Nonsense. Read your Marx. Communism and Socialism don't even remotely resemble one another. The only reason people get them confused is that Communism, as defined by Marx, was the ideal human goal and has never actually existed.
Yes go read Marx. Marx described a transition to communism in which there would be a dictatorship of the proletariat... which in effect is still a dictatorship. So, technically you are correct in that the end-goal of communism was an idealistic society based on free-will and free-participation, but in order to get to that promised land Marx also described what was in effect a brutal transition period where force would be used in order to level the playing field and bring production up to levels that would eliminate scarcity. Laudable end goals in some respects, but terrible means which did in effect play out in countries claiming to be communist... countries which ended up stagnating in what was supposed to be the transition state of repressive dictatorship because they never got past scarcity of resources and because it is human nature for some people to want to hang on to power over others when they are given that power. Giving communism a pass simply by saying that the end goals justify the means is not realistic. Maybe those countries weren't in an end-state communist society, but some of them were at least initially following the Marx playbook for a transition to one.
In other threads I have been arguing along those lines in defense of libertarianism, which if implemented gradually and as something to be striven for in degree and not absolute or immediate, then I argue that moving towards libertarianism can lead to a more prosperous and freer society.
But communism doesn't call for a gradual change towards a communist society and doesn't really allow for a peaceful transition. It just says step 1 dictatorship of the proletariat (which in practical terms means the proletariat chooses representatives to act as dictators on their behalf), step 2 dictatorship declares end to need for dictatorship after redistribution of wealth and re-education of population and end of scarcity, step 3 communist utopia. Getting stuck at step 1 seems like it is always going to be the most likely outcome of that plan.
Compare that with Socialism and libertarianism which in practice can be implemented in more of a matter of degree of moving towards those respective value systems since they don't prescribe a means of transition. Where communism envisions a transition period of dictatorship which is fundamentally unlike the end state of a communist society that is envisioned.