Lenin complained in his letters that[29] his bureaucratic "apparatus has already become gigantic — in some places excessively so — and under such conditions a “personal dictatorship” is entirely unrealizable and attempts to realize it would only be harmful."[31] Loginov explains that Lenin attempted to compensate this "lack of real power" with either with "abundance of decrees" or "simply with strong words."[29]

The Bolsheviks also used terror as a means to dissuade unrest. On August 20, 1918 Lenin wrote to Nikolai Semashko, 'I congratulate you on your energetic suppression of the kulaks and White Guards in the district. We must strike while the iron's hot and not lose a minute, organize the poor of the district, confiscate all the grain and all the property of the rebellious kulaks, hang the kulak ringleaders, mobilize and arm the poor under reliable leaders out of our own unit, arrest hostages from among the wealthy and hold them.'[32]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Terror

Lenin wanted to be an authortarian and publicly complained his followers weren't mobbing up to kill more people he politically disagreed with...

So yeah, I stand by my comment.

Lenin intentionally set the stage for Stalin, but would have done worse if he had the following.

Here, we see the “enlightened centrist” in his habitat of false equivalence…