The USSR is gone, but the CPSU is alive, and kicking under a new brand, more determined, aggressive leader, and as a highly distilled, more pure mafia than it was before, without even a pretence of behaving like statesmen.
I'll explain. See, the thread starter says that US now reaps the consequences from letting people subverted by soviet idiological subversion into the circles of power.
Then people say its all irrelevant as USSR is no more.
Then, I come here and tell to people to open snap out of this. The former CPSU is not only still around, but is even more aggressive, and concerted at idiological subversion.
Now, they are putting an even bigger priority on melding themselves into American political elites, and bureaucracy.
How many more Hunter Bidens are there waiting to join American political establishment? Hundreds? Thousands? Tens of thousands?
I didn't realize that USA national politicians were so virile.
And then then it instantly reassembled itself under a new name.
At some point they were 90%+ ex-CPSU members, and somehow they are still not communist?
90% communist, and still not communist? Well, lets call them 10% non-communists then, if you want.
So? China's actual Communist party isn't exactly very communist anymore.
I'd say the CPSU is dead, but some of its members who liked power shifted with the political winds.
I'm not as familiar with Russia, but it wouldn't surprise me if Putin's ideology is power-for-its-own-sake and nationalism, in that order.
What is communism? Peace in the world, and utopia for workers?
Or more like mafia-serfdom-militarist system, where actual proletariat are put lowest of the low, and abused by everybody on the party ladder, and what USSR actually was for most of its history?
The CPSU never, ever cared for one, and even lowest tiers in the party were fully aware of this.
In this, it's true that the communist party of the soviet union never ever been the dictionary definition of communism (which they themselve defined) It was a cynical kratocratic cult without any morals.
There were people that literally read Friedman and wholeheartedly agreed that were in the CPSU.
Hell, Yeltsin was the 7th most powerful man in the CPSU. He wasn't much of a communist.
What was "the party?" The party itself been the puppet of:
1. KGB
2. Interior ministry
3. Military
Which were the real power behind it, and essentially were the source of CPSU policy, with ordinary low rank members being mere "shesterkas" errand boys.
So now what was the actual political force running the CPSU is now having an even more direct control of Russia, and without military, and MVD competing with them for power.
The Politburo was always the head of the party.