Why was the Soviet Union called the Union of Soviet "Socialist" Republics when they were communist?

They may have called those countries socialist/communist, but they weren't socialist/communist. Technically they were neither, they were state capitalist.

There was no workers control of the means of production in those countries, therefore no socialism.

"Marxist literature typically defines state capitalism as a social system combining capitalism—the wage system of producing and appropriating surplus value in a commodity economy—with ownership or control by a state. By that definition, a state capitalist country is one where the government controls the economy and essentially acts like a single huge corporation. Friedrich Engels, in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, states that the final stage of capitalism would consist of ownership of production and communication by the bourgeois state.

Sound familiar? According to their own Marxist theory even, the Soviet Union or it's satellites were not socialist!

Socialism is not where the government redistributes wealth and controls the economy (a popular but untrue definition)

Socialism is WORKER'S CONTROL of the means of production, not some government officials controlling the means of the production.

True socialism has existed before briefly during the Spanish Civil War in Catalonia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchist_Catalonia

And communism is a stateless, classless, and moneyless society. This didn't exist under any so-called "communist" state.

Socialism is a "progressive" stage between capitalism and communism. Here we still have a hint of capitalism. That is the type of system that things like PC, multi channel TV and radios and cell phones come from. Most communist countries don't have such things. If you want to give yours up keep pushing Communism. In the United Soviet Socialist Republic people could vote. It differred from here because you could only vote for members of the Communist Party. In essence the primaries were the general election too. One other difference was they had to use machine guns to keep people from leaving and nobody was trying to get in.

Communism is an ideology which holds itself to be the end-stage of socialism.

In other words, nations can be socialist (such as the USSR), but they are gradually to become more and more socialist until the means of production are within the hands of the now-classless masses, and the nation-states themselves disappear.

Think of Communism as the ultimate Utopian society.

They were neither. They were State Capitalist. You both are wrong. Look up both Socialism and Communism. You and your friend clearly lack knowledge of both.

Difference between socialism and communism???

One uses a gun.

Socialism, communism, and fascism are the same exact thing. All are ideals that must be banned from public discussion.

They Still Are.... Behind that Iron Curtain...

FNS