Inequality in the USSR was not as bad as elsewhere in the world. Not to say there weren't any issues, some civilians lived better lives because of blat, i.e. having political connections with party members or politicians. There was certainly a level of elite bureaucracy that developed in the USSR, almost immediately. But the situation was not as dire as you describe. People weren't constantly starving. The biggest issues with food and agriculture were immediately after the revolution — under War communism and food acquisition, again in the Holodomor under collectivization, and then in the late 1980s-early 1990s as the USSR collapsed and economic shock therapy was implemented to rapidly liberalize the economy.
Capitalism is not freedom because we live under a repressive police state where the police
and military uphold the status quo and protect bourgeois property through the employment of state violence. We are deprived of the necessaries of life unless we sell our labor to the capitalist class. They will go as far as to incarcerate large segments of the population in order to enjoy virtual slave labor (the U.S. holds a quarter of the world's prison population). You work exorbitant hours under capitalism, and the remuneration is still not enough for many to pay all their bills and to survive. You spend most of your days and time at work where you are under the complete command of your boss. Workers, unless they are organized, have no say in the production process and cannot resist unjust treatment, conditions, pay or benefits (lack thereof). Organized capitalists pay millions of dollars to retaliate against employees who try to organize and resist all attempts at unionization in the workplace. They have gone so far as to spy on their own workers to ensure unionization does not occur.
Socialism on the other hand is freedom, because the working majority are instead in control and have self-determination and independence in the production process. Nobody is compelled to do anything. Our rights are not temporary, as they are under bourgeois control. Socialism is based on free contract and voluntary association, it is quite literally about liberation from capitalism and other forms of reactionary oppression.
I find it sad that you are most likely not joking when you say the people are in control under a free market economy. That could not be further from the truth. The property owners and those with the most wealth clearly are in control.