Bob Fanelli wrote:

>>

All people have a role in history. Stalin should be judged,
regardless of his altruistic pretensions of setting the world upright
and fair and equitable, on his conduct in the 'affairs of men,'
which, as you know, was abominable.

The sum total of any human's life is nothing if he or she has caused
the suffering of so many. 'The mills of the gods grind exceeding
small.'
<<

*** *** ***

And Hegel wrote (Lectures on the Philosophy of History, Section II):

>>>

A second species of Reflective History is what we may call the
Pragmatical.

When we have to deal with the Past, and occupy ourselves with a
remote world a Present rises into being for the mind - produced by
its own activity, as the reward of its labour. The occurrences are,
indeed, various; but the idea which pervades them - their deeper
import and connection - is one.

This takes the occurrence out of the category of the Past and makes
it virtually Present. Pragmatical (didactic) reflections, though in
their nature decidedly abstract, are truly and indefeasibly of the
Present, and quicken the annals of the dead Past with the life of
today.

Whether, indeed such reflections are truly interesting and
enlivening, depends on the writer's own spirit. Moral reflections
must here be specially noticed, - the moral teaching expected from
history; which latter has not unfrequently been treated with a direct
view to the former. It may be allowed that examples of virtue elevate
the soul, and are applicable in the moral instructions of children
for impressing excellence upon their minds. But the destinies of
peoples and states, their interests, relations, and the complicated
issue of their affairs, present quite another field.

Rulers, Statesmen, Nations, are wont to be emphatically commended to
the teaching which experience offers in history. But what experience
and history teach is this, - that peoples and governments never have
learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from
it. Each period is involved in such peculiar circumstances, exhibits
a condition of things so strictly idiosyncratic, that its conduct
must be regulated by considerations connected with itself, and itself
alone. Amid the pressure of great events, a general principle gives
no help. It is useless to revert to similar circumstances in the
Past. The pallid shades of memory struggle in vain with the life and
freedom of the Present. [...]
<<<

All the best,
Maurizio Canfora