The claims that Stalin commited genocide belong to the 1930s and 1980s. Specifically, this myth is a creation of nazi propaganda that was consolidated internationally by Ronald Reagan. The rise of nazism in Germany occurred as a reaction against the Weimar Republic and the failed german revolution, it was a extreme right wing response, and because of that, many of the current reputations and interpretations of the USSR and Stalin are directly linked to this period.

During the collectivization process, many rich russians and ukrainians fled to the United States and Nazi Germany, and they helped building a mass media operation that created hoaxes such as the existence of a genocide through hunger, the totalitarian regime of Stalin, etc., and also during this time, north-american media was closely affiliated with german media, so through people like William Hearst those hoaxes spread outside Germany to the whole West. More names are involved, such as Robert Conquest or Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

During the 1980s these myths became consolidated as a project of Reagan's government in bringing down the Soviet Union. While the hoaxes existed since the 1930s, they were revalidated and used as a political tool by neoliberalism and imperialism