Define "Left".

[Traitorfish]

If they fall short of totalitarianism, then they aren't totalitarian. You could perhaps argue that they aspired towards totalitarianism, but the very problem we're dealing with is that the Soviet Union possess no coherent "they" capable of such an aspiration, so even if you were able to prove that ambition on the part of one particular clique or faction, it tells us nothing structural about the Communist Party regime.

 

[ParkCungHee]

A lot of the problem we're having is the idea that fascism represents some sort of terminal point of rightness, as if moving further to the right was identical to moving closer to fascism. That's really not true, and there are a good number of historical examples of people and groups who were both extremely right-wing and actively hostile to fascism. A good provincial example is Protestant Action, a far-right Loyalist party in inter-war Scotland (and I don't just mean didn't-much-care-for-Catholics Loyalist, I mean actively-campaigned-to-deport-all-Catholics Loyalist), who were vehemently and at times violently anti-fascist, because they viewed fascism as a Popish conspiracy to undermine Protestant liberties.

Similarly, in France, when the beginnings of proto-fascism were brewing, the French far right considered it leftist twaddle, the very idea that France might be an organic imagined community rather then something the pope gave to the Bourbons, was viewed as essentially accepting the French Revolution.
This fissure in the French Far Right, though the terms of the debate moved, wasn't even fixed by Vichy, and I think it's a little difficult to label ultra-montanists and Bourbon Restorationists as "the left" in this debate.