You being from the US makes a lot of sense considering how absolutely clueless you are to what really is going on in the countries you're talking about.

I lived through the tail end of the USSR's "communism", my parents lived IN that.

The reality of it is: USSR was a totalitarian dictatorship. There was nothing communist about it. Saying it was communist is just being extremely naive and ignorant. I mean, they themselves were always talking about how they're "on the road to reaching communism", they themselves didn't think of the USSR as communist.

But even if we assume it was "not yet communist, but socialist" - it's still bullshit, because, again, it was a totalitarian dictatorship.

And China? How can you see all the billionaires and CEOs of privately held companies and say "yeah, that's socialism where the workers own the means of production"?