This community likes to remind everyone that no communist country was allowed to just be communists in peace. So there was no “proper” communist country.

This was your claim. The harm is a result of building communism, the internal necessity of protecting socialism is an internal reaction to opposed forces. You're erasing dialectical materialism. We do not live in a world without imperialism, or reactionary forces. This doesn't mean building up socialism wouldn't be nicer if imperialist countries didn't exist to sabotage them, but at the same time we must recognize that these problems are universal to building socialism and not merely the products of external circumstance. This is "proper" socialism, warts and all, that gradually resolves its contradictions and works towards the development of communism.