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A Young Communist

Trotsky was an important Bolshevik leader. In 1918 he became commissar of war and organized the Red Army. The Bolsheviks managed to win the civil war which followed the revolution largely due to Trotsky's organizational abilities. Later his opposition to Stalin's policies led to his exile and eventual assassination.
In my youth, I was a Communist sympathiser.  In fact, I was a follower of Leon Trotsky, an opponent of Stalin and prophet of 'The Permanent Revolution'.   I made many trips behind the Iron Curtain to Russia, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, and Poland in the sixties.  As George Bernard Shaw stated however:

"Any man who isn't a Communist in his twenties has no heart - no soul!  Any man who's still a Communist in his thirties - has no sense!"

I was a Marxist and a convinced Socialist.

I dealt with Kant and Hegel when I was studying Marxian Dialectical Materialism.  Karl Marx drew heavily from both philosophers.   I found them very boring.   I've never found a better explanation of the economic dynamic as a basis for human interaction in society other than Marx's.  That is'nt to say that I am a Marxist or have anything but revulsion for Communism of the type we've witnessed in the twentieth century.  As an explanation of the mechanics of early Capitalism  'Das Kapital' was brilliant, it was simply that Marx overestimated the altruistic impulses of humankind, and underestimated the greed and selfishness of the working classes!  That is the answer to your question:

"Why did Communism fail in Eastern Europe and Russia?"