They didn't lie, all these were in fact communist, BUT they also had psychotic fascist dictators that were/are twisted.
Like all Utopian ideas, communism won't work, it's way to idealistic. No one likes communism because they feel the "cow" they earned shouldn't be taken and shared. In a fairy tale it would work. But in real life it just makes lots of poor people instead of a lot of middle class, and a rich government class.