I think it's important to put the context what statements like these mean for most communists (this is mostly those lurking in these discussions that are not MLs themselves). The goal is not to vindicate Stalin, I think most people you left the spaces have serious problems with some of his actions. The point is a rejection of the western narrative. The history of the Soviet Union fed to us by the West is built on lies and propaganda, designed to give us a mental model of an a state that is inherently "authoritarian" and evil. By building a new mental model of Stalin and the Soviet Union, we can understand and criticize it from a Marxist lens.