I'm familiar with the horseshoe theory. I am not against being far-left.
But from my [limited] understanding of the figure, he did a u-turn on his policies the minute he came to power, and became the thing he was supposed to destroy [fascism, dictatorship] instead of actually applying communism/socialism the way it was intended (i.e. to liberate the working class from the social elites and restore the means of production back to them).
CMIIW.
Yeah, authoritarian... no thanks.
Besides war, fascism is known for it's crackdown on opposing thought. Banning of factions like you said, is one red flag. He created a single-party state.
Then there's the suppression of opposition along with massacres in the Red Terror. Then you have the ''war communism'' he instated from 1918-1921:
And this guy is lauded as an anti-imperialist figure?