Yeah I'm just bitter about the Bolsheviks betraying the revolution so they could be on top before it was even finished, abd doing it so completely.

Yes, monarchs were often worse, and Nick was particularly spectacular in that regard. But the USSR is sort of a recognizable legibly-modern example; they had tell communications and (shitty, because they had a chance to be decades ahead of everyone else and noped out) computers and airplanes and stuff. And while they're not the worst, they're well past the "there is no fucking excuse to suck this much" line. So that's my "worse than x" line, and I think the american empire fails on every metric.

To be clear, while I do have criticisms of centralized communism (the centralized part), I think if it were substantially at fault for how much the USSR sucked, Cuba wouldn't have lasted five seconds, much less outlived it and still squeaked by even with the spectacular bullshit challenges it face(d/s)