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A comment on Why Russians Are Not Smiling (2011). Parent comment

Re:Why Russians Are Not Smiling (2011) by oblio on Tuesday November 19, 2013 @03:45AM (#6759946)
It's because most communist parties in the Eastern Block were initially (or even always) called socialist parties. And many Eastern Block countries were named "socialist republics".

Heck, U S S R.

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Re:Why Russians Are Not Smiling (2011) by epsylon on Tuesday November 19, 2013 @08:39AM (#6761044)
Well, North Korea (and many other dictatorships) are technically "democratic republics"... Doesn't mean that they are.
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Re:Why Russians Are Not Smiling (2011) by oblio on Tuesday November 19, 2013 @08:55AM (#6761135)
True, and so were all the socialist regimes I mentioned. But after tens of years of propaganda by the communists, the name tends to stick. After the fall of communism, it sticks in a bad way: socialism = communism.

I think that the best people to ask are those that lived under "socialist" regimes (I'm one of them). If I ask almost anybody I know that lived under a socialist regime, they'll probably say the same.

Maybe theoretically socialism is a different thing, but practically it really isn't for a lot of people.

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