> Their 'definition' of democracy is not a democracy.
I think people are way too black-and-white about these things. Democracy is supposed to be a mapping of the people's will to the people's living conditions. It's very obvious that some states are way better at this than others. The amount of control the US voter has over the specific policy regime they live under is almost nonexistent. That's quite normal in western democracies.
To put it in context, an Athenian democrat would call every one of our modern democracies an oligarchy, and we in turn would call their democracy an apartheid state.
I don't think you're right about the Soviets, but my observation is that a large part of western misunderstandings of the Bolsheviks come from failing to understand them on their terms. In my eyes, a state based on soviet sovereignty, even with a strong executive in emergency situations, would be a very democratic state. That's what the Bolsheviks said they wanted to deliver, and I don't see why we shouldn't believe them.
Well, there are a lot of things one can say about these countries, but we're talking about the Soviets here. The Western flaws don't excuse the 'idealistic' Soviets.
>In my eyes, a state based on soviet sovereignty, even with a strong executive in emergency situations, would be a very democratic state.
A pity the Communists never ever tried to implement soviet sovereignty.
>That's what the Bolsheviks said they wanted to deliver, and I don't see why we shouldn't believe them.
>It's also the case that leftists simply have a different definition of democracy to liberals.
Their 'definition' of democracy is not a democracy. e.g. the various People's Democratic Republic of X, like say North Korea.