That’s how Russia / USSR, China etc don’t “technically” count.

The Lenin government did experiment with a direct transition to full communism, but found - as Marx predicted - that they didn't enjoy the industrial surplus needed for a post scarcity society. So he rolled back to the New Economic Plan, which Stalin inherited. Stalin went full tilt on industrialization, which upset a lot of agricultural workers and ended with him putting down a revolt in his native Georgia and tendering his resignation as a result.

The party wouldn't accept the resignation, so Stalin had to come back and win WW2 as a result. Russia avoided the fate of many of the Eastern Bloc states thanks to that rapid industrialization.

After the war standards of living surged, in large part thanks to the Communist model. The kind of communal lifestyle possible under pre-WW conditions wasn't attractive anymore, so Russians kept industrializing over the next 40 years. And when they couldn't match the US + Japan speed of development, they fell over in the attempt.

But to say they weren't "doing Communism"... The quality of life in the Eastern Block improved remarkably quick and access to resources was broad based and egalitarian. The economy was centralized and planned. The proletariat dictated the political agenda.

Certainly, at the time, American economists could tell the difference between the US and Soviet systems, even if they doggedly insisted central banks making private loans was freedom while central committees allocating jobs and resources was tyranny.

It's only after the USSR collapsed that we got an earful about "Not Real Communism".