It isn't actually true that most western European countries had better safety nets, and more importantly western European safety nets came from the spoils of imperialism, rather than their own working classes. The soviets were anti-imperialist and provided what they could based on what they could actually produce themselves.

As for famine, neither the 1930s famine in the USSR or even the Great Leap Forward are living memory. Both the USSR and China abolished famine in countries where famine was historically common through industrialization and collectivization of agriculture. Socialism did not cause famine, it ended it.