Edit: reading at OP's response below, there is deliberate feigning of ignorance on China having second biggest prison population as well as mass arrest of civilians in Soviet Union. It is true that the West has flaws and has imprisoned questionable prisoners, like Assange, but the Soviet Union has made mass arrests on civilians and dissidents. We don't see any large scale in the West.

The interlocutor also threw so many links down below on the second comment as gish gallop tactic. No one could possibly write that much in less than one hour since I made my comment judging by the timestamp. This is a standard troll tactic. Many links actually either contradict what the interlocutor say because they only read the abstract and misrepresent the full study, or the research being presented has deliberate bias and/or misinformation. They also throw in too much information for individual counter arguments to be made. It is gish galloping. With all being said, it is very suspicious that this is not a coordinated effort. If not, could be someone with too much time on their hands.

Lastly, the interlocutor says Russians approve the Soviet Union (if that is the case, they would have supported the communist coup against Gorbachev in the 1990s to retain the Soviet Union). I will not bother reading the articles just thrown in (which I doubt the person even have properly read them), but knowing the Russian mindset, they just take in whatever leaders there are. Centuries of top-down leadership made them malleable to authority figures. People are not always predisposed to crave democracy. Many times, they want authoritarianism and the promise of stability and many were nostalgic of either fascist and communist regimes because of perceived stability, despite the iron-fisted rule. If communism is still popular in Russia, then the communist party should have been elected to power not Putin's party. Nonetheless, the fact that more people defect from communist countries than the other way says a lot about communism.

Edit2: The person made more comments At least he/she admit Russian communists are controlled opposition. But doesn't Marxism advocate for violent revolution. Why hasn't the Russians then try to overthrow the current government despite the corruption and if communism is popular as he/she claim? Wouldn't this show that communism isn't as popular?

It is curious to see someone moving the goalpost constantly. If one wishes to discuss per prison population, the interlocutor conveniently ignore that the Soviet Union has had more prisoner population per capita then because of political prisoners and arbitrary arrests. Then of course the person will not address those who were arrested for simply making jokes under communism. Either he/she hasn't spoken to someone arrested before, or maybe served as someone as a communist authority figure in the past? If the person is trying to be humanitarian figure, as it portrays to be, he/she would acknowledge this.

There is no double standard. We talked about communism and its derivative not living up to its standards. Communism pruports to fight against the abuses and yet turned around on its original goals. Capitalism, on the other hand, is not a dogma. It just evolved on its own. Practitioners of capitalism are not one monolith out to abuse workers intentionally. There are still capitalist countries that still have better worker rights than the US.

You brought up US prison population after I mentioned arrests under communist regimes. You doing that implies Americans are being arrested for political reason, which is rare if ever. As you have justified in your previous post: "All revolutions are messy, and require purging the regressive elements." So you admit that people in the Soviet Union were imprisoned for political reasons. Ergo, and correct me if I am wrong, you're insinuating that imprisonment in the Soviet Union is political, but it is still better than that of the US because of lower incarceration rate, even though many prisoners in the US are not political.

That being said, you just admitted that now you don't care why the US has higher prison population and handwaving as to why the Soviet Union incarcerated political prisoners. You compared arbitrary arrests in the Soviet Union to systemic racism of American prison system. Are you diminishing then the severity of arbitrary arrests without warrant and due process with the flawed racial bias of another? You do justify the atrocities and flaws of communism by hand waving it and basically stating that: "Any problems seen under communism are also seen under capitalism, and they're often far worse." Are you telling me, that any flaws in communism could be ignored since capitalism is doing it anyway? Are you admitting to what communist regimes have done? Isn't the point of Marxist teaching is to dismantle the system of capitalism and offer alternative to more humane system than capitalism?

As for China's prison population. You'd be disappointed to find out it is true. Search it on your Yandex search engine.

Again, do you approve or disapprove of those detained under communist regimes?

I think that's a loaded question asked in bad faith. I don't think every person detained under communism was detained for a good reason, just the same as I don't think that every person detained under capitalist regimes is detained for a good reason. However, what I do know for a fact is that capitalist regimes detain far more people than communist ones. That's the real elephant in the room that you keep dancing around because you're an intellectually dishonest individual.

Oh, got a player do we? Want to play that game of answering a question with a non-answer? Do you happen to be a politician? I will give you extra points for even trying to gaslight me that I'm acting in bad faith even though you never initially answered my question, and instead gave all sorts of easy to point argument fallacies. A standard politician with egomania could answer with non-answer while gaslighting people. Anyone reading these comments will see through you.

You have answered my question indirectly anyway. As pointed above, by making ridiculous whataboutism with American prison system and pretending not to know that China has second biggest population, you indirectly admit that you do not care for those imprisoned under the Soviet communist SYSTEM. The problem with your standard whataboutism on prison population, is that US is not representative of capitalist countries. There are many capitalist countries with low prison population per capita. The Scandinavian countries comes to mind. The flaw in bog standard prison population talking point by communist since the 1960s is that they make attribution bias by pointing out the outlier in a trend, while ignoring the rest. They think pointing out US prison system is a gotcha to deride capitalism as a whole, but conveniently ignore other capitalist countries and also that of China, a supposedly communist country.

Lastly, trying to compare US prison population is red herring and a weak attempt at diminishing and distracting the severity of those who suffered under arbitrary arrest in the Soviet Union. Doing so is tacit approval. You accuse me of being inhumane when you compare apples and oranges to hide the suffering of those thousands who just made a joke, owned a farm, a returning prisoner of war, or a musician whose music is accused of not feeling Soviet enough. You are selectively scrutinising one injustice, but selectively ignore another if it doesn't fit your own desires. You are a communist not because you care, but because you personally benefit from a system where you think you could have power. Same as a libertarian who would advocate for having no government because he would benefit from an unregulated free market. You know what you're doing. An egomaniac always knows. Hitler and Stalin were also egomaniac.

Never seen such a good bad faith argument, I will give you that. All fallacies thrown into one. Th most egregious being moving the goal post. Accusing someone of which one is guilty of. A certain Nazi said that. Of course the other end of the horse shoe meets the other. I've debated many many likes of you to see through the bad faith arguments, especially your having cognitive dissonance right now and the holes showing. If you want to say more logical fallacies, just hit me up. I could do this all day.