I think most of those people think, given the relatively short time he was in power and given the brutality of his immediate successor, maybe if he'd lived longer, he would have showed us a "kinder, gentler" communism. The fact is that Lenin was the exact same thing as Stalin, murdering anyone who got in the way of his quest for power.
"he would have showed us a "kinder, gentler" communism"
He did. His NEP was kind of Chinese pseudocapitalism.
Lenin would likely have done away with Stalin if he hadn't died. He knew what Stalin was. Either that or Stalin would have knocked off Lenin. There wasn't enough room for both of those monsters.