How Lenin and his rule was perceived at the time strongly depended on who you asked. Because in communist circles, despite the sometimes heavy criticism of Bolshevik rule in Russia by people like Rosa Luxemburg, the Bolsheviks and Lenin were seen as fighting a particularly brutal fight against the forces of the Reaction, especially when it came to the civil war.

For those who opposed the Bolsheviks on the other hand, Lenin and Bolshevik rule represented something that went much further than our perception of the DPRK today, to use your example. It is imperative to understand that for a variety of political forces, Bolshevism was perceived as a threat so severe to the established order unseen since the French Revolution of 1789.

To fully grasp this, it is important to look at it in the context of the time. The First World War was a conflict that in many ways – its brutality, its totality – was perceived by many as unprecedented (despite the fact that the Balkan wars had displayed a somewhat similar pattern) but the reason why we today perceive it as a historical water shed and why this was already understood, probably even better, by historical actors at the time, was that World War One truly marked the end of a certain era. The developments towards the end of the war and especially the Bolshevik revolution overturned a political order that had been criticized before by many but was ultimately seen as relatively stable. In countries like Germany, Russia, and the Habsbrug Empire, the war came to an end with actual revolution, democratic, nationalist, and – in some places – communist revolution.

Lenin and the Bolsheviks represented the most dangerous kind of the end of the old order, in part because of their revolutionary program of actually trying to overturn power structures, in part because Bolshevik rule became synonymous with the kind of violence that transpired in the Russian Civil War. It didn't matter if that violence was the result of Bolshevik policy (and in many a case it was) or if it was perpetrated by one of the various factions in the Civil War fighting against the Bolsheviks. What it came down to, was that Bolshevik rule was dangerous because it would lead invariably into civil war and massive violence.

Robert Gerwarth in his book "The Vanquished" about paramilitary violence from 1917 to 1922 writes that WWI didn't truly end, save for some of the Entente countries in 1918. Rather, we need to see the post-war violence in a lot of central European countries as a continuation of the conflict. WWI spawned several conflicts that were fought beyond the actual armistice in November 1918. This includes conflicts surrounding borders, such as with the Germans in the Baltics, the Russian Civil War, or the Austrian conflict with the SHS kingdom as well as conflicts surrounding revolution like the Soviet Bavarian Republic, Bela Kuhn's short live Soviet Republic and the Russian Civil War.

Especially in the later, the Bolshevik Revolution and Lenin's rule was for those on the "white" side of things, a negative foil, a sort of worst case scenario that was to be feared and fought at all cost. Gerwarth for example points out that for the paramilitary counter-revolutionary network in central Europe (think the German Freikorps, the Hungarian White Troops), what had been an important experience was that many of them part-took in the joint German-Habsburg occupation of Ukraine in 1918 in the midst of the Russian Civil War. There many of them who already had a negative image of socialist and communists experienced the realities of the civil war, which included atrocities perpetrated by Red and White troops. Regardless, if that violence emanated from the Bolsheviks or their enemies, the experience became a underpinning for their already present aversion to left-wing ideology and served to further their perception of the danger that Bolshevik rule represented.

With the experience of the complete break-down of the established order at home, which despite all narratives about the crumbling of Empire was perceived as stable, and the actual occurrence of Bolshevik-inspired revolution, including the violence against the people perceived as the class enemy and the counter-violence, the perception of Bolshevism as the ultimate threat to what they thought of as "civilization" further compounded. This also ultimately lead to the mind-set of inter-war politics that the enemy was absolute and had to be fought with uncompromising action, a mind-set not only apparent in Carl Schmitt's writings e.g. but also a fertile ground for inter-war fascism.

Lenin's rule and Bolshevism in the minds of many in the immediate aftermath of the Revolution became synonymous with the ultimate threat to everything they held sacred and dear. Churchill e.g. went from calling the post-war paramilitary conflicts "a conflict of pygmies" to calling to "strangle Bolshevism in its cradle". And while this certainly had to do with the actual actions of the Bolsheviks during the Civil War and also associated revolutionary regimes in the immediate post-war, it also came from – if not even more so – from the ideological danger the Bolsheviks were perceived as, overthrowing what had been thought of as an eternal, natural, and stable order of things.

For those who did not agitate for left-wing revolution, Lenin and the Bolsheviks were more than a brutal and repressive dictator. They were perceived as a very real thread to order, culture, and civilization, and one that based on real or imagined experience had the potential to spread and thus represent for some the ultimate thread.

To use your DPRK example: While the DPRK is certainly – and rightly so – perceived as an unjust, oppressive and brutal regime and in many ways a danger to world-peace, the comparison doesn't carry that far because Bolshevism in its time was perceived as more than that. Churchill again sums up this attitude: "Bolshevism is not a politics, its a disease" and one that he and many other opposed to left-wing revolution saw as spreading and endangering not only world-peace but order and what they thought of as the right way of life.

This was also in part because the Bolsheviks did indeed have supporters in many countries who were indeed out of a variety of reasons ready to emulate their revolution and spread communism – something the DPRK can't exactly claim. For many of them, the violence of the Russian Civil War was seen as a by-product of the reaction against the new regime or as a almost historical necessity, again invoking in some ways, the French Revolution. For them, it was necessary to sweep away the old ruling class in order to build a new future where their very real oppression and exploitation would vanish and ti was also seen as necessary to defend oneself against the violence of the reaction in the Civil War.

So, to sum up: For those who opposed them, Lenin and the Bolsheviks represented potentially the greatest danger "civilization" had faced since the French Revolution or possible ever. For those who supported them, Lenin and the Bolsheviks represented the historical necessity of revolution including the inadvertent violence that came with that (despite the fact that some – like Luxemburg and others – did criticize a variety of manifestations of that violence).

As a final word, let me say that the perception of Lenin's and the Bolsheviks' regime as a brutal and oppressive one is not only one coming from the application of what you call the notions of rights firmly grounded in 21st century liberal democracy. While the regimes people fought against under the banner of Bolshevism and communism were brutal and oppressive – e.g. Tsarist Russia – the violence of the Bolsheviks can in part be attributed to the dynamics of a particularly brutal civil war, but also in part to certain ideological tenants of the Bolshevik interpretation of how revolutions are applied. While it can be said that being up against e.g. the forces of Roman Ungern von Sternberg and people with a streak for violence similar to him, contributed to an escalation of violence in the already particularly violent matrix of a civil war, the violence exacted by the Bolsheviks against their enemies and against people agitating for what they had perceived as the promise of the revolution (Kronstadt) did have a grounding in their believe that in order to establish their rule violence was necessary and justified. A believe and application of this belief for which they have been criticized also from the Left.

Sources:

• Robert Gerwarth: The Vanquished.

• Alexander Rabinowitch's excellent books on the Bolsheviks, especially, The Bolsheviks in power

• Moshe Lewin: The Soviet Century.

Can I also ask in what ways were Lenin's principles in contradiction with how he ruled in his few years at the helm?