Plus civilians, which don't seem to count here

They’re making fun of some of the most ardent civilian killers of all time.

I think it is more another case of “us vs them” tankie denialism. West is evil, no doubt, but Russia didn’t do to well either.

The USSR did very well (and wasn’t just the RSFSR, but instead a federation of socialist republics). So well, in fact, that life expectancies doubled due to the advancements in development and social safety nets in socialism: Complaining about communist “denialism” when the original claim is just generic Red Scare fearmongering doesn’t really make sense. What are communists denying, specifically? The idea that the communists were as bad as the Nazis? Such a claim is so thoroughly ahistorical that it doesn’t take a communist to find that absurd.

Socialism Yeah let’s exchange commodities and call that socialism.

Capitalism is when trade, capitalism is actually tens of thousands of years old, I am very smart

Trade is not tens of thousands of years old. That is ahistorical. And my argument was not about capitalism per se, it was more about the soviet union not having been socialist and not at all a development towards communism because it did trade as firstly as an entity within a world market that was not at all socialist and because trade was allowed internally and not necessarily bound to labour or necessity.

Oh you’re a Bordigist, lmao. That explains things. Either way, socialism is a transitional status between capitalism and communism characterized by public ownership as the principal aspect of the economy and the working classes in control of the state. Between capitalism and communism, elements of each are present, and do not themselves determine the identity of the mode of production but that which is rising and thus principal. Trade on an international level, even with capitalist countries, is not a determining factor for socialism. Trade internally, even if not entitely tied to labor or necessity, is not a determining factor for socialism. You’re throwing dialectics away entirely in favor of a metaphysical outlook on production and distribution.