The Russians and the other communists did not “declare” communism to be dead; the American press and dumb-ass politicians in the west declared that communism was dead. Even democrats in this country did not declare it dead.
Nope. Communism is dead. The totalitarian impulse is still very much alive, but the only real going concerns, from the PRC to the Obama administration are fascist (leaving aside the bizarre morphing of “people’s democracy” into a form of hereditary monarchy in North Korea and Cuba.)
Experience has drilled the critiques of central planning of Hayek and vonMises even into the minds and hearts of would-be central planners who have never read even a precis of the work of any Austrian school economist.
Putin and Pravda warn America of the dangers of socialism and go unheeded—even though as now constituted Russia is fascist, though less obnoxiously so than China or Obama’s vision for the U.S. The Chinese fascists (who still call themselves “Communists” but aren’t really) cling to state atheism, but in Russia it’s been jettisoned for a revival of the old Byzantine symphony of powers between Church and state (which is its present form is more robust than at any time since Peter “the Great” subordinated the Russian Church to the state).
Communism has been consigned to the dustbin of history—both shown to be unworkable by trenchant critique, and defeated in practical terms. The problem is, fascism, is ultimately more dangerous: while an affront to human dignity and freedom, and sub-optimal in terms of its provision for human material needs (capitalism being better), unlike Communism, it is workable long-term (as Franco’s Spain and Peronist Argentina showed—though the latter gave a really good case for its sub-optimality).