Writted like the dedicated apparatchick you are.

News Flash:
John Reed was not a historian. He WAS a dupe. The movie 'Reds' was not a documentary.

Many fairly bright people were sucked into the hope for a better society represented by such movements as Nihilism, Socialism, and, yes, Communism. If they were bright enough, lived long enough, and were honest enough, they produced works of literature such as "We","The God That Failed", "Animal Farm", "1984", etc.

Just for you, Jim, many of the brightest were not exactly fans of The West or Capitalism either. There's plenty of evil for everyone. But the Communist Evil was its insistence on mind control. In this it exactly imitated the Nazi evil. So elegantly captured by Orwell in his essay on Newspeak.

As Reinaldo Arenas said: "In one of my first statements after leaving Cuba I had declared that the difference between the communist and capitalist systems is that, although both give you a kick in the ass, in the communist system you have to applaud, while in the capitalist system you can scream, And I came here to scream."

Another bit of more real history as opposed to Jim Carrol casuistory:
Socialists weren't really innit. The Communists opposed the more reasonable, i.e. democratic approach of Socialists, and labeled the Socialists Mensheviks which meant 'minority' as opposed to labeling themselves Bolsheviks which meant 'greater/majority' party. This was opposite to the facts, there were more Socialists than Communists in reality.

The identification of Communism, as with Nazism is the insistence on flouting reality and human nature, and doing it with violence. And having no hesitation in lying about it.