Well I believe they are. Maybe not out loud so we can all hear it, but I think they live on. You just don’t stop being a commie. Look at the end of WWII. When the Nazi’s lost did they suddenly repent? No. They continued to be Nazi. Oh, yeah, they may have said, oh I have seen the light of my wrongs, I am sorry for liking Hitler and being a Nazi, but I think that is pure BS. They worked to return, but thankfully the allies stayed there and they could never come back.
Oh, they're absolutely communists, no question, and to the bone. But the "Soviet" brand is long gone....along with the defunct Soviet Union.
So there are Marxists, Stalinists, Leninists, and probably even "Krushchevists" The latter were hardcore Soviet tyrants...Then there was Gorbachev....sort of a wimpy dictator wannabe, who oversaw the fall of the empire....but still a "Soviet" nevertheless
. I think we fully agree, it's just a matter of semantics.