I agree. You still hear people claim that communism would have worked if Lenin hadn't died. I think Lenin died before people could see how big an asshole he was.
Or if Trotsky replaced him, instead of Stalin.
Lenin was that you’d call a trust-fund kid nowadays. Spent hald of his life ‘studying’ abroad but factually at pubs with alikes exercising in demagoguery and Marxist scholasticism over a mug of beer. He hated his own country and regular folks and while rather charismatic lacked as a leader. That is why Stalin took over. Stalin was a regular gangster who met commies in prison and immediately befriended them out of lust for power, realizing their destabilizing potential. After commies took over he organized a Mafia-like structure within the state and wiped out Lenin and Co.