Marxism-Leninism can never be legitimized and Stalin can never be seen as a revolutionary hero— this is what all left-anticommunists and intelligence services agree on.

Because Marxism-Leninism has been adaptable and agile enough to build socialism in Russia, Eastern Europe, Cuba, Korea, Vietnam, Laos and China.

This is despite the fact in Russia— where the descendants of the people who lived under Stalin lived— see Stalin as a better figure than Lenin and routinely rate him the best Russian leader and currently have a 70% approval rating of him.

Even today statues of Stalin are going up all over Russia.

Because Lenin died in the mid 1920s after World War, Civil war and all capitalist invasion and then a famine in 1921 was the start of reconstruction of Soviet industry. When Lenin died Russia was still a very miserable and war torn place.

Whereas Stalin led the Soviet Union during Socialist construction which (from the memoirs of working people) was like a groundswell of human liberation and flowering.

The truth is if Lenin had lived instead and made the necessary decisions to ensure Soviet survival (collectivisation, smashing the fifth column in the 1930s) then they'd hate Lenin today as much as they did Stalin because bourgeois propaganda would've been levelled at Lenin instead.

Which is why they pushed the faked "Lenin's Testament" for almost a century. As if Trotsky (a guy that joined the Bolshevik party a few months before the Oct Revolution) was usurped by evil Stalin who stole the Communist crown off Lenin's head.

Instead, of you know, like having a vote on who the leader should be as you would expect in a Communist party and what was done.

It's why Trotsky was hailed as the "true bolshevik" by Hearst press— which was run by a fascist William Randolph Hearst who spent the entire time making shit up about the Soviet Union and providing Goering and Mussolini columns in his newspapers.

credit to u/JoeysStainlessSteel