I had the opportunity to talk to Sidney Shapiro in the early 1990’s. He was the same way. His wife was even imprisoned by the Maoist government but it was all just a big mistake.
He was totally convinced that communism was wonderful despite the evidence
Mao was a green toothed, child-molesting monster. Your account has plenty of parallels to it. In “The Gulag Archipelago”, there were men given 20 year terms to the gulag, and still worshiped Stalin.
Hard to understand, but true.