It's worth saying that Orwell was himself a communist who fought in the Spanish Civil war, he was just against stalinist communism (which he didn't see as real communism, and neither would Lenin).
I mean, that's the whole distinction between Marxism and Leninsim, right? The idea of a vanguard party that facilitates the transition to communism? I can't imagine that Lenin would look at Stalinist USSR, and say "oh yeah, we've actually transitioned to communism now".
I grew up in the USSR, and this is news to me. Do you have evidence in favor of this claim?