO exist here in flyover country, and yet you're probably right that they shade my thinking about Russians in general, but regardless the fatal flaw in my logic was trying to defend whether Putin['s government] is neutral or gung-ho on Stalinism.
You can have that one: Russians are authoritarian assholes who still don't even try to make amends for the horrors they commited under Stalin and the others.
The way you prove my point is that there are myriad groups that "lost" in the past and now want restitution from the winners, just as you demonstrated by going after Stalin, and I think Russia is smart and stands alone in unequivocally not apologizing for its past (though I ask again for examples, because maybe France and Spain similarly do not apologize for their colonial misadventures in Africa and South America).
Why is it smart? It's tough to build patriotism amongst your people when you're constantly apologizing for what were in fact survival of the fittest or competitive advantage victories.
Supporting your dirty past of course doesn't magically make all your citizens hold hands and sing kumbuyah, so, yeah, probably Putin not apologizing simply serves to silence those who would otherwise apologize for the "icky" parts of Russia's past.
And my point is, so what? America's constant apologizing over the past thirty years has NOT lead to greater social cohesion: the aggrieved are never satisfied and those who are blamed start to masochistically hate themselves.
So this gov't stance of NOT apologizing for your icky past is DEFINITELY the way to strengthen societies: that "dirty" history is part of what shaped your culture into what it is today, anyway, so to apologize for it would be to apologize for your very culture, which CANNOT lead to healthier, stronger societies.
Seriously, this blaming, complaining, and apologizing crap of the West needs to go. We even do it with all our "green" crap, talking about how "eco-guilty" you should feel. But anyways, if the police officers and politicians kneeling to BLM wasn't enough to convince you that Russia apologizing for Stalin will NEVER satisfy the aggreived or make your younger generations stronger and more patriotic, I don't know what else to tell you.