I hardly found this post to be an apologia for the atrocities committed in the Soviet Union

 I didn't find it to be a defense either, but this one line

Lenin wasn't the purity whose legacy got corrupted by Stalin - the first gulags (in which the inmates' deaths were planned in)

seems to represent all of the death, torture, etc, and didn't seem an appropriate balance to me, just my opinion.  I don't see it black and white either, good vs. evil.    Western Europe was clearly far from perfect, as I think I said--but it's pretty clear to me who ended up better by the close of the last century.