It would be nice to think we are in the position of those early socialists in Russia

Would it, though? Tsarism was very harsh against socialists. Pioneer socialists like Babushka Breshko-Breshkovskaya spent decades in exile or prison, and most Bolshevik leaders were in exile for the most part too. Maybe we’ll see similar things in the near future with the rise of the far right, but fortunately we’re not there yet.

In fact, we’re seeing the stagnation of the capitalist west, and the boom of (arguably) communist China. This is not to say that I wholeheartedly believe that China will bring forth communist revolutions all over the place, but at least I wouldn’t think they’d be as bad as the US or as Western Europe. The material conditions for the past 30 years have been really bad for the growth of communism, as we’ve seen by the lack of growth of most communist movements. Maybe we should be more optimistic about the following 20-30 years, the world is going to change a lot thanks to the loss of hegemony of the west, and that brings great possibilities for us commies in my opinion