Anecdata, but the vast majority of European new hires I'm seeing in my team are from Spain (though they are Spanish) and work remotely from mid-sized cities or islands (like Mallorca). It feels like Central Europe is slowly losing steam while Spain is, unexpectedly, gaining some steam.
Central European salaries are getting high enough to not make remote work for abroad companies as atractive. $80k+ per year is becoming more and more common for Seniors in Poland.
Because his rule and values look more similar (at least from what I can see from outside the country) to the ones in Nazi/Fascist regimes than in Soviet ones. Stalin wasn't Russian, his rhetoric was about transnational collectivism; whereas Putin is firmly in the traditional nationalistic mould, "my nation first".
Also, Stalin organized his underlings and allies in a monolithic fashion, inside the party; punishments were mostly distributed with demotions or convictions, as internal to the system. Putin keeps his oligarchs at arm's length, in charge of companies and institutions that are nominally independent, occasionally even abroad; punishments are inflicted by "fall from balcony" and indirect ostracism, again closer to the Nazi model than the Soviet one.
