It is the usual left wing nonsense of saying Stalin wasn't really a Communist. Of course he was. And the same anti-human and anti-democratic tendencies are endemic in all Communist regimes and Communist parties.
To claim Stalin was a conservative is also preposterous. He was th exact opposite: a revolutionary.
I never said Stalin wasn't really a Communist. Of course he was. But Communism is not a liberal belief. Socialism is.
Socialism is liberal. More people (preferably everyone) have some say in how the economy works. Democracy is liberal. More people (preferably everyone) have some say in how the government works. "Democracy," said Marx, "is the road to socialism." He was wrong about how economics and politics interact, but he did see their similar underpinnings.
Communism is conservative. Fewer and fewer people (preferably just the Party Secretary) have any say in how the economy works. Republicans are conservative. Fewer and fewer people (preferably just people controlling the Party figurehead) have any say in how the government works. The conservatives in the US are in the same position as the communists in the 30s, and for the same reason: Their revolutions failed spectacularly but they refuse to admit what went wrong.
"I always believed as a speechwriter that if you could persuade the president to commit himself to certain words, he would feel himself committed to the ideas that underlay those words. And the big shock to me has been that although the president said the words, he just did not absorb the ideas. And that is the root of, maybe, everything."
David Frum - Speechwriter for George W. Bush