Without his leadership skills, the Bolsheviks most likely would not have been able to defeat the White Russians during the Russian Civil War. Stalin and his ilk were too minor league at the time to be effective leaders in the Reds' struggle against the Whites. It wasn't until the Germans sent Lenin to Russia that the Bolshevik Revolution really began to take off.
Without the Soviet Union, would communism have spread to China and Southeast Asia? Would Hitler have dared to move against Poland if Russia was a staunch ally of Britain and France?
I concur with you on Lenin.