I don't accept the "it wasn't real Communism" argument, because real Communism has never been produced at a national scale despite a couple dozen attempts. We must conclude from the evidence that, yes, that is what real Communism is and produces, with real humans, which is the only kind of human that matters. There is at the moment no reason to believe that the next attempt to produce "real Communism" will produce anything different than what has already been produced. I don't see great differences in practice between the USSR and their eastern European wards.

Given how extraordinarily dangerous that all attempts to produce Communism to date have been to all involved, even the Communists(! you remember "Stalin" and the other big names, you forget how many of their own he purged to get there), the rational answer is to stop trying. Communism is a great deal more likely to kill you than save you... and by you, I even mean its advocates in particular, which are really prone to getting purged, and in those cases where they don't get purged, only at the cost of continuously looking over their shoulders and living in a high-grade police state. Advocating Communism in practice comes perilously close to advocating for a government that will kill you, personally, not "generic you".