I included these graphs because people are saying that communism doesn't work, which is why we have to sanction them to death, for their own good(, and also because all of our enemies are dictators, what a coincidence, that's a manipulation easy to disprove, old allies are suddenly depicted as authoritarians as soon as they change allegiances, while true authoritarians aren't talked about, N.Chomsky and many others already proved this over and over).
Freedom has always been our sole argument, without which we have nothing left to defend our side. And it's not even a good one since poverty is slavery, "freely" working to fatten our annuitants lord capitalists. The entrepreneurial freedom isn't that bad though, we all have to learn from each other and i would prefer for all ideologies to cohabit together instead of only one of them imposing his unique view. Think it was Hegel who said that theses need antitheses in order to evolve into better syntheses.

I haven't lived under the Stasi's threat so for all i know i may be wrong and you may be right about the accusations of authoritarianism. It's easy to prove that their paranoia wasn't delusional though, they faced more powerful countries(, remember McCarthyism when the u.s.a. still thought that they were in a dangerous position, kinda isolated/outnumbered ? As stupid as it may seem, i quickly read the short comic "superman : red son", and was pleasantly surprised to see that the author depicted an authoritarian u.s.a. once it began to lose the cold war, with economic difficulties, state separatism, ..., that's an honest take which should probably be kept in mind when discussing the soviet's alleged authoritarianism, the only thing we remember about their society)
And our representatives were elected by a population who believed our propaganda when it celebrated the west achievements while omitting the soviets ones, when it vilified the soviet's actions and omitted our numerous misdeeds, ...
My point about authoritarianism is that it isn't inherent to communist ideals(, on the contrary, "democratic socialism in deeds and not in words" has a meaning), and since «whomever wants to drown his dog accuses him of rage», i'm almost certain that they were exagerated, Solzhenitsyn wasn't celebrated around the West for humanitarian reasons.
When you see how many impossible odds the u.s.s.r. had to face before the second world war you can understand their authoritarianism, understandable in war conditions, and the Moscow trials were during the Spanish civil war, Trostkyists were indeed traitors collaborating against communists, including in Asia, while the black book of communism with its 100M death claims has been abundantly debunked, gulags were a sad thing of course but opposing communism "because freedom" is idiotic, i'm sorry.

As for Syria, we both share an insignificant portion of the pain felt by the syrians, but i blame the west for opposing Bachar al-Assad(, elected by his population), while you blame him for not submitting. Fortunately Russia helped, we wouldn't consider V.Putin a dictator if he was aligned with our actions around the globe, i could give you as many surveys as you want proving that he didn't ever needed to cheat in the elections, contrary to our usual propaganda about our enemies, etc.