The true believers still insist that if Lenin had lived longer and prevented Stalin from coming to power then the USSR would have turned out differently. That doesn't change the fact that he was the chief architect of the concept of One Party Rule.
The "true believers" are wrong. "Lenin was different" is a myth. Lenin was every bit as ruthless and bloodthirsty as Stalin. It's all in Simon Montefiore's marvelous, definitive biography, "Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar."
His NEP (New Economic Policy) was kind of Gorbachev Perestroika and did offer some relief to the people after the atrocities of the Civil War.
And thus totalitarianism, not just for his country but the entire world.