In response to Paul T Horgan: Ash Sarkar, lipstick communist, SiberianRhod wrote:
I always laugh at the pseudo-communists in the UK, particularly those young ones who were born after the break-up of the Soviet Union. They really have no idea about anything and live in their own echo chamber.
I have lived in Russia since the early 1990s and have rarely met a communist or a party member. Most people in the Soviet Union were not communists and very few were invited to be party members (that was a privilege).
My mother-in-law did admit to being a party member but explained she became a member to secure an apartment (she still lives in it and was gifted it in 1991 along with everybody else). My wife remembers the Soviet Union and has no nostalgia for the system, the rationing and the food shortages. Mind you she has no fondness for the Yeltsin years either when the oligarchy with the connivance of the Western banks stole most of the assets and impoverished the people again.
The current communist party in Russia are more Right-wing than the Tories.
