I've hear this from Russians, they want a strong leader, and if he's an asshole sometimes, well that's just the way it is. They do admire Stalin even as they denounce him. They really think differently from Americans and point to their history, which like you say, would make us all go weak in the knees.
My dad knew someone who survived the siege of Leningrad and he told me, all of it. I thought it was just a tall tale, you know, because the guy was old af. In uni I learned it was not and to this day the thought of it horrifies me. Like, it shakes me to the core. I doubt I wold have survived. And I survived some gnarly shit in my day but nothing comes close to what Russians went through in Leningrad, and that's just one instance of Russian history, there are dozens more like it.