What makes you say it's a "very bad caricature"?
All the stories I've read and heard (from my relatives and friends in Romania) paint a very bleak picture of what life was like then. I was 4 years old in '89, but I heard a lot form my parents. Essentially they were prisoners in their own country, and the higher layers of the party practically owned all of it.
Life may have been bleak, but that's not what you were saying.
You're taking anecdotes from one part of the Soviet Union and applying it to the whole thing. Would you say that Russians are immeasurably better off now than during Communism?
Can't speak about Russia, but other countries are much better off. Poland and Estonia come to mind right now.
Also, I haven't heard any contradicting anecdotes from other parts of the Communist bloc. Life seems to have been mostly the same everywhere.
