I know my comment did not mention the bad part of communism, mostly because you can read about that everywhere.

As someone that lived through it I would just like to mention that your entire life, from cradle to grave, was basically controlled by the pervasive and incredibly corrupt bureaucracy:
- apartments were allocated based on a rigid scheme (in practice, based on the size of the bribe)
- you could not choose schools for your kids
- universities had great scholarships, but they were like a mixture of school and army (very regimented)
- after university the bureaucracy assigned you to a job (maybe on the other side of the country or in the middle of nowhere)
- There was no political or public choice or freedom of speech
- Rinse and repeat

Most people just seemed to accept that almost-slavery but they would bribe their way to a better place to live/work. I hated it even as a kid because I always had a sense of fairness that I realize now is incredibly rare everywhere in the world.

And of course there was the other side of the coin (gulags, back alley abortions, hard work and almost starvation for the expropriated peasants etc).