Putin is a billionaire so not all communists are poor.
Yes. So is Castro. So are the leaders of Vietnam and China. Man is a pretty easy creature to understand. He wants. Look at every successful communist leader throughout history. They are people who wanted wealth and power, but felt that they couldn’t get wealth and power under their current political system (or at least not as fast as they wanted it). There has never been a communist/socialist state where an elite didn’t develop to enrich themselves. That’s painfully obvious. The only people stupid enough to believe that communists truly want communism are college professors and students. Communism is just a front for stealing.
The party leaders in USSR had food, medical care, houses, vodka, etc. Just the little people had to wait in lines for rations.