It's being blown out of proportion, mostly by centre left people in the UK who are bitter that Corbyn's taken over Labour. There are a huge number of out of context Milne quotes flying around.Â
A fairly long time ago (not this millennium) Milne significantly understated the number of deaths attributable to Stalin, in a long article that at the same time showed pretty clearly why some historical claims ("twenty million" is commonly heard, but also numbers up to 30m) weren't substantiated.
The 20m figure for Stalin's death toll always included some pretty shonky accounting - for example holding Stalin entirely responsible for the Red Army soldiers killed by the Germans in WWII. Call me a traditionalist, but I'd probably lay most of those at Hitler's door.
