Not OP, but I recall reading an essay by Carlos Martinez where he explained it as the following:
Most people, regardless of what economic system they live in, don’t really have a real understanding of that system. Consider how many people actually understand what “capitalism” is today. While the Soviets did try what they could to educate their people in this regard, it’s kind of a human thing that most people just want to live their lives and aren’t going to bother trying to figure out how they economy around them works.
So even if most people in the USSR didn’t really understand what “socialism” was, they did know that the improvement in their material conditions from the beginning of Stalin’s tenure to the end was truly incredible (and indeed, as impressive as China’s growth has been in recent decades by some measure the USSR under Stalin grew by even greater leaps). For good or ill, they associated the person of Stalin with “socialism” because Stalin was a socialist and Bolshevik revolutionary, and that period saw a massive improvement in their living conditions (WW2 notwithstanding of course).
So by denouncing Stalin, many people in the Soviet Union saw that as a de facto denunciation of socialism, since the two were so closely tied together in their minds. If you equate Stalin with socialism, and the current leaders are denouncing Stalin, then at the very least that will lead to some confused feelings about socialism.
Not OP, but I recall reading an essay by Carlos Martinez where he explained it as the following:
Most people, regardless of what economic system they live in, don’t really have a real understanding of that system. Consider how many people actually understand what “capitalism” is today. While the Soviets did try what they could to educate their people in this regard, it’s kind of a human thing that most people just want to live their lives and aren’t going to bother trying to figure out how they economy around them works.
So even if most people in the USSR didn’t really understand what “socialism” was, they did know that the improvement in their material conditions from the beginning of Stalin’s tenure to the end was truly incredible (and indeed, as impressive as China’s growth has been in recent decades by some measure the USSR under Stalin grew by even greater leaps). For good or ill, they associated the person of Stalin with “socialism” because Stalin was a socialist and Bolshevik revolutionary, and that period saw a massive improvement in their living conditions (WW2 notwithstanding of course).
So by denouncing Stalin, many people in the Soviet Union saw that as a de facto denunciation of socialism, since the two were so closely tied together in their minds. If you equate Stalin with socialism, and the current leaders are denouncing Stalin, then at the very least that will lead to some confused feelings about socialism.