This discussion is daft. A child of six could work out that from 1924 onwards the so-called Soviet Union was as much a Communist society as Rome is the Kingdom of Heaven. It is not possible to make the case for communism without distinguishing it from the dictatorial regime that held sway in the USSR from 1924 to 1989. That society was the literal opposite of communism. Instead of raising the means of production, it squandered them. Instead of liberating people from want and servitude it starved and overworked them. The authority of the soviet leadership arose out of the defeat of the remaining bolsheviks, who were mostly killed or imprisoned. It was *even worse than* capitalism.
Not content to ruin their own country, the leaders in the USSR abused their (unearned) status as inheritors of the Bolshevik revolution to exercise a doleful influence on the left internationally counselling amongst other things, support for the British TUC leadership in the General strike, support for the far-right Kuomintang in China, alliance with the French government, attacks on the supporters of land nationalisation in the Spanish civil war, the subordination of working class interests to Churchill's super-exploitation, opposition to colonial liberation in India and Algeria during the war, political recognition of of the fascist Marshall Badoglio's regime in 1944, support for the return of the fascists and the persecution of their own supporters in Greece after the war, a degrading alliance with the Christian democrats in Italy after the war, the betrayal of anti-colonial struggles again in Algeria, Ireland and Vietnam, the subordination of the western communist parties to social democracy under the so-called national roads to socialism. Of course in each of these instances ultimate responsibility lies with those who followed the Soviet Union's useless advice, which is why we shouldn't romanticise it today.
There is a separate question of giving in to the *ideology* of anti-communism. But the point here is that you cannot defend the principle of communism as long as it is identified with the barbaric regime in the Soviet Union. Opposing Western attacks on the Soviet Union never ought to have implied support for that system, any more than opposing the war against Iraq meant endorsing Saddam.
Today, of course, the ideology of anti-Communism has little to do with the Soviet Union, which exercises a negligible influence over anybody (except, it appears, posters to LBO). It is a shame that the Soviet Union was never overthrown by the working class, but its passing is a good thing, not a bad thing for the left, which can be rid of this negative influence.
James Heartfield