Re: Seems a little provincial to me...
What you should understand is that there were (and sometimes still are) communist parties, trotskiist parties, maoist parties all over western Europe , but they are all in democracies; it's not because a party might be from the left or even extreme left that it won't respect the democratic rules and rituals. They don't kill people just because they want to express themselves. What went on in the SU or goes on in China has more to do with the kind of regime than the kind of party.
Raoul