And not everything left of Eastern European nationalism is communism. In fact 90% of the political spectrum lies between these two extremes.

There's a lot of space in the left that isn't stalinism. You can be a communist and have a deep critique of how 20th century communism worked, a learning from it and not wanting to repeat the bad parts.

In leftist circles in the US, weird Stalin and Lenin fans are loud, but ultimately not that common.