[throwaway290]

No, this was true in USSR so like even 40 years ago, I grew up exposed to that a lot and believe me no one can say for sure which is which.

To keep things fun, USSR was not communist either for most of the time, it was sort of socialist I guess. There are a lot of jokes reflecting the confusion between socialism and communism and how we always go to communism but never reach it

Today there are examples of socialist but not communist countries in Europe. But if you compare them to Venezuela or Brazil you would be crazy.

Maybe we need better terminology

[bigfudge]

I think we’re actually agreeing the terms are confusing. The point is that Western European socialism is not the same as the thing that was essentially synonymous with communism in the USSR in the early 20th century.

In the UK at least, the distinction was important because calling oneself a socialist was acceptable, whereas being a communist during the Cold War was not.

[bell-cot]

The USSR was economically socialist, ideologically communist, and politically somewhere on the autocracy-dictatorship spectrum. (That last varied over time, as is normal for such governments. Underlings always want autocracy, which means more power for them. The top guy almost always wants an absolute dictatorship.)

There were plenty of communists who didn't like that last part - but they were brutally purged by the autocratic-dictatorial faction. Famously: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Trotsky

I'd blame the angry, simplistic Western denunciations of anything vaguely resembling communism (including socialism) on the Western monied classes. Whether Old Money, Plutocrats, Wall Streeters, wanna-be's, sycophants, or whatever - those folks generally hate any idea which might mean less for them, and more for the 99%.