Iraq never devolved into civil war, unless you consider violence against an obvious American puppet regime to be "civil war." It is also not "better off," since the American empire has proven it shares that dictatorial quality of brutality and murder. The Soviet leaders suppressed reactionaries who were making running the Soviet state impossible or very difficult. Occasionally, things got out of hand and non-reactionary scum was killed. That is regrettable, but understandable. There is a very big difference between what the Soviet Union did (persecute class traitors, crypto-fascists and other reactionaries) and what right-wing authoritarian regimes did (kill any citizen preoccupied with civil rights).
Huh, Stalin was a paranoid nutcase who sent people to the gulags for breathing the wrong way. Also, it was Soviet policy during WWII to kill off any Soviet citizens who survived German occupation on account of "treason". In any case, the Soviet Union was responsible for the "disappearance" of many millions of people.