In any sense other than the Nazi one, they were Russians. They spoke Russian and identified as Russian. Heck, Lenin's Tomb remains in the Kremlin, Lenin monuments are all over Russia and Russians have taken umbrage at the removal of Lenin statues in Ukraine. Besides, Napoleon was Corsican, Hitler was Austrian and Alexander was Macedonian.
No, you don’t understand anything about how that part of the world works. Ethnicity is VERY important there, it’s not like France or America. Everyone in the USSR had their ethnicity on their identification papers. Nobody, NOBODY thought of Lenin and Trotsky as Russians. At the time, everyone in the Russian Empire understood that the communist revolution was about all the people who thought the previous government had oppressed them getting revenge. Ethnic politics was a big part of that and it was no secret.
It’s absurd to suggest that not considering Stalin an ethnic Russian is something only Nazis would do. It shows how little you know about the USSR and the culture and history of that part of the world. Ironically, the Nazis probably cared less than anyone that Stalin was not ethnically Russian.
Your position is especially ridiculous because you are placing blame on one ethnic group for actions ordered by men not of that group, then insisting that the reality of who was what doesn’t matter. If that’s the case, why blame “Russians” for anything the USSR did? Why not just say “communists?” It would be more accurate.
They were communist Russians who considered themselves elite and against the Czar Nicholas. So they go to the ‘culture’ of Europe to take in the teachings of Marx and Engels. They were financed by the Rothschilds who wanted to depose the Czar who did not go along with the Rothchilds’ plan for control of Russia’s money market. My father was a ‘white’ Russian who was wounded in some fighting with the Bolsheviks before the 1917 revolution. He escaped to the USA and died a few months before I was born. My mother was a child of a pre 1917 Russian family immigration to the USA. I still have memories of my mother being in contact with my father’s brother in Russia and also the Russians around my mother’s family in the USA.