One very common error in the debate over individualism vs collectivism is that it almost always conveniently ignores the stark fact that international monopoly capitalism was the dominant paradigm, exercising absolutely ruthless control over the entire planet, at the time of the Russian revolution.
It was not a level playing field, and nothing that happened in Russia occurred in a vacuum.
Most significantly, US industrialists deliberately financed and technically supported Hitler, to build up the Nazis, to sic like a mad dog on Russia, to kill or cripple the revolution.
WW1 and civil war in Russia had already bled the Russian people severely, and destroyed much of the infrastructure, thus already handicapping the revolution substantially, in terms of resources available for the new paradigm they sought to implement (ie: to put the rational popular democratic public interest over and above arbitrary, capricious pursuit of private profit by elites, against the public interest).
On the other hand, imperialist monopoly capitalism had profited hugely and consolidated wealth substantially as a result of WW1, the enhanced military and economic power from which was all brought to bear against Russia to support the most heinous monarchists and other reactionary conservative nationalists, capitalist Bourgeoisie, and fundamentalist religious elements during the civil war...and then Hitler.
I would submit that the more draconian aspects of what manifested as Bolshevism and Soviet "communism" were a direct result of that realpolitik of brutal, vicious, ruthless subversion, invasion, attack, encirclement, blockade, and boycott by international monopoly capital, to try to destroy, or failing that, to cripple the revolution, and then a protracted campaign to infiltrate and subvert Russia with relentless Faux "News" style propaganda, bribery and skulduggery of all kinds, to agitate sedition and sabotage against the revolution.
So...Russia, and other "communist" countries, in the face of such pressures, suffered great hardships, and made egregious errors, not the least of which being resort to throwback methods of elitist martial law, to survive, it's true, more or less...
Conditions were harsh, the masses were illiterate, steeped in two thousand years of superstition, and it could take a year or more for information to get from one side of the country to the other...
These circumstances were not optimal for socio-economic and political development, to put it mildly.
I propose that we need to consider what would have happened, if the US, especially, had supported the masses, in Russia, China, et al, and embraced their determination to throw off imperialist neo-colonialism, and to assert popular democratic independence.
If we had supported their revolutions, the whole world would be better off today.
I would also just like to interject that people really need to consider how much we can trust the "information" and "analysis" promulgated by monopoly corporate fascist commercial mass media, in considering such issues.
Draconian measures, supposed "attrocities" and "failings" so bitterly attributed to "Communism", based on what happened in "communist" countries like Russia and China, do not in any way define the actual real intent, purpose or methods of communism...unlike capitalist imperialism, which is entirely based upon, and much more inherently characterized by, unabashed elitism and murderously exploitive coercion...including genocide and slavery.
The circumstances faced by Russia, China, et al, in no way "prove" any inherent flaw in the social theory of communism (ie: popular democracy) but serve more to point to the continued urgent necessity for it, in the face of the pathological misanthropic depravity promulgated and exercised by monopoly corporate fascist imperialism, including it's moribund "liberal" face, fascist "Libertarian" anti-collectivist ultra-individualist "social Darwinism".
Communism is not about suppression and exploitation of the masses, for the benefit of elites.
That's capitalism.
Communism is really all about democracy, in the public interest, which, indeed, must be imposed, by coercion, upon traitorous anti-democratic elements, in direct proportion to their resistance to the popular democratic will.
Naturally, the capitalist (or monarchist, or whatever) elites will scream bloody murder about their own suppression...but no mercy or "empathy" is in order, for those who would rape and dismember society for their own self-gratification and amusement.
For justice and peace, to save the planet, we must have democracy. Democracy is the most fundamental revolutionary principle.
Death to capitalism as we now know it, and it's moribund form, fascism!
All Power to the People!
Bring the Better Democrats!
All Out for 2010 and 2012!