Hiding what one thinks in order to avoid losing one's job seems closer to what the victims of Stalinism went through, albeit they could lose far more than their job.
Unless you have reason to think this guy is a mass murderer, it seems to me pretty absurd to compare him to Stalin. I think it most likely that at worst he is an idiot who thinks Stalin wasn't that bad or some nonsense.
Stalinists aren’t stalin. They are stuck in the mud loyalist to fearless leader never admit a flaw shred the past at every turn. Orwell wrote extensively about these people. It soured him on Socialism when he was fighting Fascism in Spain.