How accurate is it to say that Stalin’s use of terror in the 1930s was fundamentally similar to Lenin’s use of terror in the years 1918–24?

This question is fundamentally asking a question of continuity, it is asking whether the use of regime terror during Stalin's authority was essentially a continuity of the use of terror during Lenin's reign. It could be argued that although Stalin's use of terror did have distinctive similarities to that used by Stalin (with the institution of the NKVD essentially being a continuation of the Cheka which had existed under Lenin), the scale of use of terror was distinguishable in Stalin's regime in terms of the simple scale of use of political imprisonment, gulags, and the use of terror within the Communist Party mechanisms itself and not just against clear enemies of the Bolsheviks. It therefore can be asserted that although the means of terror remained the same from the rule of Lenin to that of Stalin, the application (particularly to create terror within the CPSU itself) was unprecedented. The institutions were fundamentally similar, but the application different.