Communism has never existed at all, lets start there.

Whether the dictators where honestly trying to create communism, or they were using it to fool the populace much the same as monarchs used religion, is debatable.

It appears that from their minutes and other notes and such that Soviet leaders truly believed what they were doing was communism. It wasn’t a case of them pretending and then in secret they’d laugh at the sham they were executing. No, they truly believed they were being marxists.