Well Joe, I had family living under Communism in Eastern Europe and, of course they "told jokes and loved their families and went on picnics and rode bicycles, and had a reasonably good quality of life." I think they might have taken issue with your "reasonably good quality of life" though. The most common themes we invariably heard from them were fear and scarcity.

The fear was of being turned in to the authorities for being overheard saying something negative about the regime which would get you labelled as a dissident and possibly disappeared into the gulags. This had the population living under a constant cloud of suspicion of their friends, neighbours and even family members as no one knew who might be an informant. An interesting outgrowth of the oppression was the development of a vocabulary of euphemisms, often quite creative and comical, used when discussing politics amongst friends.

The lineups and empty store shelves of food, toiletries and other items of daily living have been well documented. This naturally gave way to a black market economy and created a class divide between those with "connections" and those without. Those without were often exploited by those with just to have access to common everyday items like laundry soap or flour.

So like you say Joe they "told jokes and loved their families and went on picnics and rode bicycles" mostly to maintain a semblance of normality while awaiting the end of Communism which they hoped and prayed for every day.