>Democracy is the road to socialism— Karl Marx
That line has not been found in any published work by Marx. Marx opposed “liberal democracy” (that is, the conservative limited-government democracy of the time). Later Communist regimes were dictatorships of a small elite, and merely used the term “’democracy” as a cloak to cover what was really going on (also “People’s Republic” — there’s that word ‘republic’ again :-).
Both ‘republic’ and ‘democracy’ are used loosely by different groups to mean all kinds of things. Only the specifics determine what’s really meant.