What did he actually, in the not fascist Goebbels propaganda, Trotskyite slander or Khrushchevite revisionist sense...

no, Lenin knew better.

as opposed to Trotsky who never supported anything consistently ever. If we're going to pass off pedestrian psychological evaluations as an argument Trots are literally just contrarians who want to be different and edgy.

>Anarchists claim the soviets betrayed them during the civil war because they don't understand that saving Spain from fascism crushing political rivals even if it hurts the war effort was more important than a 3 year economic experiment actual socialism.

Hoping nobody in this thread gets banned or their posts removed so I can keep what faith I have left in the mod team making sure this isn't just an echo chamber for Stalin

Dude being gay was pretty much illegal everywhere until the 60s. You might as well attack him for not supporting trans rights as well.

He couldn't have done anything to change material conditions. In that sense he did nothing wrong

I think why a lot of people bring that up is mostly due to Lenin's decriminalizing of homosexuality (and Stalin's recriminization) Had Lenin just kept the ban in place I'm almost positive people wouldn't bring that up.
So yeah, kinda a shitty move and I see why people will bring it up at all, even if it's a little redundant to use it as an argument.
The best comparison I can give is if the USSR legalized alcohol then did prohibition when the rest of the world had prohibition for millennia.

What the fuck was this guy's problem?

And why didn't Stalin purge him for someone far more capable for the damn job?

When it came to his job and after all is said and done, you really couldn't find anyone else more capable than Beria. The man was *good*.
Stalin introduced him to the Allies as "our Himmler" for a reason. Beria was able to stay off of Stalin's shit list by being incredibly politically savvy and an extremely efficient agent of the state, much more so than anyone else who was killed/purged.

He was a massive fucking dick, though, and in the end got what he deserved.