In reality soviet union was a system of evil disguised as ideology. This is why they spoke about systems and made leninism mandatory in schools. The problem is that violence and ideology do not cancel out, they can be, and in reality were functioning as one.
Soviets only pretended to fight for a better world, but in reality it was just a deceptive cover for occupations, mass extortions and violence. Everyone was poor, repressed, and almost nothing was created.
It left a heritage of prevailant fear of marxism in ex-soviet countries, because it was experienced first hand as violence covered by bulshitting.
It is extremely hard for left-wing politics in countries, where the memory of communist repressions is still alive in almost every family. Hard to even speak against capitalism here, because capitalism meant basic human rights: to have home, to work and travel freely. Now capitalism means something else, but the word still remains somewhat untouchable.
So I would say, good systems are something to strive for, but humanity first.
If you judge countries by GDP, you should adore not only systems of USA, but also Quatar and Emyrates. Numbers only tell a fraction of story. Of course, when industrialisation came to USSR, GDP growth in the ashes of war was impressive in percentages. Like if you go from 1 to 3 dollars a month, you grow astonishing 300%. And all just by copying foreign solutions: there was almost nothing originally created in USSR. Even now russia is primarily primitive dig-out-and-sell economy. Russians often say that we in the Baltics owe them all these factories. As if we wouldnt build industry ourselves after a prosperous interwar period. As if Finland now was poor and regretting that it fought back this "marvelous" empire. And of course you are right: employment in almost forced labour environment was high :) Even if GDP numbers were ok, life was shit: you couldnt buy things even having money, and people wer not allowed out, instead of not allowed in, like real prosperous countries do. So no, GDP is not a good benchmark here.
As for the sentiment for USSR - of course it is strong inside brainwashed russia, where all media is state controlled. Currently their main national narrative is about the war, about being a superpower. USSR was a large, war-winning empire (even if with allies, even if repressive and evil). Sadly they are still killing Ukrainians to become empire again - all enabled by those sentiments and loss of narratives about human dignity. War, power and greatness is what matters to them. On top of that, russians who still remember USSR are on the edge of poverty in their current cleptocratic liberalism, but they were young and somewhat secure then. But try looking at this data not from imperial centre of russia, but any Baltic state - you will see a different picture.