For me it was game over by the time Lenin died anyway, so although I wouldn't have chosen the Stalinist way, I can't think of another approach that would have worked at that point either. The crippling isolation had already begun. Stalin was a create of circumstance.

To me socialism is supposed to be about genuine working class control of the means of production; genuine economic democracy, and you can't do that in a fighting state because it would be too vulnerable to outside manipulation.

....and once that is done - once the economic centre of capitalism is taken out - we are dealing with a totally different ball game anyway because they will have no base of power from which to attack and cause these authoritarian reactions.

So, yes i agree, this does need talking about. But not by morally judging the soviet union, defending the (often very exaggerated) crimes of embattled dictators or by trying to directly replicate stuff that didn't work.
Westerners need to be talking about how to over throw the system HERE...

The problem is though that he was still right; the imperial core workers are soft, spoilt and easily bought off; yet if we don't cut the head off the snake then any smaller revolutions will be embattled and turn in on themselves.

....just generally rebellious - rot in their own isolation, because they have to fight from day 1, police their own people for traitors, become overly militarised etc etc.
So i think we can say that this doesn't work.

Lenin was right; imperialism has turned western workers soft and made them less likely to revolt by feeding them resources stolen from elsewhere.
His solution, kick off from outside the imperial core.
We've had a 100 years of that now, and leninist regimes - whether socialist or...

What we got instead was a long, drawn out fighting decline that people either hold up as an example of evil or an example of purity rather than what it was; an embattled attempt to make the best of a shit situation that ultimately failed under massive outside pressure.

These circular arguments annoy the tits off me.
In many ways, despite its accomplishments, the USSR did the long term goal of socialism a disservice by neither succeeding at global revolution or failing in those first 5 years.

We're not trying to replicate the past, we're trying to create a global revolution where capitalism is over thrown and worker / doer economic democracy can be established without the threat of dominant capitalist powers smashing in from outside. THIS IS WHAT LENIN AIMED FOR TOO!

In this context - the WHOLE context - what is the point of either arguing that what they created was saintly and desirable or evil and dismissible? What is the point of tying Marxism and Communism to this legacy?

...that was never the desired goal, and the systems that were created under those circumstances were never the aim. Ultimately, it can be argued that the USSR eventually collapsed as a result of both its isolation and the rigid defensive systems it put in place to avoid collapse.

....to use it as a base & trigger for global revolution. The failure of that revolution in europe between 1917 and 1921 created a whole new situation; a long term fighting regime that would be isolated, attacked and constantly under pressure...

Google? My criticism is that you are using popular history. You don't see the connection?

Im now defender of Stalin and Mao, but you seem to have come here to spout pro capitalist popular history nonsense. Serious historians dont take those figures seriously.

Is anosgnosia a trauma response? Because coming from a historians perspective i find peoples unwillingness to look covid in the face absolutely fascinating (and yes, i have long covid)

History dog looks like Marx, which is appropriate