Socialist romanticism

Last night I noticed that I was linked to a peculiar (to me) post about expansion of the EU. When I visited the post, I realized it was from Tennessee Ticket in which he writes:

Back then, all sorts of places I had a hankering to go were behind the so-called Iron Curtain: Poland, Lithuania, Yugoslavia, Hungary, and, according to some, Massachusetts. Wait -- I was in Massachusetts. Three years there, and I could probably count the number of communists I met on one hand. (I did meet fascists in New Hampshire, but that's another story.)

and gives me an elbow poke about my characterizations of Massachusetts as socialist.

Well, snarky comments about Massachusetts aside, I have no romantic notions about Poland or the USSR (prior to the fall of "the so-called iron curtain") or Lithuania (after the iron curtain's fall). And TT's story about the expanding EU demonstrates the good fortune of these countries that Ronald Reagan didn't have a romantic view of Marxism.