GenZhou

There's this famous quote from putin that goes something like, "Whoever doesn't miss the soviet union has no heart, whoever wants it back has no brain."

I'll often see statistics of how many people in, for instance, Russia say that the USSR was their greatest/best time in history, or how people in former yugoslavia do miss Tito, or how older people in East Germany have nostalgia for the former DDR, or even how a majority of Romanians think that Nicolae Ceaușescu was one of the best leaders of Romania in the past few decades [which, considering he was probably the worst leader in all of the eastern bloc, discounting Gorbachev, is a stunning indictment of capitalism in the country].

But the thing is, this is all asking about the past. I dont expect results and massive change everywhere, all at once, immediately (although who would complain). But it's been three decades now, and not one former Soviet country (except maybe Belarus, if you are extremely loose with the definition or extremely optimistic) has returned to some form of socialism.

Obviously the organizational capacity of socialist movements were kneecapped at the end of the Warsaw pact and soviet union. If they weren't themselves dismissing socialism the parties were usually banned completely or forced to change to comply with anti-socialist laws.

This isn't me saying there's literally no leninist parties in these countries, or even one's with some popular support. Obviously there's CPRF in Russia (although of course there are...doubts about their authenticity), the recently emperilled Communist Party of Bohemia-Moravia, etc. But if, say, a majority of people think communism was the best time in history for the country, presumably that would mean more than a few would be members of communist parties of some sort, no?

This isn't some "ah ha, gotcha tankie," thing. I think it's just that I wish there was more than these nostalgia polls to indicate the possibility of future socialism, rather than simply nostalgia.