I went to respond to your comment, but reddit errored out, and deleted all my comments from the chain. I was trying to edit my one comment to say you were correct. I was using an analogy. I apologize. Either way, to the actual topic I brought up, it's obvious that the USSR was not communist, just like North Korea is not democratic. To start just from wikipedia "However, contrary to Western usage, these states do not describe themselves as "communist" nor do they claim to have achieved communism—they refer to themselves as Socialist or Workers' states that are in the process of constructing socialism". They never were trying to be communist though. They didn't feature anything that is communism. They didn't have common ownership of the means of production. They didn't have an absence of state or social classes. There were those within the government, and then the masses. Those in power of the government were the bourgeoisie. They were an authoritarian dictatorship and not a dictatorship of the proletariat because the working class had no power. So yeah the USSR was not communist. Same as how Nazi Germany was not socialist. Same as China wasn't communist. Same as North Korea is not democratic.