Almost half of Russians in a recent poll blamed dictator Joseph Stalin’s “blunders” for the Soviet Union’s huge losses of life in World War II, Russian news agencies reported on Sunday.

Forty-nine percent of respondents told the Levada polling agency that “the blunders of Stalin” were the “main reason” for massive Red Army losses in the first two years of the war, the Interfax news agency reported. Stalin erred by purging the military of top officials, failing to prepare for combat and abandoning millions of Soviet prisoners of war, respondents said.

While Stalin supporters stress the vital importance of his wartime leadership, only eight percent of respondents said that Stalin played the key role in winning the war....