The kid that tells people he’s Russian starter pack

Only one half of that half, the Chinese half, was self- professed Communist. The other half, the USSR-Cuba-Vietnam axis, was socialist in pursuit of Communism, and their clique and China were always at odds. Cuba and Vietnam are, by the way, still functionally socialist to this day. Likewise, China and its former friend North Korea both still claim to be Communist, but like...we all know better, right?

Arab Socialism is an incredibly fascinating story (surprised you didn't mention Libya), and as for African socialism? There's some much more successful examples to use, like Senegal, Ghana, and my dear dear Guinea-Bissau (Amilcar Cabral is honestly the greatest leader of the century imho). Senegal and Ghana in particular are two of the most prosperous states in Africa, and you can attribute quite a bit of that to African socialism's criticism and rejection of colonialism.

Latin American socialism's collapse can be 100% blamed on US intervention, and the far-right regimes propped up in their stead were/are infinitely worse. Socialism returned to Latin America in the Pink Tide just the past decade, and still remains popular.

I'm going to ignore the Warsaw Pact countries you listed, because they were never really socialist. They were just batteries the USSR used to fund their own apparatus. The socialism implemented in the Soviet collection of states existed in a situation where it had to find support among a literally facsist ultraconservative status quo more often than not (i.e. Hungary, Romania), so their 'socialism' was essentially "everyone is equal except the gays and the gypsies." It was a control system for imperialist ends, not a true implementation of theory.

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