[WS:] While I agree with your critique of the Soviet style system, I also think that your argument tends to fall into the fallacy of composition - quite common among bourgeois critics of socialism. In this account, all negative aspects of life under the Soviet style system are attributed to a single feature - that they were labeled "socialist" - while ignoring all other historical circumstances that may have created or contributed to these dysfunctions. It is really like blaming the hospital for the death of a gravely ill patient brought in for treatment. The hospital effect may or may not contribute to the patient's death, but it certainly is not the sole or even main cause of it.
Russia and its EE satellites were backward rural societies that never experienced democracy or even a republican form of government in their history or had a real economy. This backwardness created dysfunctions so ingrained in social fabric, that would persist regardless of what political regime ("Reds" or "Whites") succeeded the tsar.
We can have endless debates about the effects (both negative and positive) that "socialism" had on these societies, but the indisputable fact remains that whatever social/political/economic system existed there, it was a product of a vast array of historical circumstances rather than a pure manifestation of socialist organization of economy and society.
It is quite possible to define socialism based on a very different socio-political context, e.g. Scandinavian social democracy, Israeli kibbutz , or even European welfare states - as each contains some elements of socialist principles - and none of them would have the dysfunctions that existed in the Society system.
I think that for everyone who is genuinely interested in promoting socialism, it would be far more productive to focus on those features that are relevant for developed democracies instead of being fixated with those that existed in backward rural societies and then claiming that they would not work here.
Wojtek