No, it's his position that Lenin and Stalin faced foreign (or at least foreign-influenced) opposition almost immediately. Which is true. On the other hand, th

No, it's his position that Lenin and Stalin faced foreign (or at least foreign-influenced) opposition almost immediately. Which is true. On the other hand, that excuse runs pretty thin after 1945. But the oppression was still there. So it appears that oppression was more a feature of the system. (Or at least a feature of the man - but then Lenin did it too, and Brezhnev did it perhaps less, but still enough to be oppressive, so it looks like it was a feature of the system.)