The Legendary Dragon Alephwyr, named Alephwyr, BA

One thing to begin with in your study of socialism is to throw away everything you think you know about Stalin

And then get new information from where? Why is the old information resilient enough that it needs to be purged even in the face of superior evidence or argument?

The old information is resilient because its been the enforced position by the West since the start of the Cold War. The entire institution of western capitalism and imperialism created a narrative and hammered it into every media form possible for nearly a century.