Chris Doss
With a caveat about making parallels across cultural lines, the situation will be comparable when a US politician dies and there is a stampede at the funeral to see the Dead God, killing hundreds.
^^^^ CB: It's not the U.S. , but there have been deadly stampedes related to the personality cults around soccer players. All the personality cult in Stalin's years was dumped into one person. In the U.S., over a longer period of time, it is thousands of smaller cults, including movie stars and sports figures, besides politicians. Sort of Monotheism vs pantheism. Reagan combined movie star-politician to great effect.
Does the former-USSR have manuy personality cults after Stalin? The U.S. hatches new ones monthly.
^^^^^^
As for Luke's point -- causally speaking, it's not so much that authoritarianism socialisms gave birth to Stalins as that Stalins gave birth to authoritarian socialisms.
^^^^ CB: Militarized socialisms is a better term. I'd say more the reverse. Militarized socialism became necessary to defend against the monstrous capitalist wars and threats of war against socialisms. Authoritative individuals are a definitional part of militarism, but it is not big men who determine even this little history, rather the other way around. Capitalism was able to force socialism to militarize the whole society, largely.