>>2314879I think it was easier when there was only one socialist country (the USSR) for communists to soy out about. The USSR was the red fortress. They didn't see a contradiction between their ideals and the twists in Soviet foreign policy (although some did). But it became more complicated when more socialist countries came into being. In a historical plot twist, Stalin had formulated socialism in one country, but during his lifetime his armies installed new socialist governments in Eastern Europe, and more new socialist states emerged in China and Yugoslavia which were outside of his grasp.
Another issue is how communist parties themselves changed once they came into power. I think a lot of people who treat historical commuism as fandom glide this over, but there were real and violent disputes about this, culminating in the Cultural Revolution in China where Mao launched a mass campaign directed at his own party. But there were also the "new class" theories about the Soviet Union, that the communists, state-owned factory directors and various low-cunning strivers had essentially formed a new social class even though the official ideology held that there were no classes (and many people who were doing pretty well and had privileged positions probably believed that because that's how ideology works).
The main thing is that there's a strong argument it had started to turn into a conservative regime focused on stability above all else. Now it was a different kind of conservatism compared to traditional reaction, but nonetheless shared the basic elements of dogmatism (like Catholic dogma), coasting on historical inertia, and assuming an attitude of opportunism to the world as it is. Now there might have also been elements of this during the Stalin era, but there were also really radical things happening during the Stalin era too, so one might say the Stalin era was also a transition period between the initial revolutionary period and the conservative period of the USSR later on.
But a lot of noob communists on the internet probably shy away from these criticisms, either because they don't understand it and never really learned about these things, or they don't (understandably) want to lend ammunition to the liberals and others on the right who use what I'm saying as a way to dismiss socialism.
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