In Soviet Hungary, we had the police watching you pretty much as constantly as possible, and random people often got interrogated (painfully) for, say, not turning in enough of the taxes on farm produce, simply because it was impossible for them. And apparently everything was grey, and the houses looked (and the remaining still look) like fucking grey bricks with the occasional window. Hooray for communism, that's what I say.
Stuff got better after 1956 (revolution), the random violence got toned down quite a bit, and it was pretty much guaranteed that you'd have a job and enough money to live confortably (if not exactly wealthy, but whatever).
Come the fall of the Soviet union, the new governing system makes all the bad choices, stuff is pretty bad as of right now.
You see, it's never black and white. More like red and walrus.
Edit: Holy motherkriffing shit, I actually managed to write down something that makes some kind of sense. Even better that all my information comes from my parents, grandparents, and history books (which failed to evilify the Soviet union).
Limited perspective makes for great arguments.
Edit2: Gosh dang, that last line sounds so cool. I think I'll write it down.
Edit3: Wait, you want some Soviet Russia jokes, do you? But they're so silly!
Ah... fine.
In America, you assassinate the president. In Soviet Russia, the president assassinates you.