I am not a communist, but I am fairly acquainted with their framework, so...
Communism is primarily an economic system, not a political or even social one. Everything else around it is frills that can and is adjusted to the culture. First, you must define what it is, which I would regard as pure socialism: (I will use the most basic definition) Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy. As all other capitalistic or free-commerce oriented nations, there are massive differences in policy, geography, culture, geopolitical background, and history which will affect its results. Any decent historian knows that assigning a domino effect with assurance will never be quite right.
Anyways... The Holodomor was a massive, year-long famine during the USSR under Josef Stalin that killed millions of Ukrainians. I will say it again, the key note is under Stalin. Saying that an entire government that began by revolution in an extremely impoverished, violent country predisposed to authoritarian tendencies was the exact same in every single era of its nearly seven-decade reign would be ridiculous. Under Gorbachev, it hardly even resembled socialism anymore, until he freed the markets to the point it collapsed. If someone really does want to know the cause of the Holodomor, they would read historians' accounts. It is theorized as being a result of Stalin's prejudice, of natural causes, of isolated policies, and so on. The answer is, like any situation, complex, multifaceted, and not able to be boxed into a simple answer. But I wager most communists would say it is a result of Stalin's individual policies, and the authoritarian culture imbued in volatile Russia since the beginning.
Regarding "The Great Leap Forward", it isn't necessarily a communist thing. China, like Russia, was also in an impoverished state and evidently, fertile enough for ideology to take root. It would be too long, and wasted on readers, to provide paragraphs of Chinese history, but essentially it has always been a meritocratic civilization. The CCP even disowned Mao after seeing his effects and the lives lost, and he merely came back because he initiated another cultural reovlution. As for the Soviet annexation of Eastern Europe... Jesus Christ, that's not even Communism, that's just Eurasian nut racism that was already there and to this day, continues in Russia.
There simply isn't a connection, and trying to play cat-and-mouse with complicated historical situations is merely a game. Communism isn't responsible for
every thing that happens in their government, the same way that provinces of developed states make their own policies. Why did krushchevkas look that way and were built that way? I have no idea, there are infinitesimal explanations, some or none of which have to do with Communism/Socialism as an ideology. Personally, I find that housing is better than no housing, even if the engineers were undereducated. Not everything that occurs under a government is actually due to the government, and seeing things through that lens is narrow. "If communism good, why apartment thin?". Putting an insanely high bar for socialism to be perfect is already forgiving subpar and even viciously exploitative capitalism. Any genuine curiosity is wiped out by pre-existing biases, whether acquired consciously or not.
I'm by no means a fan of a "ideological salvation to utopia", but thinking that we have reached our ne plus ultra is not only cruel, but pessimistic as to what humans can achieve. Analyzing a vastly different system through the lens of two centuries of capitalistic culture is never going to be an accurate control group. There are many good things that have occured under strictly Marxist-Leninist one-party states, but also many bad. However, the same can be said about any other form of government. The question is, which one is less bad when allowed to run without an unholy amount of opposition via blockades, sanctions, and relentless propaganda and misinformation? The world has not been so equal to all visions.
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